Review: The Beijing International Book Fair 2008

Sep 1-Sep 4

The Beijing International Book Fair 2008

Tianjin International Exhibition Center
(022 2801 2976)

Tianjin is one of those small-scale towns that feel like a quainter version of Beijing. While the city has it's own Central Business District, it's located in what my taxi driver called the bailou qu (the white buildings district) - it is dwarfed by even the shortest of Beijing's CBD office buildings. The quaintness of the city and its contrast with Beijing is further sharpened by the experience of taking the new super duper high-speed train which transports you from the capital to Tianjin in only 30 minutes - at one point when I checked on the overhead electronic board it announced we'd reached a speed of 327km/hr. The train was very clean and neatly kept and amazingly the train stewardness, given that they're only on duty for half an hour, are impeccably dressed and even don an air-hostess hat.

The BIBF offered a wonderful chance to see a variety of books that ranged from the slightly weird to kitsch and a lot boring stuff in between.
The first floor was taken up by mainly Chinese publishers, separated into different provinces, such as Shanghai, Jiangsu, Sichuan and Guangdong, with publishing houses and their main titles lining each section. You could browse everything from the literary, such as in the Changjiang Wenyi publishing house whose selection included the works of Shen Congwen, the pen name of Shen Yuehuan, who wrote about sailors and the countryside. You could also find academic titles, such as those peeking from the shelves of Fudan University Pess.
International publishing houses crowded the second floor of the exhibition center, they were divided into separate national sections. In keeping with the Year of Greece in China festivities, the country of honor for this year was Greece. Other countries present included Saudi Arabia, Korea, Italy and Russia. There was a collection of Japanese books dealing with earthquakes and big-name publishers such as Penguin, DK and McGraw Hill were also present.

As most of the books are not for sale, there wasn't much to be gained from browsing the various booths, the main purpose of the fair seemed to be to allow those in the industry the opportunity to meet publishers and distributors.

For me the highlight of the trip was actually the train ride (RMB 58 one way), the sleek, bright and spacious train gave me the impression that I was entering a new modern age – the only difference being that once I stepped off, I walked into a weird and scaled down version of Beijing. It was a strange feeling, like passing through a grand glittering archway only to enter a parallel place where the people all wear last year's fashion.

Links and Sources
BIBF Official Site