The Island Bookshop in Bailizhou town Photos: Courtesy of Chen Mulan

Nestled in the middle of the Yangtze River, Bailizhou town in Yichang city, Central China's Hubei Province, is a vast river island fringed by 74 kilometers of continuous dykes. Locals simply call it "The Island." 

For decades, like many rural regions across China, the quiet island has grappled with youth outflow, leaving many left-behind children growing up confined to mobile phones. It is against this quiet rural backdrop that Chen Mulan, a local woman, launched her private, free-of-charge Island Bookstore, aiming to bring the warmth of reading to every child and resident on the land that raised her.

"I sincerely hope to call on more people to join the rural reading initiative and commit ourselves to doing things that are hard yet right," Chen told the Global Times.

Passion for reading

Chen's passion for reading stems from her own impoverished childhood. She had no access to storybooks until the age of 10, when she borrowed her first fairy tale from a classmate, a moment she said "ignited a lifelong love for literature." 

After graduating from college, she built a successful career in Shanghai, far away from her hometown. 

Yet every homecoming pierced her heart: The familiar villages remained, but young people had all left for cities, and local children spent their childhoods glued to screens, deprived of spiritual nourishment.

Driven by gratitude for her hometown, Chen made a life-changing decision when she was 33 years old. She quit her promising urban job, invested 160,000 yuan ($23,623) of her personal savings, and returned to Bailizhou to open the town's first public-welfare bookstore. The bookstore never sells books, charges rental fees or runs commercial businesses. It exists solely as a free public reading space for island residents. 

The beginning was far from easy. The villagers were unaccustomed to voluntary cultural services, and few stepped into the bookstore. Most visitors would only glance around but seldom come in. 

Undeterred, Chen visited rural households, farmlands and local schools to promote reading by taking her books door to door. Gradually, her persistence paid off. More residents and children became regular readers, and the once quiet bookstore turned into a vibrant cultural hub. 

She went on to launch a series of influential public reading events, including the "Reading Session for Thousands of Island Readers." To date, she has hosted over 500 public reading activities, serving more than 35,000 readers.

As her public welfare journey deepened, Chen felt she was shouldering greater social responsibility. 

During extensive visits to over 200 rural students, she discovered a poignant problem: Most children had no dedicated study desks, doing their homework wherever they could find space. The observation inspired her most ambitious initiative, a project she named the "One Square Meter Reading Space".

Chen Mulan engages with a girl at a reading promotion event in Central China's Hubei Province.

Grass-roots innovation 

In early 2024, Chen's team united public welfare volunteers nationwide to launch the "Island Bookstore Lighting Plan." 

The initiative builds personalized miniature reading corners for rural children, equipping them with desks, lamps, books and school supplies while providing regular reading guidance and psychological counseling. 

The transformative power of the initiative is evident in 9-year-old local boy Li, who became a biology enthusiast after gaining a dedicated reading space. He can identify dozens of local plant and animal species, all thanks to the encyclopedias donated by Chen's team.

What began as one woman's solo endeavor has grown into a large public welfare community. 

By the end of 2024, the Island Bookstore had eight core members and over 300 volunteer contributors nationwide. It has earned official recognition, listed in China's national rural reading program and awarded honorable titles for their outstanding rural cultural services. 

Currently, the bookstore hosts young children who pore over picture books, as well as villagers who read newspapers and books in their spare time. Its monthly themed reading sessions even draw avid readers from afar, who travel across the river by ferry to attend.

Building on local demand, Chen further expanded her vision, converting idle rural houses, clinic lounges and village activity centers into shared public reading spaces, weaving literary atmosphere into daily rural life.

"Reading is never a solitary journey, but a collective progress," Chen said. "Rural reading promotion is not the task of one person or one village, but a shared vision for all of society." 

Her grass-roots efforts perfectly illustrate China's nationwide rural reading revitalization strategy. 

In June, multiple central government departments jointly launched a nationwide effort to upgrade the country's vast rural reading room program, aiming to revitalize rural cultural facilities and cultivate reading habits among rural residents. This action was taken after the landmark National Reading Promotion Regulations took full effect nationwide in February.

Official data shows China has built 587,000 rural bookstores nationwide, delivering over 1.3 billion books to rural areas and equipping each rural resident with more than 2.6 books on average. 

While national policies provide systematic top-down support, grass-roots practitioners like Chen deliver targeted, human-centered services that fill the gaps of standardized policy implementation, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Liu Weicheng, head of the Hubei Provincial Library, highlights the unique value of grass-roots efforts. 

"Unlike rigid top-down policy promotion, grass-roots volunteers deliver warm, practical solutions rooted in real local needs. Their persistent, down-to-earth innovations unlock the endogenous vitality of rural cultural construction," he told the Global Times.

From a single small bookstore to citywide cultural cooperation covering hundreds of rural cultural centers, Chen's journey has spanned six years. She often recommends the book Lighthouse (Tout Seul) (Chinese Edition), as she believes literature lights up ordinary people's lives. 

"I hope this countryside bookstore can serve as a spiritual sanctuary and extend its influence to distant corners of rural China," Chen said.