The 11th River City Reading Season and the 2026 Public Library Service Promotion Week officially launched at Wuhan Library on April 23. The event, themed “Reading Together, Beauty Unfolds, A New Journey Begins,” was jointly organized by Wuhan Library, the Changsha Library and Nanchang Library of the Yangtze River Midstream City Cluster, public libraries in the Wuhan Metropolitan Area, and the Wuhan Children’s Library. Through various formats such as grassroots reading figure interviews, five-sense aesthetic book recommendations, and immersive reading markets, the event broke traditional reading boundaries, integrating the fragrance of books into daily life and offering citizens a multi-sensory reading feast that could be touched, tasted, smelled, heard, and seen.
The light of the ordinary warms the streets, paying tribute to grassroots reading guardians. During the launch event, the “Light of the Ordinary: A Tribute to the Fragrance of Books” on-site discussion session was particularly touching. Three grassroots reading promoters—Wu Shi from Jianghan District Library, Qin Yan, the head of Hanyang Rose Lane Academy, and Zeng Yiqing, a community member from Chucai Community, Zhonghua Road, Wuchang District—took the stage one after another, sharing their dedication and original intentions in grassroots reading promotion, using simple stories to illustrate the responsibility and love of grassroots library workers.
Among them, Qin Yan’s story deeply moved the audience. Hailing from the mountains of Enshi, Qin Yan had extremely scarce book resources in her hometown during childhood, making reading a luxury for her. At the age of 18, she first entered a university library, and the shock of the vast array of books and the rich scent of paper planted a firm seed in her heart: to ensure that more children like her former self could easily access good books. With this original intention, Qin Yan embarked on the path of reading promotion, persisting for twelve years.
Over these twelve years, Qin Yan has evolved from donating books in her own name to rural primary schools and giving books to friends and relatives, to formally operating a city study, connecting with provincial and municipal library public resources, gradually deepening and solidifying her public interest reading efforts. The Rose Lane Academy she operates is located in the Zhiyinxiyuan residential area of Hanyang District, Wuhan, an old neighborhood primarily inhabited by the elderly and children. Many dual-income families face issues of children being unattended after school and having monotonous after-school activities. In response, Qin Yan insists on keeping the study open to the public for free, encouraging the elderly to bring children to read newspapers, write, and draw in the study, making it a safe and secure growth space for children and a spiritual haven for community residents.
After years of operation, Rose Lane Academy hosts nearly twenty book clubs and various themed reading activities annually, with annual borrowing exceeding five thousand volumes, and children’s picture books being particularly popular. Now, an increasing number of volunteer families are joining the academy’s operations, and the team of reading promoters continues to grow.
Wu Shi from Jianghan District Library, who also shared the stage, has been at the frontline of libraries for over a decade, engaging in activities from Golden Bridge book reviews and picture book lectures to textbook plays and digital reading promotion, safeguarding readers’ enthusiasm for reading in daily routines. Zeng Yiqing from Chucai Community in Wuchang relies on 18 community volunteer service teams, collaborating with Wuchang District Library to deliver cultural resources to residents’ doorsteps, bringing neighbors closer and warming community life through reading. These three promoters, rooted in public libraries, city studies, and community grassroots levels, have transformed reading from “a personal matter” into “a collective joy” through their daily perseverance.
Aesthetic education partners recommend books through the five senses, allowing reading to leap off the page and touch the heart. If grassroots reading promoters are the sowers of the fragrance of books, then “aesthetic education partners” are the connectors between reading and aesthetics. During the launch event, the “Aesthetic Education Partners: Five-Sense Book Recommendations” segment was poetic. Five outstanding librarians carefully selected by Wuhan Library and the Wuhan Children’s Library took the stage, acting as messengers of reading and aesthetic education. Using the five senses—touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight—as guides, they interacted with the audience and recommended five books with warmth and depth, making reading no longer limited to the static experience of turning pages but a comprehensive sensory enjoyment permeating daily life.
“Reading is not just turning pages or silently reciting words. It can be the fireworks on the tongue as tea smoke curls, the freshness at the nose as flower branches droop, the texture under the fingertips as paper rustles, the whispers in the ears as rivers murmur, or the poetry and distant horizons before the eyes in a riot of
