ACCORDING to a list released recently by Amazon China, the top 10 most bookish cities in China in 2015 are Suzhou, Hefei, Kunming, Jinan, Ningbo, Chongqing, Zhengzhou, Changsha, Foshan and Hangzhou.

    China’s first-tier cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou are missing on the list while second- and third-tier cities are leading in reading. Except for Jinan and Zhengzhou, others on the list are all southern cities.

    Shi Jianjun, vice president of Amazon China, said that they got the list by calculating the proportion of book sale volume compared with overall product sales of the city. As for Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou’s failure to get on the list, he explained, “It may be because the pace of life in these cities is too fast and people are under too much pressure. There are many more channels to get information in these big cities, and people have more choices to keep themselves informed beyond reading books.”

    Amazon also released the top 10 best-selling books in 2015, top 10 best-selling writers and the top 10 emerging writers. The best-selling book was “Secret Garden” while the best-selling authors are Higashino Keigo, Johanna Basford and Da Bing.

    (SD-Agencies)