Losing the plot

Ma Hailing is a bookworm. When not at work as an IT retailer in Beijing, she can usually be found reading or shopping for new novels. For her, the digital age could not have come soon enough.

The 32-year-old said that being able to download books has saved her a lot of time and energy.

"Thanks to the Internet, I don't have to carry around piles of heavy books, and I don't need to travel all the way to a crowded library," she said, adding that she reads downloaded novels on her Hanvon e-book tablet and 3G cell phone.