A passion for periodicals

An exhibition at this year's BIBF featured 4,000 books and 1,000 magazines in four categories, including rare first editions, Wang Ru reports.

When Yury Tavrovskiy was a student at St. Petersburg State University in the 1960s, he learned Chinese language and calligraphy, read poems from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and novels of essayist and translator Lu Xun (1881-1936), and also studied the oracle-bone inscriptions of ancient China.

His knowledge about China helped him in his later career as a Russian Sinologist who wrote and translated works about China. On Aug 20, Tavrovskiy received an award during this year's Special Book Award of China for his work introducing Chinese culture to the world.