Curtains go down on the one-week Shanghai Book Fair 2014 on Aug 18, with more than 150,000 books and over 600 cultural activities on hand this year. Visitors were taking photos at the exhibition hall. [Photo/Xinhua]

This year’s week-long Shanghai Book Fair came to a successful end, on Aug 19, with its “Meet on Tuesday” reading seminar attracting local writers and readers to share their tales of reading, and with the host Cao Kefan on hand and read form Letters from Fu Lei, excerpts from the writing of translator, scholar, and interpreter Fu Lei and his wife.

Cao also shared some recollections of an interview with Fu Cong, Fu Lei’s son and their discussion of Letters from Fu Lei. And Zhou Kexi, Chinese translator of the French classic Le Petit Prince, read some passages from French writer Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe in both Chinese and French, which added an interesting bit to the seminar.

Later on, Zhou spoke of his dream when he was young of becoming a translator and bringing more foreign classics to China, and of how he settled on French literature, after 28 years as a math teacher.

Reading some piece from the Russia’s great poet Alexander Pushkin, was the famous actor, Jiao Huang, with a heart-wrenching delivery while leading the audience into the world of arts.

And there were more writers sharing their literary experiences at this year’s book fair, to wrap it up, and celebrate the 500 publishers with more than 150,000 books who took part. There was also a display of photos, works and films on the French novelist and playwright Marguerite Duras to celebrate her 100th anniversary as part of a Sino-French cultural event. The book fair also cooperated with 17 district libraries across Shanghai in holding several dozen local reading events and benefiting 200,000 reading fans. Even out on the distant Chongming Island there were eight writing and reading exchanges. Through these combined efforts, the organizers hoped to pass on the spirit of reading and emphasize Shanghai’s place as a city of culture.