Keeping a 'diary' of China

Newspaper collector finds value in old publications that record the country's past

For over half a century, 77-year-old Liu Yuzhi from Guiyang, Guizhou province, has been collecting newspapers of all kinds from all over the country. To date, he has a collection of more than 500,000 pieces in his self-built libraries.

Liu, a former clerk at the Guiyang Municipal Bureau of Grain, collected a wide range of "precious" newspapers such as the Xuantong Time Gazette of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and the first and final issues of different newspapers from the last century.

Other interesting pieces from his collection include commemorative publications named after the Chinese zodiac, a People's Daily edition printed on silk material, and news pages printed on an umbrella.

"For me, a newspaper is an encyclopedia containing various content," Liu said. "It is news at present and will be history in the future. We can read about life and learn lots of knowledge from it."

As Liu had only three years of primary school education, he experienced difficulties writing articles at work.

"It was urgent for me to learn how to write and I started to read the local newspaper and I kept copies afterward. I wrote useful sentences down from the paper and learned them by heart every day.

"When I encountered an article that I was interested in, I would cut out the article and paste it into a notebook," Liu said.

In 1964, Liu decided to develop his hobby into a serious "career" when a colleague told him that the first issue copy of Guizhou Daily he bought from a flea market was of high value.

Since then, he continuously collected newspapers mainly from three sources: subscriptions, antique markets, and recycling stations.