A tome is where the heart is

A picture of a young man reading the Chinese version of Francis Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution while resting at a makeshift hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, was widely shared on social media in February.

Fukuyama later tweeted a photo of the man holding the original version of his book after recovering from COVID-19.

The man, 39, surnamed Fu, is a post-doctorate student at Florida State University in the United States. He said he didn't expect to get famous by simply indulging in his daily hobby.

During the pandemic, reading has become a comfort for people. A documentary titled And Yet the Books, released in December, has received more viewers since Spring Festival.

The five-episode documentary is produced by video-sharing platform Bilibili, and has been viewed more than 7 million times.

It took Luo Yingluan, general director of the documentary, and her team, a whole year to make the film.

And Yet the Books is Luo's second book-themed documentary, following 2018's Being a Book Fanatic.

"That one is more about professionals in the book industry, while And Yet the Books is about people's relationship with books," she explains.

The 31-year-old leads an all-female team, all of whom are under 30, and believes that the content of the series may only scratch the surface of the subject.

"However, we hope this documentary will be a spark to light up people's interest in books," she says.

Zhu Yue, a novelist and book editor of Chinese original literature, is one of the three protagonists in the first episode about book editors and translators.

"If we can find one person to read our book among 100,000 people, we can survive. The largest encouragement for me is to find a good book," he says.

The second episode looks at how a book transfers from one person to another, which made Luo realize that making a documentary is like finding a treasured used book－it's about fate.

Luo, herself, is a lover of picture books, so the third episode explores how three authors create their visual wonderlands. The last two episodes are about book designers and book lovers.

"Each of the interviewees has a wonderful story that we could take a whole episode to tell, but we have to cut each story to around 10 minutes, which is a hard process for us," Luo says.

The name of the documentary originates from a poem with the same name by Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz.

Luo uses a soft narrative style to tell the stories.

"Reading is a vehicle that can carry us safely to countless parallel worlds besides many parts of our own, and we hope this documentary can capture the wonderful stories about books and book lovers－as well as offering a salute to the book editors," she says.

The voice-over of the documentary is performed by actor Hu Ge, attracting many of his fans, many of whom were impressed by the quality of the documentary.

Zhu Xianliang, general producer of the documentary, says it's a win-win situation for both the production team and Hu, as the film also exposes him to potential new fans, too.

Zhu Xianliang was impressed by Hu's working attitude. "He spent the whole day, from 9 am to midnight, recording, which is a heavy workload, even for a professional voice-over artist," he recalls. "He was doing it for free. The two boxed meals during the recording were the only thing we offered him."

Drawing younger viewers

A cartoon element is one of the highlights of the documentary－in each episode, cartoon segments are used to illustrate stories being recounted by interviewees, whether it's the stick figure of a book editor as he appears in his dreams, or a picture book author walking into the wonderland he's created.

"The stick figure of Zhu Yue was actually drawn by himself," Luo says.

The cartoon production occupies about 15 percent of the total cost, but its inclusion was a strategy calculated by Zhu Xianliang when planning the documentary.

"On Bilibili, around 80 percent of our users are aged between 18 and 35, so the documentary should be interesting for them," he explains.

He says the users on the platform are mostly well educated and are willing to pay for the content they like.

Zhu Xianliang has been working in the documentary arena for three decades, mostly with traditional broadcast TV stations. In 2017, he joined Bilibili and started to focus on making products for new media platforms.

The team at the platform has made works about food and history, which have received over 100 million views. "The documentaries distributed via new media platforms offer more interaction between the audience and the production team than ever before," he explains.

"We know reading is a niche area on our platform, but we need to produce documentaries covering all manner of subjects and interests, as well as make something that younger viewers can learn from," Zhu Xianliang says, adding that their goal is to get more young people falling in love with documentaries.

"The directors should keep the audience in mind when creating a documentary, especially for an audience on Bilibili, because danmu－meaning 'bullet words' which are short live comments that appear on the screen in real time－have become part of the viewing experience," Zhu Xianliang says.

"For shots that we know will trigger many danmu, we need a few seconds of 'filler content' to leave room for the audience to have a 'bulletword carnival'."

The documentary has received many favorable reviews, garnering a score of 9.2 points out of 10 on review site Douban and 9.8 points on Bilibili.

"It's a victory for video and also a victory for books," one Douban user comments.

After the documentary was released, the books mentioned sold like hot cakes online－copies of Jimo de Youxi ("the lonely game") sold out and 8,000 more are being printed.

There are users on both Douban and Bilibili who summarized all of the books that appear in each episode, even books that just get a brief mention in an interview.

According to Zhu Xianliang, a physical bookstore named after the documentary that will stock all of the books mentioned in the series is planned to open in Shanghai later this year.

"It's an indication of how far a documentary can go," he says.

According to Luo, the second season of the documentary is currently being researched.

"In the first season we put a lot focus on literature," Luo notes. "For the second season, however, we plan to explore more book genres and search for interesting stories."