'Red' bookstores witness rising Chinese enthusiasm on revolutionary history

Read to mark landmark

This year marks the centennial of the founding of the CPC. Strong foot traffic has been observed in the bookstore since the beginning of the year, said manager Pan Min, who added that 70 percent of them were tourists coming to Jinggangshan.

Sales have climbed both on year and on month according to Pan, in line with industrial forecasts in a market report released in Beijing in late March.

Traditionally a season of thin trading, the first four months of this year logged an increase of nearly 180 percent in sales compared with the same period in 2019, the year before the outbreak of COVID-19, said Pan.

Best-sellers included collected works of Chairman Mao, catalog records of the Jinggangshan revolutionary base area and an oral history of the struggles in the region, according to the manager.

A similar scene was also found in Zunyi, Southwest China's Guizhou province, an "unusual one" according to the staff at a local revolution-themed Xinhua Bookstore branch.

More than 900 km to the west of Jinggangshan, Zunyi hosted a CPC meeting in 1935, which is widely considered a watershed event in the history of the CPC.

Sales soared 30 percent in the first quarter compared to the same period of 2019, according to Zhan Huijing, head of the Zunyi bookstore.

"Many readers made a point of visiting here, asking when a much-expected title on CPC history is available," said Zhan.