Subway With Free E-Books For Passengers In Beijing

“The more you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” –Dr. Seuss

What do you usually do when you are on a subway? Surf the internet, take a nap, listen to music, play video games, or work on your computer. As in most cities with underground WiFi connections, commuters in Beijing spend their time on subway with the same habits.

But from now on, they can have another option: access a library of free e-books.

We often hear our friends complaining that they don’t have time to read just a few pages of their books. And this seems like a brilliant idea to those who want to make their commute more valuable. With just a scan of a QR code inside the train, you give to yourself the chance to read, to acquire, and to be certain that we need to read more and more.

The books are carted by the National Library of China in order to encourage people to read everyday. This special subway is called “M Subway Library”. The e-library contains a selection of 70,000 books, ranging from classic literature to sci-fi and nonfiction. Books are selected based on passengers’ reading preferences, and most happen to be students or younger office workers. The National Library of China said that the collection of books will be updating every couple of months.

The Beijing subway isn’t the first to add a library. In Bucharest, a metro station plastered station walls with a giant print of library shelves, complete with QR codes on book spines. On a metro line in Shanghai, a bookstore launched an unofficial library of actual books that passengers could pick up at one station and drop off at the next.

Books fall open, you fall in. If you are living in Beijing, and subway is your daily transportation, let’s charge your smartphone and tell me what you have read by the end of tomorrow.

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