In front of Tengtou village in Fenghua district, Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province stands a small cottage called TENG.XIAOYUAN, inside of which lies a rural library.

Villagers walk in front of TENG.XIAOYUAN. [Photo by Zhao Mingjun for chinadaily.com.cn]

Open the door of TENG.XIAOYUAN and walk into the house, and you will see rows of books neatly stacked inside the walls on three sides. There is a wide range of books, from science fiction to children's educational books, from agricultural technical guides to political readings.

This library can meet the needs of almost all nearby villagers and tourists, as staff from Fenghua District Library come from time to time to update the inventory. "The books here are all rotated", said Fu Dandan from Tengtou village. "I remember new books just arrived at the beginning of this month."

Books in the library in Tengtou village. [Photo by Zhao Mingjun for chinadaily.com.cn]

The library is open from morning to night, seven days a week. Fu Deming, an official of Tengtou village, loves to read for a while every weekday evening after work. "I often choose books or read articles about rural revitalization", Fu said, "so that I could better serve the people." What's more, he likes to read books about history in his spare time.

It's extremely easy for villagers to borrow books. All they need is their ID cards to apply for a library card, and it is completely free. The most frequent visitors to the are the elderly and children. Seniors in the village still like to read newspapers, and children are usually brought to the library by their parents on weekends, which is when it's at its most lively.

The library card of the Tengtou village library. [Photo by Zhao Mingjun for chinadaily.com.cn]

The library, built in 2018, has hosted many activities since it opened, such as the Poetry Recitation Competition and Family Reading Class. In May 2022, it was selected as a demonstration library for other villages in Ningbo.

There are currently 215 rural libraries of this kind in the district, with about 280,000 publications. Over the past two years, the Fenghua district government has invested more than 2,500,000 yuan (about $370,000) in total and is constantly replenishing the book supply.

With the help of the district government, Tengtou village has been continuously improving the library. Now, when villagers visit, they can not only read paper books but also listen to a variety of audiobooks by scanning the QR code on the walls. As the villagers said, this welcoming library has become one of the best places for some spiritual nourishment.

The library of Tengtou village was selected as a demonstration site for other villages in Ningbo. [Photo by Zhao Mingjun for chinadaily.com.cn] 

The audiobook wall.  [Photo by Zhao Mingjun for chinadaily.com.cn]

(Written by Zhao Mingjun. Zhao is master student majoring in international journalism and communication at Tsinghua University, and is on a field survey tour with her classmates in Zhejiang province from Aug 9-15.)