Shanghai Book Fair to be held next week

The 2023 Shanghai Book Fair will be held at the Shanghai Exhibition Center from August 16 to 22 with 850 reading events – 467 at the main venue and 142 as parallel events.

The opening hours will be from 9am to 5pm for the day session, with the last visitors allowed in at 4:30pm, while the evening session will be from 6pm to 9pm, with entry cut off at 8:30pm.

The prices for the day and night sessions are, respectively, 10 yuan (US$1.4) and 5 yuan, and there will be 14 sessions in total.

Each account can only buy five tickets for one session. Visitors must do real-name registration to buy tickets with information from their identity card, passport, and mainland travel permit for Hong Kong and Macau residents, or for Taiwan residents.

Children need to purchase full-price tickets and do real-name registration as well.

Tickets for the day session have to be purchased before 12pm, and before 10pm for the night session.

Sales of tickets started at 3pm on Wednesday and they are available on Damai.com and the WeChat public account of the Shanghai Book Fair or people can scan the QR code on some cooperative media platforms.

Offline ticket purchase sites have been set up in 30 Xinhua Bookstore outlets across the city.

There will be no ticket sales at the site of the book fair.

Visitors need to show their ticket purchase information before entry and when going through the security check.

Their identity card or passport will be verified to go through the gate with face recognition.

Children are advised to stay with their parents. If a child cannot present the identity card, he or she must show the "hukoubu," or household registration book, the birth certificate or electronic identity card to the staff.

People are banned from bringing all kinds of liquids into the venue, including water, tea, beverages, especially alcoholic drinks.

Gate No. 2 and No. 3 of the Shanghai Exhibition Center on Yan'an Road M. and Gate No. 8 located on Nanjing Road W. have been set as entrances for visitors.

Green travel is recommended and visitors can take public transport like Bus No. 71, Metro Line 2 or 7 to get to the site.

If one is driving to the venue, the Jing'an Kerry Center nearby can provide parking services for a certain number of cars.

With the book fair ticket purchase information and Jing'an Kerry Center consumption receipt of any amount, people can get a free parking coupon for two hours at the customer service desk of the shopping mall.

Recently, Zhuozhou City in Hebei Province and other regions of China suffered heavy rains and warehouses of many publishing and distribution companies were flooded, causing huge losses.

To support the flood-stricken publishers and help the domestic publishing industry, the fair will hold some sales activities at booths like pre-sales, crowd funding, and bumper sales.

Moreover, it encourages publishers across the country to participate in a donation event, in which readers will buy their books and the exhibitors will make some donations.

A platform for collecting ancient books will be unveiled at the fair and a project for translating domestic books into foreign languages and promoting them overseas will also be launched.