2013 South China Book Festival In Guangzhou
If you live in Guangzhou and want to find some cheap English books, you should head to the Book Festival that is open until the 22nd. It’s free to enter and you can see the opening hours on the tickets below. You can find the Book Festival at the Canton Fair complex by taking the metro to Pazhou station and walking to exit A.
Most of the books are from the mainland and printed in simplified Chinese, but you can also find books from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Hong Kong pavilion has English books too, but they are more expensive than on the International Pavilion.
So for English books head to the area 13.2 and find the International Pavilion (国际馆) marked in the map. They have a good collection there and prices start from around 20RMB.
This year was my second the Book Festival, but unfortunately I wasn’t as lucky as last year. A year ago I bought six books in English, but this time I only bought one. I was looking for anything about China or from Chinese authors, but the collection was much different from last year. They had some interesting books at the Hong Kon pavilion, but those were too expensive.
You can also find lots of stationary and calligraphy products at the Guangzhou Book Festival. We bought three big notebooks for 10RMB.
If you’re a book lover looking for books in English, simplified or traditional Chinese, this fair is definitely for you.
6 Comments
MrChopstik
Looks pretty cool. Love book fairs and, if I were there, I’m sure I would enjoy it. Thanks for sharing.
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Sara Jaaksola Reply:
August 20th, 2013 at 12:44 am
Great to hear you liked it! Walking around and browsing the books was almost as fun as buying.
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Alysa
Cool…everyone in my family are bookworms, someone invited me to go yesterday but I ended up being busy so I turned him down…but now that I see that they have English books, it must be worth a visit!
(though nothing can beat the prices on taobao ;P)
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Sara Jaaksola Reply:
August 24th, 2013 at 10:34 am
Haha, yes Taobao is unbeatable. But sometimes you just want to touch the books before buying :)
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Bryan
That is cool. I have never been to a book fair before. In the US, I buy my books from a non-profit organization called “Friends of the Public Library.” They have wonderful collections of used books at a low price. Most of the books don’t even cost more than $10. One time I have purchased a book (like-new) for only 50 cent. That same book cost would more than $15 online or at the book store. I even bought a college text book (very good condition) for $3.50. All the money is used to help the library, improve children literacy rate, and support education. Donation is always welcome. I donate my unwanted books to them.
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Sara Jaaksola Reply:
August 24th, 2013 at 10:33 am
Bryan, Friends of the Public Library sounds really cool! In Finlan I often bought books from libraries’ summer sales and from second hand shops.
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