THE BINHAI library, often called China's most beautiful, is breathtaking.
Swirling shelves of books rise in gravity-defying stacks to a high ceiling in a light-dappled room:
a modern cathedral to learning.
No wonder the library, in Tianjin, an eastern city,
has become a favourite photo stop for glammed-up young folk posting to social media.
But it does not take long in the library to see
that there is less to it than meets the eye.
Most of the books are just pictures of spines glued to the wall.
And most of the visitors are glued to their phones, not perusing books.
It is the perfect backdrop not just for photos but also for one of China's new official obsessions:
how to get people to read more, and to read more deeply.
Since its founding in 1921, China's Communist Party has treated literacy as a core objective.
For Mao Zedong, briefly a librarian before becoming a revolutionary, the motivation was not bookish:
he wanted to build a proletariat conscious enough to overthrow its feudal overlords.
Yet literacy campaigners can appreciate his results.
He helped propel China from a literacy rate of less than 20% in 1949
to about 60% at his death in 1976.
It is approaching 99% today.
In February a new regulation that aims to promote reading came into effect.
On April 26th the country concluded its first-ever national reading week.