Wenzhou strives to burnish its image with culture

It is an hour before midnight in Wenzhou, and the hustle and bustle of the city has long faded. Most of the stores are closed, but the soft glow of reading light continues shimmering through the windows at the neighborhood library, its wooden benches filled with patrons deep into the night.

The boutique library is a part of the "City's Study" project by Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, usually known for its successful small businesses and wealthy business owners instead of art and culture. With this project, the city hopes to enhance its publics services in culture and recreation.

Over the three years since the project first started, Wenzhou has constructed 27 of these 24-hour self-service libraries for its residents to read books at any time of the day. Next year the city plans to add eight more, according to Hu Hairong, the curator of Wenzhou's public libraries who led and conducted the "City's Study" project. The libraries were often set up in in densely populated areas in order to reach and serve the most number of residents, he added.

"We aim to build more high-quality libraries so that citizens could arrive at any one of libraries in 15 minutes," he said. "The City's Study was warmly welcomed by citizens, and they were willing to offer private space for us to build libraries for free."

In 2016, these libraries combined to cover 32,000 square meters and hold 2.53 million books. Together they received 3.69 million readers, who checked out 2.94 million books.

"The City's Study is near my house, I come here every night," said one of the patrons at one of the libraries."I think it has a good atmosphere for reading, which is much better than reading at home."