A girl selects a book at the Shenzhen Book Fair at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center yesterday.  Sun Yuchen

Shenzhen Book Fair, displaying more than 1 million books at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center, attracted crowds of visitors over the weekend.

Among the 300 publishers attending the fair, China Publishing Group Corp. and CITIC Press Group have the biggest exhibition areas. China Publishing Group Corp., a State-level publishing agency, arranged for 18 publishing houses, including the Commercial Press, Zhonghua Book Co., SDX Joint Publishing Co. and People’s Literature Publishing House, to attend the fair with 5,000 types of selected books.

As a guest of honor and organizer of the fair, CITIC Press Group introduced 2,000 types of high-quality publications covering 11 themes, such as finance and economics, children, social science and culture, literature, life and the arts. In the digital area, visitors can enjoy high-quality audio-video content by downloading the company’s app. In its tech area, visitors can interact with robots and experience the possibilities of reading in the future.

As the summer holiday has begun, minors who visited with their peers or parents were immersed in reading different kinds of literary books, picture books and pop-up books. According to another one of the organizers, Haitian Publishing House, more than 100 types of picture books and literary books offered in promotions have sold out.

The fair organizer also designated a 2,000-square-meter area for children-parents reading. The area was divided into different sections for educational games, science and art for parents and children to enjoy reading and interacting through games.

In addition to the exhibition, dozens of cultural celebrities, such as Mai Jia and Chi Li, were invited to give lectures, and children’s book writers Cao Wenxuan, Shen Shixi, Wu Meizhen and Yu Yujun attended autographing activities to promote sales.

Themed “Reading and Cheering for the Motherland,” the facial-recognition AI-based book recommendation dispensers aroused curiosity among visitors, who could get recommendations for 300 types of books by standing in front of the scanning screen, which can recognize gender and age.

Visitors can pay for books by scanning the QR codes at each stand without needing to wait in line. The organizer also developed a system by which visitors can locate the books after scanning the fair’s online book service system.

The fair ends today. Admission is free for primary and middle school students and 10 yuan (US$1.45) for others.

Shenzhen was named by UNESCO as a global model for the promotion of reading in 2013. Official data shows that Shenzhen’s adults read 7.23 paper books and 11.21 e-books each year on average.