Caretaker's mission

"Through the description of Foyles by Zhu, I felt that British bookstores have maintained the same cultural atmosphere, but many of the Chinese bookstores I wrote about 10 years ago have already shut down," he says.

"To support the business of bookstores shouldn't be a one-time policy, but a long-term project."

During his trips to London, Yang found the books there were preserved well.

"The oldest book I bought this time was printed in 1623, but when you open it, you will find the quality of the book is even better than many of the books published only 30 years ago in China."

When Yang returned with a suitcase full of books, he was stopped by a customs official with a sniffer dog at the Beijing airport. He had been suspected of carrying something suspicious, he says.

Yang has been spending money and time on books since his childhood. His father was an official in the culture department of Hunan's local government in the 1960s. He never declined his son's request when it came to buying books, Yang recalls.

Even through the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), when many books were difficult to obtain, and Yang was not able to attend college, he managed to educate himself through a lot of reading.