A van carrying 2,000 books to 62 village schools

Every Thursday at half past six in the morning, Old Zhou starts his white van right on time.

The back seats are gone, replaced by eight built-in shelves holding more than two thousand books, shelved by grade: picture books on the lowest shelf, where the smallest children can reach them; early readers, children's novels, science books, and Tang and Song poetry stacked upward from there. The van also carries four folding reading mats, an emergency lamp, and an old speaker.

Old Zhou drove for the county hospital, running medicine out to the countryside before he retired. All those years on the road he noticed something that hurt worse than the drug shortages: country kids don't lack textbooks — they lack "books for pleasure." At Tiaozichang Primary School, one boy told him the only extracurricular book he had ever read was a composition anthology passed down from third graders, its pages curled from wear. A girl once asked him: "Uncle, those big thick colorful books city kids read — what do they look like?"

In his second year of retirement, Old Zhou did something the whole family opposed: he dug out his savings, bought a van, scraped together two thousand books from home and from everyone he could beg them off, and turned it into a "traveling book box" that runs to village schools in the mountains every Thursday.

The first route had six schools. His rules were fine-grained: the schools pay nothing and staff nothing — they only need to clear out an empty classroom for a "reading corner." Books are borrowed without registration or deposit; finish one, return it to the shelf yourself. "Books are for people to read, not for people to guard." Each visit he stays a whole afternoon: reading picture books to the lower grades, listening to the older children talk about "the one I've been reading."

The beginning was all uphill. Books ran short, so he spent half a year combing used-book markets and scrap stations, one book at a time, then disinfected, wrapped and mended them at home. His family didn't get it; his wife fought with him — "can't you rest easy in retirement?" Harder still were the schools' misgivings: "Won't outside books get in the way of study?" He didn't argue. He made one request: "Let the kids read for one semester and see." Six months later, that principal called him: "Old Zhou, next term could you bring an extra crate? They crowd around the shelf every recess."

Six years on, the traveling book box runs to sixty-two village schools, and the two thousand books have become more than twenty thousand. What changed most is the guestbook in his van. The first entries were all "the books are so good." Then came "I want to be an astronaut — are the stars in this book real?" and "This is the first story I ever wrote. Please advise, Grandpa Zhou." One child drew a van on the page and wrote beside it: "Grandpa Zhou's van is our village school's library."

Two thousand books can do only so much. They cannot flatten a mountain. But they can let mountain children know that beyond it lie many, many different lives — and that for every one of them, some book writes down the way to get there.

The year before last, Old Zhou fell ill and the route stopped for two months. Lying in his hospital bed, what bothered him most was "the children will be let down this Thursday." Instead, the teachers of the schools along the route organized a roster on their own and relayed the book box down the line — sixty-two village schools, and not one let the reading break. The day he was discharged, he went to a school to "inspect," and in a reading corner found an old book whose flyleaf carried a line from some unknown child: "This book has been to many schools. Please take care of it the way you take care of Grandpa Zhou."

Old Zhou is seventy this year. His son has taken over, driving the route on weekends while Old Zhou rides shotgun, in charge of "reading picture books to the lower grades." Father and son have a pact: when they have served one hundred village schools, they will put up a sign at the gate of the very first one.

What will the sign say? Old Zhou already knows: "Books can't walk on their own. So somebody has to give them a ride."