Shanghai: The main forum of Shanghai International Literary Week, a major event of the 2025 Shanghai Book Fair, opened on Wednesday, bringing together writers, translators and professors from home and abroad to discuss the theme Classics in Flux and Transformation. Held on Tuesday night at the Henry Lester Institute of Technical Education in Hongkou district, the main forum will run from Aug 12 to 18.
Martin Puchner, Byron and Anita Wien Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University in the United States, delivered a keynote address on the importance of cultural exchange and adaptation in the context of widespread cultural appropriation.
Puchner stated that culture is a dynamic process shaped by interactions, borrowings and adaptations across different societies and eras. Drawing on the example of Xuanzang (602-664), the famous Chinese traveler who brought Buddhist manuscripts from India, Puchner highlighted how culture evolves through circulation, rediscovery and reinterpretation. The annual festival, for readers and publishers in Shanghai, will culminate on Aug 19 with 1,267 reading-themed activities scheduled to take place. This year’s Shanghai Book Fair has expanded from its main venue at Shanghai Exhibition Center to a second venue in the Shanghai Book Mall, significantly increasing the fair’s floor space to an unprecedented 42,000 square meters.
As one of China’s most important book fairs, the event welcomed over 300,000 visitors and achieved a sales volume of nearly 50 million yuan ($6.97 million) last year, a significant 35 percent increase from 2023. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
