An NGO that looks at spiritual development, not just exams

Li Yingqiang (pictured), 31, is co-founder of the Transition Institute in Beijing and co-founder of the China Rural Library, a grass-roots non-governmental organisation that has promoted civic education in rural areas since 2007. With its nine rural libraries across the mainland, the group provides opportunities to children in the countryside struggling in an exam-oriented education system.

How did you get started on the China Rural Library?

I graduated with a bachelor's degree in economics in Nanjing, Jiangsu , in 2001 and worked at a telecommunications company in Jinan , Shandong , for two years before taking up postgraduate studies in economics at Peking University in 2004. While studying in Beijing, I began working part-time with a couple of grass-roots social and economic institutes and worked at an economics magazine until 2007. A few months after I co-founded the Transition Institute, my colleagues and I started to work on the library project. We consulted friends and experts to compile a list of 1,500 core books before establishing the first library. The first collection of 2,000 books was set up in my home town's Qingshi High School, in Qichun county, Hubei , in November 2007 using donations from friends who cared about public affairs and civic education.

Why did you set up rural libraries?

It was not an idea out of the blue. If I were still a child, I would be the target reader for the library. I grew up in a village where spiritual life was extremely deficient and studying was so dull in the examination-oriented education system. In my primary school, I had only one extracurricular book, Journey to the West in traditional Chinese, left by my grandfather.

Youths should be capable of making their own decisions when growing up, an ability that is difficult to acquire but that can be learned through reading and social experience. So I really hope to provide some resources to children. Our goal is not just that children can read books; they must be good books. The books we select offer positive power, trigger curiosity about the world and imagination and widen the horizons. We buy books at discounted prices and receive donated books and bookshelves from people. Each library should have 3,000 to 5,000 books when it starts up.

What do you think of the state of book reading among children in the countryside?