Miao Shiming, a newspaper collector in north China's Shanxi Province, has won himself registration in the Guinness Book of World Records for his tremendous newspaper collection.

Miao, 46, born into a peasant family, began collecting newspapers when he was 15 and has accumulated a collection of more than 368,000 issues of over 30,000 kinds of newspapers, some 55, 000 issues of over 10,200 titles of magazines, and over 3,200 books over the past 30 years.

Among his rare collections are early newspapers such as Shen Bao (Shen Pao), which started publication in 1872, and the first issue of the People's Daily.

Miao, now deputy director of tourism administration of Zuoquan county, established his private newspaper library in 1998, which has attracted over 30,000 visitors from all over China, including experts and scholars.

(People's Daily 05/23/2001)