While many Chinese people celebrate the Spring Festival with family gatherings and banquets, a host of bookworms choose to feast themselves on books, lectures and movies -- all free of charge -- at the National Library of China (NLC).

According to the Friday edition of the China Daily, the Beijing-based NLC will work all day long during the Lunar New Year holidays, a festival calling for family reunion, home visits and huge feasts.

Yang Bingyan, deputy director of the NLC, said to the paper, "We have seen an increasing number of holiday-makers choose to spend their leisure time reading books or visiting cultural sites."

At least 39,280 bookworms came to the library during the week-long Spring Festival in 2000. Last year's seven-day vacation saw the number climbing up to 42,714.

According to Yang, the NLC, Asia's largest warehouse of books, will send staffers to accompany children on a tour of its gorgeous structure and give visitors small gifts and readers' manuals on February 12, the first day of the Spring Festival holidays.

Between February 12 and 14, an exhibition featuring the rubbings of ancient stone inscriptions and rare books of China's ethnic minorities will open to the public.

Visitors will also be able to watch movies for free in the mornings during the first three of the seven holidays.

On February 16, Yang Liangkun, conductor of the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, will teach how to understand Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No 9.

( eastday.com February 8, 2002)