Dictionaries for donation fly off shelves
- Source: Global Times
- [08:35 April 20 2011]
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A teacher collects dictionaries from students at Zhaodengyu primary school Tuesday. Photo: Courtesy of Zhang Zheng
By Yan Shuang
Primary and middle school students turned dictionaries into bestsellers in Fengtai last weekend, after district education authorities asked them to donate the reference books to children in China's poverty-stricken regions.
"We've sold around 200 Xinhua dictionaries every day over the past few days, whereas usually we can't sell even one per day," said the manager of a bookstore near several Fengtai district schools on Dongdajie.
"The school texted me last Tuesday and asked me to purchase the latest edition of the Xinhua dictionary for donation. The campaign was voluntary, but most of the kids at school participated," Zhang Zheng, the mother of a 7-year-old boy who attends Fengtai's Zhaodengyu primary school, told the Global Times Tuesday.
Some parents complained that schools only asked for dictionaries and that some refused to accept older copies, according to a Legal Mirror report Monday.
"It would be better if we donated money so the school could purchase them all together," a parent told the paper.
Yet the commission could not be sure all the money would get to the needy children without any getting "lost" along the way, explained a commission media department employee surnamed Yuan.
The donation was part of a national campaign initiated by departments that included the General Administration of Press and Publications, said Yuan. Book donations will be delivered to children in poor areas of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, the Tibet Autonomous Region and Chongqing Municipality.
"We only accept those that are at least 80 percent new, since the new editions have modifications," he said.
Dictionaries were recommended but other books besides textbooks are now also accepted, according to Yuan.
