Rural residents in Zhangjiagang, Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province participate in a reading activity. [Photo/WeChat account: zjgwtgl]

Zhangjiagang, a county-level city in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu province, has set up many physical and online reading rooms for rural residents to promote reading.

As of the end of 2021, Zhangjiagang had 50 brick and mortar reading rooms that are open around the clock and accessible to residents in all districts. The city government also regularly provides financial support to update book collections.

The reading rooms hold about 2,000 reading activities every year to encourage reading among rural residents.

Zhangjiagang has also built 149 online reading rooms that have been visited 22.64 million times to date.

According to data recently released by the Jiangsu Digital Rural Bookstore, a provincial-level reading platform designed exclusively for farmers, more than 2.77 million people in Zhangjiagang visited the digital reading room in 2021, the most among all counties in Jiangsu.