BEIJING -- Wang Anna, a 28-year-old working in Beijing, used to pack used books into every nook and cranny of her bedroom because her bookcase was full.But now she has a way to dispose of her used books. She opened an online bookstall on the second-hand book trading website kongfz.com four years ago, and since then has sold more than 100 books."Selling my books to other readers is more environmentally friendly than throwing them away," Wang said. "And the value of the books can be maximized if they are passed on to more readers."Book recycling has become increasingly popular in China, as websites and mobile apps for trading used books flourish.However, Wang sometimes finds selling books on kongfz.com to be a lot of work because she needs to input the books' information, wait for buyers to order, and then ship the books.Yushu, which can be accessed at 22bat.com and the company's official WeChat account, eliminates these troubles.Staff of Yushu provide on-call and onsite service to collect books free of charge. The collected books are sold at a 62-percent discount online and at brick-and-mortar bookstores, or they may be donated or made into other products.Yushu's logistics service works with online retail giant JD.com, enabling the book-collecting service to cover 344 cities in China, Yushu founder Shang Xiaohui told Xinhua.Shang started the book-recycling project as a university student in Shanghai in 2013 and founded Yushu in June 2017. The platform has collected nearly six million books so far.For Shang, the popularity of Yushu is partly due to increased environmental awareness on the part of donors, and their belief that the books can help people.A fourth grader at Guangqi primary school in Shanghai mobilized more than 400 pupils to donate 1,230 books, and they are still continuing to donate, Shang said."Publishing a 250-page book consumes 7.5 kilograms of water, nearly 1 kilogram of wood and 125 grams of coal," Shang said, adding that many donors believe in protecting natural resources.The collected books will be disinfected and some will be distributed to more than 80 public libraries in schools, communities and welfare houses established by Yushu.Yushu staff handle every book carefully because the books may change children's lives, Shang said.He once learned that Shejie Primary School in poverty-stricken Guizhou Province badly needed books.A volunteer teacher who had been working at the school for two years told Shang that bookstores in towns were too far, and books were too expensive for the school.Soon after, Yushu staff donated 300 books to the school, then donated another 600 later.The students were very happy and wrapped the books in newspaper to avoid scratches."Yushu is awesome. It makes my idle books achieve more value," a book donor named Mimi said on Yushu's official WeChat account.Chinese adults read an average of 7.86 books in 2016, according to an annual survey on reading habits conducted by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication in April 2017.Shang's vision is for Yushu to help Chinese people read one more book per year and to give children in poor areas more access to good books.Shang said Yushu plans to set up 1,000 public libraries by the end of this year.As more book-trading websites and mobile apps emerge, more Chinese are dusting off their used books and letting them begin a new chapter online. custom awareness wristbandscustomize your own braceletdesign your own rubber bracelet onlinesilicone wrist bandsrubber bracelets
An artist's illustration of China's Queqiao relay satellite, which will relay data between controllers on Earth and China's Chang'e 4 lander-rover pair on the moon's far side. [Photo/China National Space Administration] XICHANG, Sichuan Province -- The relay satellite, launched Monday for China's Chang'e-4 lunar probe, is carrying the largest communication antenna ever used in deep space exploration, according to Chinese experts. The launch of the satellite Queqiao, or Magpie Bridge, is a key step for China to realize its goal of sending the Chang'e-4 lunar probe to soft-land on the far side of the Moon. Queqiao, developed by China Spacesat Co Ltd under the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), will be the world's first communication satellite operating in an orbit around the L2 point of the Earth-Moon system to establish a communication link between controllers on Earth and the probe. Chinese experts designed several antennas for the relay satellite, including one shaped like an umbrella with a diameter of 5 meters, which opened in space after the satellite separated from the carrier rocket. It must endure temperatures as cold as 230 degrees centigrade below zero. Chinese experts conducted countless experiments during the development of the antenna, said Chen Lan, deputy chief engineer of the Xi'an Branch of CAST. The satellite is of great scientific and engineering importance in the exploration of the universe, said Zhang Lihua, manager of the relay satellite project. A reliable long-distance data transmission link is a key technological goal for space experts around the world. A relay satellite is a type of communication satellite that provides data transmission, observation and control services for other spacecraft. China has already sent a series of relay satellites into geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of 36,000 km for manned spacecraft. Queqiao is similar to those relay satellites, but its orbit is more than 10 times farther, which is the main technological difficulty.
