Reading Habit Survey in UM

Books are considered not only the best friend of people, but also gifts of learning that can enrich and improve one’s lives. Good reading habits are a source of knowledge and learning. However, it is generally known that the book reading rate in China has fallen in recent years. Moreover, statistics showed that the average reading rate of Macao residents is lower than that of mainland residents. Although we have many ways to kill time, the importance of book-reading is not replaceable. Therefore, we should form a good habit of book-reading.

In order to have a better understanding of the book-reading habit and attitude of the college students in Macao nowadays, we have done a questionnaire survey in the University of Macau (UM). Finally we called in actually 40 effective questionnaires, among them male 23, female 27.

According to the survey, the college students in UM only read five books per year on average. As is shown in Chart 1, 18% of the respondents read more than 10 books per year. However, it is reported that office workers in Taiwan read 10 books on average in 2010, and Canadians read 17 books on average in the past dozen years. Therefore, the college students in UM are not reading enough by contrast.

Then, what’s the reason of the low reading rate among the college students in Macao in recent years? In fact, reasons for this are varied and people have different points of views. Some considered the fall in the reading rate as a social problem. According to Chart 2, 29 respondents thought the reading rate declined because of the social impetuous atmosphere, while 10 of them thought it was due to social utilitarianism. In the contemporary society, everyone is eager for success, and there is too much emphasis on utilitarianism, so that some people may think reading books is useless.

Besides, 21 respondents complained they do not have time to read, while 22 of them thought it is very tiring to read books and they would rather play computer games. “I have a lot of homework to do after class, and I feel really tired, so in the leisure time, I just want to relax and see a movie instead of reading books,” said Bonnie Zhan, a student from accounting major in UM. Although there are a lot of students in the library every day, most of them usually read the text books or do their homework. “I usually go to the library to study before the examination,” said Marry Ma who is also a student from accounting major.

In fact, another reason for the lower book-reading rate is that some readers have switched from traditional paper-based media reading to modern mass-media reading on the Internet. In the information age, people often obtain information through the Internet instead of books, because the Internet is faster and more convenient. In the survey, 23 students prefer the paper-based books, while 24 students will combine both of them. Only three students prefer mass-media reading, and they think e-books may replace paper-based books one day.

Asked the main purpose of reading, we can see from Chart 3 that 62% of the respondents said they read for entertainment, 24% of them said they read to gain more knowledge, and only 14% do the academic reading. According to the results, for most of the people, reading is only a relaxing entertainment, and few people will take it seriously. Besides, half of the respondents do have a regular book-reading plan, but they seldom manage to fulfill the plan.

With the development of economy these years, the world has become increasingly fast-paced, so that fewer and fewer people will read books regularly. However, still some people are genuine booklovers. Anthony Wang is a graduate student in UM and he has the custom of reading before bed. He said, “Reading is one of the few methods to have certain issues fully covered. Therefore I like it.”

In society, some people devote themselves to the cultural industry, although they can’t make much money. For example, the Pinto bookstore provides a platform for writers and readers to share their thoughts together through various activities. Moreover, the government also held a Macao Literary Festival in March this year to promote the culture of communication as well as to encourage Macao residents to read more books The Pinto Bookstore – Where are the Books?

The concept of the 2nd –floor bookstore, originated in Hong Kong, refers to those located on the 2nd floor because of the lower rent. Pinto Bookstore is the first 2nd floor bookstore in Macao, which is also an independent bookstore. It integrates book sales with cultural activities, such as book exhibitions and lectures. In addition, the bookstore also has an area upstairs selling CDs called Pinto Music Store.

Compared to Hong Kong and Taiwan, there are not so many readers in Macao nowadays, so it is difficult for the bookstore to make a profit by selling books. In fact, there are quite a few big bookstores in Macao, but they usually offer highly profitable products, including stationery, textbooks as well as the best sellers. Unlike the traditional bookstore, the area of 2nd floor bookstores is small and they mainly sell the books of social sciences.

Moreover, every 2nd floor bookstore has its own style which leads to bookstore tourism. Bookstore tourism is a type of cultural tourism that promotes independent bookstores as a group travel destination. It started as a grassroots effort to support locally owned and operated bookshops, many of which have struggled to compete with large bookstore chains and online retailers.

The Pinto Bookstore opened up on October 5 in 2003 which is the day for the Portuguese revolution to overthrow the rule of imperialism. So the Chinese name of the bookstore is of great irony that raises a question to society: “Where can we find the books we need?” According to a study by a Macao local artist Chu Cheok Sun, the bookstore was set up by three people who were friends and held the same goal to serve the Macao society through cultivating a reading and writing culture. With abundant experience in book selection, they could always bring customers surprises and excitement. About 70% of the books were published in Taiwan and the contents included poems, cooking books, and travel journals. Imagine a Saturday afternoon, you find a little bookstore where you can sit down and browse a book while drinking a cup of coffee. You can feel relaxed and immerse yourself in a circumstance full of literature. The concept of Pinto is to slow down the rhythm of our daily life. The atmosphere here is contrasted with the world outside. Surrounded by McDonald’s, Starbucks, Sasa and Bosini, Pinto is difficult for tourists to find. So it has a profound significance for the culture development in such an environment full of material attractions since it restores the native look of Macao. People who visited Pinto will experience this particular aspect of society.

It is worth mentioning that there are two cats in the bookstore which are not afraid of people at all. You can browse a book while the cats may sit beside you as if they can understand the contents as well. Two plants are placed in the windowsill and we could also see a huge painting of Chairman Mao in a style of Andy Warhol’s Pop Art. Information of some local art exhibitions are spread in Pinto and customers can also buy lots of postcards from there.

Differing from other bookstores, a high expectation is placed on the Pinto Bookstore assistants, who should love reading, have their own thoughts and attitudes toward different books, since staff play an important role between the bookstore and the customers. On the one hand, they are expected to communicate with customers who need their suggestions and recommendations about book selections for the reading. On the other hand, bookshop assistants can help with restocking the shelves with new selections according to customers’ feedback.

For a small bookstore that runs on a shoestring, the difficulty of offering a good payment and welfare for staff leads to the staff turnover. There might be only two or three out of 20 interviewees who can be qualified for the job, according to the present bookshop manager Ms. Cheong who started working in Pinto when it was just opened. She said, “Basically, for those who have a Bachelor degree, once they know about the payment that we could offer, they would just run away.” Miss. Lam told us there were three part-time bookshop assistants including her at the moment. Most of the staff there were like Lam who was actually a college student and loved reading.

Besides selling books, the Pinto bookstore is also a platform for writers and readers to share their thoughts together through various activities that are held in the bookstore such as book fairs, lectures by writers and new book launches. Quite a number of creative events were held by this bookstore and some of them did attract lots of Macao citizens including those who had not known about the Pinto Bookstore before.

“Even though the payments for people who work for the cultural industry is far less than those who work for some other popular jobs in Macao such as hotels or casinos,” said Cheong, “Once people enter this field and really see the value of their work, it is almost impossible for them to leave there.”

Significance of Evoking Macao People to Read

The 2nd edition of the Macao Literary Festival -- The Script Road -- was held from March 10 to 16 and brought to Macao more than 30 renowned writers, publishers, translators, journalists, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists. The models are similar as those of last year, there were conferences and debates along with concerts, film screenings and exhibitions.

This year’s festival featured a range of prominent contemporary Chinese writers including Liu Hsi Mu-Rong, a well-known Taiwanese poet who has profoundly influenced the Chinese literature; Han Shaogong, the author of “A Dictionary of Maqiao”(馬橋詞典)and the translator of the work of Fernando Pessoa; Bi Feiyu, the winner of Mao Dun Literature Prize in China; Hong Ying, an internationally known Chinese writers; and Yi Sha, a controversial contemporary poet. Other names such as Qiu Huadong, Pan Wei, Wang Gang, Huang Lihai, Li Shaojun Jun are also very influential writers in the Chinese contemporary literature. All of them were invited to the festival.

On the Portuguese-language literature side, the Script Road invited Dulce Maria Cardoso, one of the greatest novelists of her generation; Rui Zink and Ricardo Araújo Pereira, who work with language and humor in a very special way. And many other famous authors also came and joined this grand gathering.

The festival was supported by organizations including UM, the Pen Club, the Institute for Civic Affairs (IACM), the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), the Orient Foundation, Macau Closer, the Portuguese Bookshop as well as other public and private entities.

Cooperating with the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, the festival aimed to establish a strong connection with local schools and universities, including UM, Institute for Tourism Studies, Pui Cheng Middle School, and so on, giving young readers a great opportunity to get in touch with the authors. It hosted lots of sessions to accomplish one of the festival’s ambitions – to offer students greater exposure to the literature world.

One of the conferences was held in the Yuet Wah College on March 15. There was a heated discussion about raising reading interests among students. One of the discussants said that there is a new educational policy for the high school students in Macao that students are obliged to spend 45 minutes in the reading class once a week. One of the students stated that the policy is useless in increasing their reading interests because of the limited time of each reading class. The students responded intensely to his statement and it seemed that they strongly agreed with him. Another student wondered how young people can cultivate a good reading habit when they have so many other interesting things to do rather than reading. He said that they feel it is difficult to sit and read for a long time. One of the Chinese guests Qiu Huadong, chief editor of the magazine People Literature, said that people should find the books they are really interested in and start reading them no matter which type of books are. By doing this, they can make a good start to cultivate a good reading habit, said Qiu.

Rui Zink, a prestigious writer in Portugal, said, “The best way of keeping youngsters reading for long is to break their legs. Only by this way, they cannot move to other places and have no choice but reading books during their leisure time. Reading is solitary, only those who refuse being seduced by the outside world can enjoy reading.” The students all laughed and clapped their hands forcefully.

The festival also included other lively sessions of literature at various locations such as the Fundação Rui Cunha and the Mandarin House, headed by several famous Chinese writers, such as Liu Hsi Mu-Rong, Bi Feiyu, Han Shaogong, Pan Wei, Huang Lihai who shared their reading and writing experiences to promote people’s reading activities. Yao Feng (the pseudonym of Yao Jing Ming), the Vice-President of the Cultural Affairs Bureau and Deputy Director of The Script Road festival who is also a famous poet in Macao and translator of many works from Chinese into Portuguese, said the significance of the festival is to encourage more and more Macao people to enjoy reading. He also showed his worry, “Macao people do not read so frequently, casinos make people more obsessed with making money. However, the city requires people to read and think a lot to create a better cultural circumstance. And this festival provides multiple platforms for the writers from mainland China, Macao and Portugal to forge ahead the development of the Macao reading environments.”

A volunteer from this festival, Selina, a student from the Macao University of Science and Technology who was the interpreter for the Portuguese writer Rui Zink, said, “The festival provides me a great chance to meet so many famous writers from both mainland China and Portugal that I’ve never imagined before. And I also bought many books of the writers to read because it’s embarrassing to talk with these prestigious authors without knowing their work. Through this process, I’ve become more interested in contemporary literature.”

The second Macao literary festival -- The Script Road -- finished, but it has enhanced a good circumstance for people to read and think. “Literature is the distillation of our life while reading is a gateway to transit us into the beautiful literary world,” Hsi Mu- Rong said in one of the conference sessions. And the festival has managed to establish a connection between readers and authors so that a larger range of Macao people can become more interested in reading.