Readers visit the exhibition area of Shandong Province during the 32nd National Book Expo in Jinan, capital of east China's Shandong Province, July 26, 2024. (Xinhua/Xu Suhui)

At the 15th Readers' Conference held on Friday during the ongoing 32nd National Book Expo in Jinan, Shandong province, Rong Xinjiang and Cao Wenxuan led other speakers in presenting the audience with a feast of traditional cultural, life retrospectives, and insights into their reading and writing.

The two writers, who are both professors at Peking University, shared their new books — Rong about his search for scrolls and other written material from the Dunhuang Grottoes, and Cao about his new novel.

"The lost scrolls and Buddhist texts from Dunhuang help piece together a picture of ancient China and its exchanges with cultures along the Silk Road between the 5th to 8th centuries," Rong said, adding his search began in the 1980s and has led him to libraries and universities in 48 cities around the world.

Cartoonist Bai Cha, the pen name of Liang Kedong, whose illustrated stories about a cat called Wu Huang and his friends have become popular, shared anecdotes about he got involved with books and began his career.

"As a child born in the 1980s into a teacher's family, I had access to lots of books. I liked the really thick ones, because I seldom read them and only used them for my collection of pressed flowers and leaves, so the thicker, the better," Bai Cha said.

"But my illustrations are inspired by cartoons. When I get stuck, I read the masters' works again and again in search of solutions or inspiration," he added.

Organized by the China Publishing Group and Shandong University, the event sought to boost reading and spur interest in popular cultural topics that are also enlightening.

The readers at the Jinan Library, where the event was held, were able to meet the writers and ask questions, while 600,000 more watched the conference online on multiple platforms.

The National Book Expo, which ended on Monday, attracted 1,700 publishers and institutions and exhibited 400,000 titles.