Between the lines the story of an unusual tome

Lyu Chonghua, owner of Fangyuan Bookshop in Xi'an.[Photo by Liu Juntao/ China Daily]

"It's the essence of Lyu: the salt of the earth and sturdy," Li says. "By the way, he couldn't afford to have me choose the cover from imported materials."

Standing behind the counter, Li, who butts in once in a while, chuckles: "Or use silk, linen, or sheepskin."

He is wearing a white mandarin jacket and a black waistcoat. He squints and bares the teeth under his handlebar moustache in a broad smile, looking for all the world like a caricature of those images in the book.

Lyu dipped into his own savings to produce the book, spending more than 200,000 yuan ($30,600) on the first and second print runs of 7,500 copies, which quickly sold out after the book won the award in Leipzig, paving the way for a third printing, which is due out soon.

"The publisher wanted to sit by and see how sales went before we began a third print run, but I told them to stop being silly. Award winners sell at least 10,000 copies. No problem," Lyu chuckles.

Five years ago, when the book was still in its gestation, he was not that confident.

"I'm an ordinary man from an ordinary family, and this is an ordinary bookshop. Who would want to read our stories? As a book seller, I hate books that cannot sell."

His mother, Ma Xiulian, who founded the family book business, rejected his plans for what eventually became an award winner as a waste of money.

"Even after we won the gold medal, my mother, lying in hospital after a stroke and with cancer, was far from happy about it. But when I told her the book was selling well and that we had recouped our outlay it brought a smile to her face."

In January 2010 at the Beijing Book Fair Lyu met Zhang Dong, then vice editor-in-chief of Guangxi Fine Arts Publishing House. Zhang suggested that why not make Lyu's orders into a book?

In 2002 Lyu started using fax, and he came up with a way of making his orders stand out.

"There's a high turnover of sales staff in publishing, and before anyone could become familiar with me and our requirements, he or she would leave, meaning I would again have to spend a lot of time getting to know whoever replaced them."