Famine turns to feast for Chinese readers

All these classics were new editions of those published before the "cultural revolution", Ruan said. At the time, the Shanghai Translation Publishing House and the editor's office of foreign literature at the People's Literature Publishing House, the two major publishers of foreign literature, had just been set up.

Ruan's mother was able to buy a copy of the first edition of Spartaco available in vertical typesetting, and the first edition of The Red and the Black by Stendhal (the pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle), which featured a grid-patterned cover and was part of the Grid Classics Series.

"We bought versions of The Red and the Black in both vertical and horizontal typesetting," she said as she sat behind the reception counter at an exhibition to mark the Shanghai Translation Publishing House's 40th anniversary.

The copy of Spartaco she owns was showcased on the second floor at the exhibition, together with a first edition of The Decameron. There were also first issues of the bimonthy Shijie Zhi Chuang (Window to the World) in 1978, the bimonthly Foreign Literature and Art in 1979, and the Chinese version of the French fashion magazine Elle in 1988.

Chen writes of Foreign Literature and Art, "The magazine was founded in late 1978, when China's literary and art circles had just woken up from the 'cultural revolution' and were cautiously opening the doors and windows to foreign culture and art."