Private vs. Public: Entrepreneurial Library Services for Children in China

Abstract

At 8:30 on a cold November Sunday morning in 2014, I met Echo Liu in southern Beijing, an hour’s drive away, far from the renovated alleyways and Forbidden City of the city center.

Echo and a handful of helpers were busy preparing her children’s library, a library that she owns and operates as a private business, for a 9 a.m. storytime and craft activity that would feature a foreign visitor.