A man of words

Publishing industry veteran Li Xin's recent memoir, Yisheng Yishi, recalls his four-decade career working on more than 3,000 titles. CHINA DAILY On the orange cover of the book Yisheng Yishi, a memoir by editor and publisher Li Xin about his four-decade career starting in 1982, is a black-and-white photo of him as a middle-aged man sitting at a desk under a lamp concentrating on a stack of papers — a draft of the Chinese version of Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by US sociologist Ezra Feivel Vogel. As he has worked at top Chinese publishers since 1982 as one of the first university graduates after the country resumed college entrance examinations in 1977 — namely, People's Literature Publishing House, Joint Publishing HK, SDX Joint Publishing Company and the Commercial Press — Li's experience involving more than 3,000 titles showcases the developmental arc of China's publishing industry throughout this period. Zheng Yong, deputy editor-in-chief of Commercial Press, says, "The book is not only Li Xin's personal memoir but a historical account of the contemporary publishing industry to pass down from generation to generation".