Some people are voracious readers and collect books, but there is a resident of Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province, who has collected 6,000 book labels in the past 23 years.

The collector, surnamed Cui, said: "I started my collection in 1984 after visiting an exhibition of book labels, and my collections includes more than 700 authors from all parts of the world."

It is said that book labels, which identify a book collector, originated about 500 years ago in Germany after the Chinese technologies of paper making and printing were introduced to the rest of the world through Europe. (Sanqin Daily)