If the Chinese are in the mood for books, they go to Dangdang.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Ms. Yu, your company Dangdang is China's largest online bookseller. What role does Dangdang play in China? Is it kind of like a Chinese Amazon?
Peggy Yu: Dangdang has revived the Chinese book market. Our market-share is about 10 percent and Amazon trails far behind us. Our five distribution-centers send out 300,000 books a day. And we will expand: We will soon add two distribution centers.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Nevertheless, you haven't yet emerged as a competitor to the book shops?
Yu: Most of the bookshops are state owned. They don't have a good marketing, their customer service is lousy. Take for example the book plaza of the state-enterprise Xinhua in the center of Beijing: The atmosphere there reminds me of the Soviet Union or of former East Germany.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: And Dangdang represents the alternative?
Yu: Yes, we try to create a pleasant shopping-experience on our Web sites. The customers receive a lot of information; we help them to find books based on their tastes.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do your fellow countrymen like to read?
Yu: They read less than Germans. In Germany I always see people in trains and planes holding a book in their hands. In China you see people playing cards; only a few read a newspaper. That is a pity. If people would read more, we would be a better country.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How do you mean?
Yu: It's a good thing when people read, share information and exchange opinions. It doesn't matter if they read books or surf the Internet. The most important thing is to read.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Dangdang is not only about making money, but also seeks to get more people to read?
Yu: Exactly. Reading must be fun. We have a lot of cities with millions of inhabitants. And each has only a single small bookshop with half of the shelves filled with textbooks for students. How boring! We try to close the gap and to inform people about good literature.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: You also send your books in remote areas?
Yu: More than half of our orders come from remote areas. One of our tasks is to create access to books all over the country.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Credit cards and bank accounts are still not very common in China. How do you get your money?
Yu: The customers pay cash on delivery. We hired around 60 to 70 delivery services, which deliver to 724 cities. In very remote areas, like Tibet, we use the postal service.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: How does the cooperation with the publishing houses work?
Yu: That is a problem. Only a few have a sophisticated computer-system. So they don't know which and how many books have to be reprinted and redistributed. That creates difficulties for us. Another problem is advertisement: We offer information about books, which is actually a task that the publishing houses should do.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What kind of books do the Chinese like the most?
Yu: The demand reflects our state of mind. The most popular are self-help books on how to stay healthy or how to get rich.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you have problems with censorship? Do you have to sometimes cease making some books available?
Yu: Very rarely. Censorship is a problem of authors and publishing houses, not ours. In more the more than nine years we have existed, I can remember only four cases. One book had a map showing Taiwan as a country separate from the Peoples Republic. The other dealt with the Cultural Revolution. Then there was the book of Zhang Yihe ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... "The Past Is Not as Foggy," which recounts the experiences of political campaign victims....
Yu: The books that had already been distributed were allowed to be sold, but the others had to be withdrawn. And I remember "Shanghai-Baby" ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... written by the scandalous young author Wei Hui ...
Yu: Only the ban made his book popular. No, censorship isn't the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the state of our soul.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: What do you mean by that?
Yu: We are constantly in a good mood. Everything moves forward, upward, the stock exchange, the gross domestic product, even pensions. But there is not enough self-reflection, not enough criticism.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Which is exactly what authors should do.
Yu: Correct, but they don't. China distributes many products to the world. But in comparison to other countries, we don't offer good literature that is influential internationally. That worries me. Indian, Mexican, Brazilian and Turkish writers have produced great works in the last couple of years, but not any Chinese writers.
Interview conducted by Wolfgang Höbel and Andreas Lorenz
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