"Everyone is a book. By reading others we can better understand each other and ourselves," Liu said.
The books presented this year are from a variety of interesting backgrounds, and include a sex educator, psychoanalyst, martial artist, Taoist, busker, former depressive, urban management officer or chengguan, and a student of criminology.
Professor Pei from Sun Yat-Sen University was one of the most popular books at the event. She has led a research team that talked to hundreds of women over the past few years to study masturbation behavior among females, but found that talking about sex is still a taboo topic for many Chinese today.
"In China, you can download many pornographic films from the Internet but you can hardly find a platform to discuss sex seriously," Pei said in her introduction, with several readers sitting around nodding and giggling.
According to her studies, half of females masturbate but few talk about it, or even realize they do it. Pei said she once tried to open a Weibo account to publish her study results.
"Although it quickly attracted a lot of attention, it was soon shut down by Weibo administrators because they thought we were spreading pornography," Pei said to laughter among readers.
The living book talked most of the time as many of the Chinese readers have learnt to be humble during a teacher's lecture. But some readers could not wait to join the interaction.
Several young girls asked if boys will not like girls who openly talk about sex. Before Pei answered, one boy in the audience voiced his dislike of such girls, while another boy gave some negative feedback.
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