After more than 10 years of work, the first volume of former Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang's biography will soon go on sale nationwide, and bookstores have already begun to take orders.

Staff with Xinhua bookstore in Chaoyang District in Beijing told China Daily that the biography would appear in the store within a week or two. The biography is the collective work of five senior scholars who used to work under Hu.

"We believe that his achievements and moral character are worth being forever remembered," said Zhang Ding, 83, one of the biographers.

The authors have spent more than 10 years on the 900,000 Chinese character-biography, which is composed of three volumes and 36 chapters.

It was reported on Sunday that China has published the first volume of Hu's biography to mark the 90th anniversary of his birth.

Issued by the People's Publishing House, the first volume of Hu's biography, focusing on his revolutionary career with his involvement in the Long March, the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Liberation War, covers his life from 1915 to the end of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

The five authors have been collecting written materials for years and went several times to the places where Hu was born and where he worked.

As Zhang and his four fellow authors are all elderly, writing the book was a slow process.

"We have no idea how to use the computers, and the story was handwritten word by word," he said.

Source: China Daily