Thirty-eight-year-old Zheng has just finished the original edition of the Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway in his cell.

Imprisoned eight years ago for robbery, the man will have to stay in jail for another five years.

"The old man in the novel lives on the isolated sea only talking to seagulls and dolphins, and this resembles my living condition to some extent," Zheng told Xinhua in the library of No. 2 Prison of Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

But he said reading will make him temporarily forget the monotonous life behind bars and help him look to the future.

Zheng hopes to find a decent job after returning to society. To achieve his goal, the man who had already begun to learn English has chosen to continue studying the language in jail.

Having passed the national English self-study examination of junior college level, Zheng is busy preparing for a higher program.

Few of the prisoners know of the World BooK Day, which falls on April 23, but many of them are reading every day after finishing their daily work, seeking a brighter future when their prison terms are over.

A "turning imprisonment term into an academic term" slogan prevails in China's prisons.

Zheng's inmate Zhang is working hard to prepare for self-study exams in tourism management and has already passed three out of the 20 exams.

Zhang was imprisoned for commercial fraud. His prison life will end in two years. He said in the future he hopes to become a guide in a decent travel agency.

The library of Zhang's prison has 33,000 books, of which about 20,000 are provided by the library of Kunming, capital of Yunnan.

The library, the size of half a basketball playground, provides nearly 1,000 prisoners with many sorts of books including Consumer Society by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard, works by Chinese novelist Shen Congwen, English glossaries and photoshop manuals.

"Law magazines are the most welcomed here while pictorials and some ball game magazines are also frequently borrowed," said librarian Dou.

The 40-year-old was jailed for economic problems. Yet Dou said he has spent more time reading since he arrived at the prison.

At the same time, Dou set up a "life rebuilding" newspaper, a biweekly that comprises articles written by the prisoners.

In some bigger prisons, reading and studying are linked with parole.

Liu Wendong, vice chief of Tianjin prison administration's education section, said the municipality has eight prisons and one hospital for prisoners with more than 16,000 prisoners.

Every prison or hospital has an examining and approval team, which collects and evaluates all the certificates, awards, published articles and the exam records of the prisoners.

The teams will send the evaluation results to the local courts, which will become an important proof for parole, Liu said.

Imprisoned in Tianjin Yangliuqing prison, Jiang was sentenced to life imprisonment for theft.

He said he felt lost after becoming a prisoner. But encouraged by the policemen of jail, he started to read and entered for the self-study exam of a college's international trade major.

Jiang managed to pass all the exams and the court reduced his sentence to 17 years.

He said, "It is reading that pulls myself back from the edge of desperation and gives me hope for a renewed life."

The majority of the interviewed prisoners do not want to talk about their past. No matter what sort of experience they had, tourism managers, economists and interpreters are their new dreams.

Just as what Zheng sensed after reading the Old Man and the Sea, "a man should always look forward rather than living in the past. Though it is difficult, we will get what we need if we try hard."

Source: Xinhua