Johannesburg, July 21st (People’s Daily Online) - Johannesburg China Town is now more than a place of Chinese groceries and gourmet food, since the first Chinese bookstore, the very first of its kind in the African continent, opened in Cyrildene on Saturday.

The 1000-square-meter shop provides readers with 20,000 kinds of Chinese books, covering diverse categories of science, humanities, culture, arts and education. Li Yong, the Chairman of Xinzhi Group said, with the bookstore being a platform of cultural communication, they are going to translate more Chinese literature masterpieces and best-sellers into English, introduce them to the South African readers, and also in the opposite way to the Chinese readers.

The owner of the bookstore, Kunming Xinzhi Group, is China's largest private book retailer, with 75 outlets around the country. As South Africa being the location of its eighth overseas bookstore, Xinzhi has already set up shops in Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Burma, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Nepal in the last five years.