The new Changzhou Library is located in Changzhou’s new landmark, the Cultural Square, which was designed by GMP from Germany. Adopting the idea of stone arch bridge, a traditional design in regions south of the Yangtze, the library stands as one of the six arch buildings with a huge overhang structure.

With a gross building area of 28,300 square meters, it has a 1,200-seat capacity and space for 1 million volumes. The library also serves as an event venue featured with a performing arts center, a live streaming center, a parent-child book reading center, a study room and a seminar hall. There are also reading areas reserved for collections, foreign language books, arts, ancient books, picture books and biographies. On the first floor, the Qiubai Studio in the library is open 24 hours a day, allowing citizens to borrow and return books at self-service kiosks with their library cards.

The new library has a special reading area for books from Changzhou’s international friendship cities, which has so far collected more than 1,000 volumes donated from 18 countries including Italy, Russia, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan and Poland.

From June 6 to 12, the new library will have a one-week trial operation. The booking system will be ready in June with maximum 800 appointments per day, said Shi Yimei, director of Changzhou Library’s Management Department. By then, citizens can make appointments either online or offline.

During the trial operation, the library’s opening hours are 9: 00-11: 30 and 13: 00-17: 00 seven days a week.