"My biggest hobby is reading. It has become a lifestyle for me," said President Xi Jinping. "Reading helps keep our mind active, and it inspires us and cultivates the noble spirit."

Books are the vehicle of culture. Reading is an important way to inherit culture. On World Book and Copyright Day, we share with you some stories of Xi Jinping on reading.

It is through books that Xi learned the importance of being loyal to one's country.

"When I was a boy, about five or six years old, my mother took me to buy books. At a bookstore, she bought a picture-story book series titled, The Legend of Yue Fei. One of the volumes illustrates Yue Fei's mother tattooing four characters meaning 'serve the country with the utmost loyalty' across his back.

I said that must hurt so much! Mother replied, yes it did hurt, but Yue Fei kept that in his heart. Since then, the four characters have been embedded in my heart, and it has become my life-time pursuit," Xi said.

In terms of literary and art creation, Xi Jinping emphasized a people-centered philosophy. He said the fundamental purpose of literary and art works is to serve the people.

He cited the story of Liu Qing in explaining it.

"In 1982, before I went to work in Zhengding county, Hebei province, among those who came to see me off was a scriptwriter named Wang Yuanjian. He told me that after I went to the countryside, I should mingle with the masses, just like Liu Qing did," Xi said.

Liu Qing was a writer who served as deputy Party chief of Chang'an county in Northwest China's Shaanxi province during the early 1950s. To better learn about the life of farmers, he quit his position as an official and settled in a village named Huangfu and stayed there for 14 years. During that time he was devoted to creating a novel titled Chuang Ye Shi, or The Story of Entrepreneurship, which depicts the socialist transformation of agriculture in rural China.

"Because Liu Qing had a deep understanding of the lives of local farmers, he created vivid characters in his book. He was so familiar with the life of farmers that once a new government policy was rolled out, he could immediately figure out whether the farmers would welcome or oppose the new policy," Xi said.

Not only Chinese literature fascinates Xi, he also is a fan of foreign literature.

During an interview with media outlets from BRICS countries in March 2013, Xi said, "When I was young, I read a lot of Russian literature. The books by Russian writers such as Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Nekrasov, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Sholokhov had a huge influence on me."

"I clearly remember many chapters and plots in those books," Xi said. He mentioned How the Steel was Tempered, written by Nikolai Ostrovsky, which he read many times.

"After reading What Is to Be Done by Nikolay Chernyshevsky, I felt a huge shock," he said at a seminar on literature and art in October 2014.

Xi also is an enthusiast of French literature.

In a meeting that honors the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France in March 2014, Xi said, "Since youth, I have been fascinated by French culture, its history, philosophy, literature and art."

"Reading the books about the French Revolution enriched my thoughts about the evolution of human society and politics. Reading the books of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Saint-Simon, Fourier and Sartre deepened my understanding of how progress in people's minds could induce the progress of human society. Reading the books of Montaigne, La Fontaine, Moliere, Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, Flaubert, Alexandre Dumas fils, Maupassant and Roman Rolland allowed me to experience the joys and sorrows, reunions and partings of life. Those characters in the books, such as Jean Valjean, Quasimodo, Boule de Suif still reside in my mind vividly till today."

There is another anecdote about Xi's passion for reading foreign literature.

When Xi worked and lived in Liangjiahe village in northern Shaanxi province from late 1960s to 1970s, he once walked 15 kilometers to borrow a copy of Faust. And later, the owner of the book walked 15 km to take back the book.

During a visit to Washington in 2015, Xi also shared his enthusiasm for American literature.

Xi said, "As a young man, I read The Federalist Papers and Thomas Paine's Common Sense. I also like the stories and thoughts of Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. I read Thoreau, Whitman, Mark Twain, and Jack London. In The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway, the depiction of storms, huge waves and a small boat, an old man and a shark left deep impressions on me."