National Library of China (中国国家图书馆)

The old National Library building, completed in 1987, was listed as one of Beijing's "top ten architectural landmarks of the 1980s", but at 12,000 a day, visitors had long since outgrown its capacity and a new building had been planned several years ago.

The National Library of China is situated at the No. 33 Zhongguancun South Main Street. The main building is a twin-tower building, featuring double eaves, grand roof covered with glazed tiles in peacock blue and external walls fixed with light grey ceramic tiles.It is divided into south library, north library and ancient books library including 31.19 million volumes with more than 2 million volumes of rare ancient books. Covering an area of 280,000m2, it was the largest library in Asia and the third in the world with a grand collection of books in 2008.


It has 2,900 seats in its 80,000 square meter area and is expected to be able to meet increasing demand for the next 30 years. The completion of the new building makes the National Library of China the largest library in Asia and the world's third largest library with a great range of English and other foreign language editions, including periodicals and academic titles.

Foreigners can only access the books at the library and are not permitted to borrow, but the selection makes it well worth the trip. Their website has a searchable online database that is available in both Chinese and English. Reader's cards are available for RMB 5/month or RMB 20/year.

It’s also home to China’s famed oracle bones and thousands of historically valuable papers. For rare book fans, the biggest attraction of National Library of China Phase II building will be on the first floor, where a special glass room houses original copies of the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Branches of Literature – a huge Encyclopedia project initiated by the Qing Emperor Qianlong, who reigned from 1735 to 1796).