BEIJING, Sept. 23 -- A special reading season kicked off on Monday to promote digital and traditional reading in rural areas.

Seven major activities, including the reading of different themes, shared reading and book sales, will be carried out at village-based libraries across the country.

A total of 587,000 such libraries had been set up by the end of 2018, under the Rural Library Project, which went into full swing in 2007.

Over 1.16 billion books have been provided to these libraries.

Among these rural libraries, 125,000 have been upgraded to provide digital reading services.