Reading is undergoing subtle changes as the digital wave surges. When page flipping gives more ground to screen swiping, humans reshape, with AI tools, their reading. On the 31st World Book Day, Yenching Scholars from different countries told their stories of reading and how they engaged with AI-powered reading. Books are a treasure trove of knowledge and provide a place in which one’s soul can resonate with written word.
How a Book Shapes “Another Me” in a Person
Books are informative, and more importantly, they are formative.
McKenna Grace Norton (2025 Cohort, USA): I first encountered Cavafy when I was a high-school student. Over the past ten years, Before Time Could Change Them has been like a special friend to me. I feel an intellectual and literal resonance with this poet I’ve never met. This resonance has shaped who I am today—an invaluable life experience.
Aurelia Rita Dochnal (2025 Cohort, Poland): I read and reread Thoreau’s Walden, particularly his description of the early morning in Chapter Two. I am trying a way of life that is closer to nature and attentive to my body. Walden is a natural, inspiring guidebook for life lived.
Aurelia Dochnal in her dorm room
Perpetual Cudjoe (2024 Cohort, Ghana): World Heritage Craze in China is more than informative; this book urges me to examine assumptions I wasn’t aware of and leads me to look at historical remains, museums, and tourist destinations from a new perspective.
Justin Robert Hurley (2025 Cohort, USA): An international scholar who intends to live in China and understand the country can start with the American journalist Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones. The book records Hessler’s personal experiences when he taught in Sichuan and worked as a Beijing-based journalist. Readers are encouraged to explore the underlying patterns behind Chinese society.
Andrew Benjamin Rule (2024 Cohort, USA): Read more contemporary Chinese literature! Both the Chinese original and the translation. You can read challenging literary fiction, or online novels that require only 1% of your brain power. For example, Chuanxing about the queer communities in contemporary Chinese society, as well as English translations of Muqin he (Mother River), Taiwan manyou lü (Taiwan Travelogue), and Yewan de qianshuiting (A Submarine in the Night). I’ve discovered reading is the best way to deeply engage with the latest intellectual and cultural trends in Beijing, especially when you talk with the author at a book signing. Contemporary Chinese writing is continuously being published. There is no better way than to witness how culture is created.
Andrew Rule at Stoic Book Haven in Beijing
Andrew Rule’s bookshelf
AI as a Tool, a Partner, and a Guide
In reading and pursuit of knowledge at large, a reader continually explores the deep meanings behind texts.
Yin Rui (2025 Cohort, China): AI and social media apps are increasingly embedded in our lives, and my way of reading has changed accordingly. I used to read only print books, but I now try to include social media apps in my reading. Before I start a new book, I read short comments and in-depth reviews of the book on Douban, to get a rough idea of the book’s originality and social relevance. Then, I search on Weixin Dushu for the e-book. I usually find online comments on the famous lines and chapters of books, enabling me to better understand specific lines and to come across unexpected insights. Also, when reading a specialized book, one may run into unfamiliar technical terms and background knowledge never seen before, and AI can be a quick source of relevant knowledge.
Perpetual Cudjoe (2024 Cohort, Ghana): For me, AI is a guide in reading, not the goal. That is, I don’t rely on AI to summarize the book I’m reading or to go through the whole text. I just use AI to test my reading and understanding of the book. For example, after finishing Yan Haiming’s World Heritage Craze in China, I posed questions to AI concerning the arguments and views in the book. In this way, I could tell whether I’d grasped the author’s central idea or whether I’d assumed I understood. I have come to see that we need to make the best of AI. I use AI to help me with critical reading; we need to go beyond the literal meaning of texts and move to challenge the author’s arguments and the plausibility of our own interpretation of the book. When I am using AI, I won’t ask it whether my interpretation of a book is correct or not; instead, I ask AI to challenge my interpretation, pointing out the weakness or offering a different perspective. In this way, reading becomes a more engaged analytical process. For me, AI is more than an auxiliary guide—it serves as an analytical tool, urging me to think deeply and to challenge my own assumptions. Therefore, AI helps me enhance my arguments.
Wang Shidi (2024 Cohort, China): I’ve tried AI-assisted reading, and I must admit that AI does a remarkable job of extracting the key content and explaining the theories. But AI cannot think for me. AI-assisted reading seems more efficient; however, the content is usually over-simplified and fragmented. One has no in-depth thinking with AI-assisted reading. Knowledge merely flashes by and cannot be truly understood or applied in real life. In this sense, AI is inefficient.
Wang Shidi at Uris library in Ithaca, New York
Reading for Change: To See the World and to Find Oneself
Curiosity-driven reading lays the ground for academic research and offers passage into self-reflection, enabling us to stay intellectually humble, curious, and committed to lifelong self-cultivation through learning and inquiry. This empowers sociological research with a human touch. Reading also helps us forge a habit of “mindful questioning,” which underlies all aspects of scholarly inquiry and the grander scheme of our lives.
Wang Shidi (2024 Cohort, China): Books ultimately come down to a “process of learning” where we continually pose questions and seek answers. During my exchange at Cornell, I did close reading of English-language academic sources and popular works to develop my own writing style through imitation. And at YCA, I discussed Haizi’s poems with my fellow students and observed that people from different cultural backgrounds hold different perspectives on the same topic. Reading may not produce an immediate effect; yet, books offer a formative power that endures in everyday life and across the lifespan, enabling us both to learn and to think.
Wang Shidi’s bookshelf
World Book Day: Embark on a New Journey
Reading is not only for acquiring prior knowledge; it bridges the present, the past, and the future. AI-assisted reading can be an intellectual mirror. In this way, continued reading shapes and reshapes the self. On the World Book Day, we challenge you to pick up a good book long forgotten, but to read it in a new way—inviting AI to join you as partner or challenger. Read something new to you, something written in another language or in another genre you are unfamiliar with. Immerse yourself in the warmth of reading, without worrying about efficiency at the expense of thinking. The spring sun falls on the rustling pages as the glow of new technology shines from e-readers; between physical books and e-books, let us cultivate a better self.
