Beijing's Sanlian Bookstore has become the mainland's first 24-hour establishment of its kind this year.[Photo by Zou Hong/China Daily]

Surely, 2014 has marked a new chapter in China's literary scene. Xing Yi reports.

New pages were added to the story of Chinese literary development this year.

Beijing's Sanlian Bookstore became the first 24-hour establishment of its kind on April 23, the 19th World Book Day, prompting Premier Li Keqiang to call it a "spiritual landmark" in a letter to its staff. About a dozen stores followed suit in such cities as Guangdong's provincial capital Guangzhou, Shaanxi's provincial capital Xi'an and Chongqing municipality.

Bookstores also began reconfiguring their marketing to go beyond merely selling books to becoming spaces for lectures and events.

Nature writing and sci-fi surged from obscurity to popularity.

Chinese have become infatuated with nature writing through naturalist Cheng Hong, who's also the premier's wife. Her book Return to the Wilderness became a hit after she presented it as a gift to Ethiopian President Mulatu Teshome in May.

Subsequently, Commercial Press released a series of translated works belonging to the genre, such as The Forest Unseen and One Square Inch of Silence.

The first installment of Liu Cixin's sci-fi trilogy The Three-Body Problem became the first book from the genre by a Chinese author to enter the US market and a best-seller at home. The work has sparked interest in the previously overlooked genre in China－as have plans to adapt it into a film.