A large-scale read marathon, the world's largest reading promotion activity, is set to take place in Shanghai and in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces on Sept 15.

This event held every spring and autumn and seeing 1,700 participants take part is to inspire readers of all ages to nurture their love of reading and to help promote reading as a recreational activity.

It altogether has 21 competition sites around the four municipalities and provinces, including the Home Study libraries in Jiading New City and Nanxiang town in Shanghai's Jiading district, and the Zhejiang Library, the Anhui Provincial Library, and the Wuxi Library in Jiangsu province.

Participants are required to arrive at the competition site within the prescribed time (10:00 – 16:00) and finish reading an unpublished new book within six hours. They need to scan a code with mobile phones to calculate their reading time after finishing the reading, and enter the test-taking system to answer a few questions. The person who spends the least amount of time, composed of the reading time and the time converted from the answer scores, will be the champion.

Registration for the read marathon is open now, with the deadline being 0:00 on Sept 3. People with an age from 14 to 75 wanting to take part in the event can sign up at http://match.readmarathon.com/login.

Detailed process of signing up for the competition:

1. Forming a team with five people

(The team leader can start a team in the registration system by logging in with a WeChat account, and invite the other four team members.)

2. Submitting the registration by the team leader

3. Waiting for the drawing lots on Sept 3

(The chosen teams will have volunteers' notice through WeChat.)

A participant of the 2017 read marathon gets the certificate and the medal after finishing her reading. [Photo/sohu.com]