In 1969, just shy of 16, Xi was sent to the remote rural village of Liangjiahe in the hills of Shaanxi province as an "educated youth." Bringing two suitcases filled with books, Xi spent seven years living in yaodong, a traditional cave dwelling carved into the yellow loess hillsides. Despite the harsh conditions, his enthusiasm for reading never waned; instead, books became a source of spiritual strength during those challenging years.

Xi would use breaks from farm work to study dictionaries, or pen the sheep on the hilltop for a moment to read. At night, he immersed himself in books under a kerosene lamp. He once walked 15 km along a bumpy, dusty country road only to borrow Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust." He was also deeply impressed by Russian writer Nikolai Chernyshevsky's "What Is to Be Done?", in which the protagonist's resilience encouraged him.

During his stay in the village, Xi read nearly all the literary classics he could find. Xi recalled, "What comes out effortlessly today are the things I read at that time."

Through extensive reading, Xi developed a distinctive approach: turning thick books into thin ones and thin books into thick ones. That is, he would distill the essence of rich and complex works into core insights, while probing the depths of concise texts to fully uncover their richness. By the time he was admitted to Tsinghua University in 1975, he had read Karl Marx's "Das Kapital" from cover to cover three times and filled 18 notebooks with his reflections.

Reading Chinese and foreign classics nourished Xi's inner world. Throughout the years, whether serving as a grassroots official or China's top leader, he has maintained a rigorous reading habit while also encouraging his colleagues -- and the broader public -- to read.

"Overseas analysts of China are understandably very interested in whether Chinese leaders are reading, whether they have time to read, and what kind of books they are reading," The Diplomat said in one article. "Leaders' knowledge is formed by the books they read ... This in turn is an important factor in determining the shaping and implementation of policy."