On October 23rd, Arete Readers team participated in the Read Marathon, as the ultimate challenge of personal focus and willpower. The Read Marathon is an original reading promotion activity in China. Participants are required to finish reading a new book that is not yet available in the market within 6 hours, and the total score of the race is made by adding up the speed and quality points.

This year, our competition book is "To the North", published by Jiangsu People's Publishing Press in September this year. The two authors, Li Hongmei and Liu Yangdong, are both from the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Literature and History Museum. This book tells the story of democrats going north to join hands with the Chinese Communist Party to negotiate democracy, understanding the history of consultative democracy helps us to have a better understanding on the mechanisms of consultative democracy and pushes us to better integrate consultative democracy into our real political life. This is also the meaning of reading "To the North".

Our team won the medal, but we got more beyond the medal. Compared with other competitors, our ability to concentrate still needs to be improved. I hope that we’ll keep the habit of reading more and reading better in the future, no matter we compete or not.