A World of Color.docVIP

A World of Color 　　Zeng Xin， a master’s candidate at Peking University in Beijing， learned about the coloring book Secret Garden： An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book by Scottish illustrator Johanna Basford through a smartphone app that recommends items worth buying. She decided to venture into an artistic field utterly different from her inscrutable academic pursuit―Chinese philosophy. 　　She purchased the book from the e-commerce website Taobao for about 30 yuan （$5）. A set of 36-color pencils came as a free gift with the purchase. 　　During her two-month-long summer vacation， Zeng colors illustrations in the book whenever she has time. She has finished two and a half drawings. 　　“I have derived a sense of achievement from coloring because it’s easy to do，” Zeng said. She added that as a philosophy major， she often feels defeated when reading philosophical treatises. 　　Zeng is not alone. Within a month of the release of the Chinese version of Secret Garden in early June， the book had sold out on China’s three major book retailing websites―JD.com， Amazon China and Dangdang. On July 18 alone， it sold 25，000 copies on JD.com. Some online shoppers even sought to buy copies on foreign e-commerce websites. 　　In addition to Secret Garden， several other coloring books have also become popular. Their enthusiasts range from white-collar workers to pregnant mothers-to-be. Uploading finished drawings to social networking platforms is becoming fashionable among such enthusiasts. 　　 A palpable hit 　　Secret Garden contains 96 pages with one delicate pen-and-ink illustration on each page. All the illustrations are made up of patterns featur-ing flowers， grass， tree leaves， and small animals and insects like owls， butterflies， and birds. 　　Basford told the BBC recently that the book was inspired by the garden her grandfather tended when she was little. 　　A graduate of the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design of the University of Dundee in Scotland， Basfor