Duan Chun and the other seven retired cadres and teachers followed a suggestion from a rural teacher and built a library in Haoshan village, located in central China's Hunan province in 1985.

Before the library was built, the local adults could not find a place to learn new knowledge. Therefore, the retired cadres and teachers gave positive responses to the suggestion of a rural teacher that a library should be built. For instance, they donated money and asked for help from people who have extra books to donate. After a while, they collected nearly ten thousand books. 

They renovated an ancient building which was built in 1778 as a library. As all the local villagers have free access to the library, the number of readers sees a continuous increase. Quite a few readers work as volunteers and take turns to provide management services in the library. 

This library is comprised of more than 53,000 books and books have been checked out about 120,000 times from the library in the past 30 years.

According to incomplete statistics, 127 local students have been recruited by undergraduate institutions among which three students got admitted to Peking University since the time the library was built.