About We Love Science

We Love Science

We Love Science, in Chinese Women Ai Kexue, is a Beijing children's science magazine founded in 1960 by China's children's publishing system. It is the earliest children's popular-science periodical founded in mainland China and is described by its publisher as the country's only national-level children's science magazine. Published by the China Children's Press and Publication Group under the Communist Youth League's central committee, it appears as a semi-monthly, in editions divided by age: a youth edition for readers of about 8 to 15, built around the sections Charming Science and Wisdom Encyclopedia, and a children's edition for ages 5 to 8. Its editor-in-chief in recent listings is Wang Rongwei.

Conceived in 1957, founded in 1960

The magazine's founding story is unusually well preserved. In 1957 Zheng Yanhui, an editor in the knowledge-books editorial office of the China Children's Publishing House, decided to create a comprehensive knowledge periodical for children. To find a name, she posted a notice on the publishing house's wall newspaper inviting her colleagues to suggest titles; editors of the China Youth Publishing House, who shared the offices, contributed suggestions as well. The name the editorial group settled on was Women Ai Kexue — We Love Science — a title in the voice of its readers themselves. The magazine was formally founded in 1960, with Zheng Yanhui as its first editor-in-chief. The founding came in a period when the young People's Republic placed science at the centre of its ambitions for children: a generation that loved science was, in the language of the time, the generation that would build the country's future, and a magazine that made experiments, nature and technology vivid to primary and middle-school readers was an instrument of that policy as well as a pleasure.

Suspension and revival under another name

Like its peers, the magazine was halted by the Cultural Revolution: publication stopped in 1966. Its return was staged. In April 1977 it resumed publication under a temporary title, Shaonian Keji (Youth Science and Technology); after two issues under that name, in March 1978 it formally restored its original name, We Love Science. The episode mirrors the wider history of Chinese popular-science publishing, in which the classic titles founded around 1960 were suspended for a decade and then revived, often first under cautious new names, as the reform era reopened science education. The restored magazine resumed its place in classrooms and school libraries across China, where for many children of the 1980s and 1990s it was the principal science reading available beyond textbooks.

Publisher: China's children's press

The magazine is published by the China Children's Press and Publication Group, the national children's publishing house operating under the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. The group is the anchor institution of Chinese children's periodicals: it publishes ten journals, including Zhongxuesheng (Middle School Students), Children's Literature, Chinese Children, and the picture magazines for younger children, and it leads the national associations of children's periodical workers and children's book publishers, maintaining links with more than two hundred children's newspapers and periodicals and thirty-five children's publishing houses, and publishing cooperation with more than fifty countries and regions. Within that system, We Love Science is the science flagship — the title through which the house addresses children's curiosity about the natural and technological world.

Editions for two childhoods

The modern magazine is divided by age, recognising that a six-year-old and a fourteen-year-old need different sciences and different pages. The youth edition, for readers of about 8 to 15, is built around two main sections: Charming Science (Meili Kexue), presenting the attractions of natural phenomena, animals, plants and the physical world, and Wisdom Encyclopedia (Zhihui Baike), carrying broader knowledge features. The children's edition, for ages 5 to 8, is presented as a picture-rich fun pictorial and happy comics format. Subscription descriptions of the magazine describe its contents for school readers as spanning nature exploration, science experiments children can perform, science fiction and fantasy elements used as teaching stories, and reports on the frontiers of science and technology; its regular features invite readers to conduct their own observations and experiments and to write in with results. The stated aims, constant across editions, are to spread scientific knowledge, stimulate creative inspiration, enlighten scientific wisdom and cultivate scientific quality — to make science a habit of mind, not only a school subject.

Recognition and educational role

The magazine's official standing has been repeatedly confirmed. In 2002 it was designated by the National Young Pioneers work committee as a specified publication for children's science education. It has been honoured across the 2000s in national assessments of children's periodicals, and its publisher describes it as a good companion of primary and middle-school students, serving children with news information and educational content. Its domestic periodical number is CN 11-1067/C. In practical terms, its role in Chinese schools parallels that of the great children's science magazines of other countries: teachers use it to supplement the curriculum, school libraries subscribe as a matter of course, and its experiments and features feed classroom activity. Because it is a national title from a state children's publisher, its reach extends to small cities and rural schools that commercial magazines often do not reach.

The world of Chinese children's science publishing

We Love Science belongs to a small group of survivors. Chinese children's periodicals began in the early twentieth century, but the popular-science titles for children are a creation of the People's Republic: founded around 1960, suspended in the Cultural Revolution, revived in the late 1970s and professionalised in the reform era. Where most children's magazines compete on characters and entertainment, We Love Science has held the science ground for more than sixty years, in recent decades against the competition of television, video and apps. Its semi-monthly frequency and its two-age structure are adaptations to that market; its name, unchanged since Zheng Yanhui's wall-newspaper competition of 1957, is not. The name itself has become an institution — a slogan generations of Chinese schoolchildren met on a magazine cover before they met it anywhere else.

The magazine today: editions and availability

In its current form We Love Science is a semi-monthly in a handy 16-mo format, carrying the domestic periodical number CN 11-1067/C and published from Beijing by the China Children's Press and Publication Group. Subscription listings price recent issues at 20 yuan, adjusted from 17.5 yuan at the start of 2020, with a full-year subscription at 240 yuan; the youth edition is also sold in combination packages with other school magazines, a common route by which it reaches primary and middle-school classrooms. The publisher's description of its contemporary contents stresses breadth within the science brief: the living world of animals and plants, the physical world of experiments and inventions, frontier reports from Chinese and world science, and guided activities through which young readers observe, make and discover for themselves. The continuity of the offer matters more than any single feature: a Chinese child who begins with the picture edition at six can graduate to the youth edition's Charming Science and Wisdom Encyclopedia sections and read the same title, under the same name chosen in 1957, until the age of fifteen.

Legacy

We Love Science's legacy is generational. Founded in 1960 as mainland China's earliest children's science periodical, interrupted for a decade, restored in 1978, it has presented experiments, nature and technology to primary and middle-school readers for over six decades, under a title chosen by its first editors to speak in children's own voice. As the science flagship of the national children's press and a designated science-education publication, it occupies in China the place that classic children's science magazines hold elsewhere: the first science reading of millions of adults who now work in China's laboratories, engineering firms and technology companies.