> who described lively market for books in even minor towns Yep, this is stronger evidence. I'm more sold. Respect for learning itself though IMO is fairly we

> who described lively market for books in even minor towns Yep, this is stronger evidence. I'm more sold. Respect for learning itself though IMO is fairly weak (though nonzero) evidence. Historians have wildly differing estimates (admittedly with gigantic error bars given the difficulty of studying literacy rates) for the literacy rates of different time periods of Imperial China despite a near-constant "respect for learning."