The Chinese book, Order: Fangyuan Story [Photo/Xinhua]

The "world's most beautiful book" awards were recently announced in Leipzig, Germany. The Chinese book, Order: Fangyuan Story, published by Guangxi Art publishing company, won the top prize.

The competition is held every March in Leipzig. It is organized by Stiftung Buchkunst, a German book art foundation. Competition judges examined about 600 works from 32 countries to select the most beautiful of the year. Fourteen books from eight different countries won prizes.

The winning book, Order: Fangyuan Story, written by Lu Chonghua and designed by Li Jin, tells the story of a 33-year-old private bookstore, Fangyuan.

Li Jin and Lu Chonghua both graduated from the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts. Li Jin became a professor at the academy. Lu Chonghua began to manage the bookstore owned by his family. On every book order, Lu painted caricature portraits with different emotions to record his feelings.

Lu spent four years making those memorable portraits into a book. His best friend, Li Jin, became the designer of the book. "It helps me to realize my design dream," said Li. "In the book, there's a story about book orders, and a story about my friend's family, as well as the memory of several generations of a bookstore."

Another Chinese book, Insatiable Desire to Learn, won the bronze prize. It was the second time that China has been honored with the title since Mei Lanfang's opera portfolio picture book won the gold prize in 2003.