Harry Potter gets unleashed on China tomorrow

The sixth Harry Potter novel goes on sale tomorrow morning at 7:01 Beijing time. Beijing’s major bookstores are opening up early to sell Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 《哈利·波特与混血王子》, although customers wanting to make other purchases still have to wait until normal business hours. The book already has several thousand pre-orders from people eager to read the English version and collectors wanting to get their hands on an original edition.

Harry Potter 6 is being discounted online, in many places quite heavily. The American edition has a sticker price of 198 RMB (24 USD), while the British edition is 178. Online booksellers quote 168 and 149 respectively, and many of them are including discount vouchers for future purchases. Joyo, which has a countdown timer emblazoned across its front page, goes even further by including stuffed chickens worth 170 yuan (uh, right) left over from the Spring Festival, and a cheap, 10 yuan Tibetan pendant.

People’s Press indicated that work on a mainland Chinese translation would commence as soon as it could get its hands on a copy on the 16th. The previous Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix, was translated in just three months; this time they’re trying to get that down to two, for a street date of late September or early October.