BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhuanet) -- The People's Literature Publishing House (PLPH), China's exclusive publisher of the Harry Potter series in Chinese, is expected to release the Chinese-language edition of Harry Potter VI no later than October 15 this year.

    "It may come out at the end of September at the earliest. We plan to print 800,000 to 1.2 million copies in the first printing," said Pan Kaixiong, deputy chief of PLPH.

    But that's still too late for many Chinese Harry Potter fans. Incomplete statistics show since the global release of the "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" on July 16, more than three thousand copies of the English edition have been sold in Beijing. In Shanghai, the Shanghai Foreign Languages Bookstore alone has recorded more than 700 copies of the book sold.

    Buyers include adults as well as high schools students, reminding people of the amazing progress of English language teaching in China.

    "Compared with other fantasy novels, Harry Potter is more imaginative and the plots are more reasonable," said Zhang Li, a junior high school student in Beijing.

    "As Harry Potter grows up and enters adolescence, he is gettinga quick temper. I'm anxious to know how he lives in Harry Potter VI," she said.

    More than 6 million copies of the previous five volumes of the Harry Potter saga have been sold in China, according to PLPH deputy chief Pan Kaixiong.

    "That's a very remarkable record," said Pan. Enditem