Zhongguancun, an area near the Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, has become a byword for the country's booming IT industry. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The Zhongguancun Notes, a nonfiction work by novelist Ning Ken tells the story of how China's Silicon Valley was formed. Xing Yi reports.

Award-winning novelist Ning Ken has just released his first nonfiction work, The Zhongguancun Notes, which tells of how the area evolved from a village to China's equivalent of Silicon Valley.

The idea of writing such a book came to Ning as he was browsing Secrets of Silicon Valley by Deborah Perry Piscione in 2015.

"Piscoine mentioned Zhongguancun in the last chapter, comparing Silicon Valley (home to world technology companies in the United States) with Zhongguancun and also an Israeli high-tech zone," says Ning.

"Although her tone was skeptical, the comparison shed little light on the role of Zhongguancun, it stimulated my interest."

Ning then devoted himself to interviews with people and field work in Zhongguancun for this book.

Ning, who was born in 1959, started writing prose and poems in the 1980s, and later shifted to novels.