Chinese common readers—including railway workers, farmers, and female factory managers— made themselves in the early twentieth century. They relied on an informal knowledge infrastructure comprised of lithographic publishers, independent schools, streetside bookstalls, and an as-yet largely unrecognized national book network. Tracking these readers’ activities within this infrastructure requires a vernacular literacy approach that uses actual praxis rather than abstract metrics to assess literacy. This approach moves from the remnants of practices—bookstall surveys, scribbled marginalia, how-to instructions for decocting a cure—towards a historical understanding of common readers as knowers rather than numbers.