Back to 80: My Literary Life

The next morning, Fang Minghua drove Song Tangtang to the train station, accompanied by her secretary Xu Hui.

He and the crew first went to Yanjing, and then gathered other actors and flew to New York, where they filmed for four months.

After Fang Minghua saw off his wife, he did not go home but drove to the Provincial Writers Association compound. When he arrived at the jury office, he saw Wang Zi.

"Teacher Fang, you are back from a business trip to Xiangjiang." Wang Zi greeted him quickly when he saw him.

Perhaps it was during work that she was too embarrassed to call Fang Minghua uncle and called her teacher like Li Hongying.

Fang Minghua nodded: "Are you used to coming here?"

"It's good. Sister Hongying takes special care of me." The girl said happily.

Fang Minghua didn't say anything. He took out the Gartonley strawberry-flavored hard candies he bought from Xiangjiang and placed a small bag in each office. Everyone happily ate them.

Zhang Yanqian was specifically responsible for the office work of the jury and took the initiative to report to him on the recent work progress.

"Under the arrangement of Teacher Lu Yao, we have sent a call for papers to the People's Daily and Guangming Daily, which will be published on August 1."

“What about Hong Kong’s Ta Kung Pao and Taiwan’s United Daily News?”

Fang Minghua asked again.

"The receipts have also arrived, and Ta Kung Pao and United Daily News will publish them on August 1."

"In addition, Teacher Li Li from San Francisco also sent a fax, saying that they have contacted the New York Times and the Times of the United Kingdom and will publish our call for papers. The Yomiuri Shimbun of Japan also sent a fax. ”

Fang Minghua nodded with satisfaction.

Although it is said to be a Chinese-language literature award open to the world, this is the first time the awards will be awarded. From the perspective of funding and feasibility, the stakes should not be too large.

It is enough to solicit submissions from the three regions across the Taiwan Strait, as well as from the three countries of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan. If the results are good, the scope of the submission will be expanded in the next step.

"Chairman Fang, this is the list of invitations to be sent to major magazines and publishing houses. Take a look." Zhang Yanqian said, pulling out another piece of information from the drawer and handing it to Fang Minghua.

For selections such as the Mao Dun Literary Award and the original National Outstanding Short and Medium Novels Awards, in addition to simply publishing a message in the newspaper, in the name of the Chinese Writers Association, notifications were sent to all provincial writers associations to recommend works for selection.

Fang Minghua's Chinese Literature Award is under the name of the Qin Provincial Writers' Association. Of course, he cannot send a notice to the Writers' Association of his brother provinces, and he does not want to go through official channels.

In this case, it is better to send invitation letters to major publishing houses in the name of the jury.

"Contemporary", "Harvest" and "Flower City". Sanlian Bookstore in Xiangjiang, Crown Publishing House in Taiwan, etc.

Magazine categories include "People's Literature", "Wenhui", and "Novel Monthly". There are also "Hong Kong Literature" and Taiwan's "United Literature". Basically, they include no less than forty or fifty famous literary publications and magazines from the two sides of the Taiwan Strait. .

Fang Minghua glanced at it and asked again.

"Has Lu Yao seen it?"

"Well, this was drawn up by Lu Yao himself."

"Okay, after the call for papers is published in the newspaper, we will send invitation letters to these units!"

On August 1, two domestic heavyweight newspapers, "People's Daily" and "Guangming Daily", as well as Hong Kong's "Ta Kung Pao", Taiwan's "United Daily News", Japan's "Yomiuri Shimbun", the United States' "New York Times" and the United Kingdom's "The Times" simultaneously published A call for essays: “The call for essays for the first World Chinese Language Awards has officially started!”

Scope of the call for submissions: From January 1, 1990 to December 31, 1991, any novel, short story, essay, poem (collection of poetry) published in any magazine in the three places across the Taiwan Strait can participate in the selection.

At the same time, during this period, non-Chinese literary works published around the world and translated into Chinese within the time specified in the call for submissions can also participate in the award.

The deadline for submission is December 31, 1991, and then enters the selection stage. The list of winners is expected to be announced from April to June of the next year.

The call for papers also details the requirements for the work, the selection rules, the list and resumes of the jury members, the list of reading class members, etc.

In particular, the names of the members of the jury are all famous in the literary world.

Of course, what surprises readers even more is the prize money for the winning works.

Prize for winning novel: 100,000 yuan!

Novella: Eighty thousand!

Sixty thousand short stories and prose poems (collections)!

Including shortlisted works (five shortlisted works of each type will also receive a bonus of 5,000 yuan!)

(Winning writers from non-Mainland China can be paid in U.S. dollars at the official exchange rate.)

As soon as the bonus amount was announced, both readers and authors immediately became excited!

One hundred thousand yuan for a novel!

You must know that the winning works of the third Mao Dun Literary Award that was just held were only 5,000 yuan!

Some people even secretly compared it to the British Booker Prize, the highest literary award in the English-speaking world. I heard that the prize money for winning the award was 10,000 pounds, which was only 87,000 yuan equivalent to RMB according to the exchange rate at the time.

The prize money of the Chinese Literature Prize is completely comparable to the Booker Prize!

The news from the outside world has not yet come back, but mainland writers are the first to get excited. Those who have published novels in the past two years and think they are relatively good have called the magazines or publishing houses urging them to recommend their literary works.

Winning the award is probably not easy, but even being shortlisted is fine.

RMB 5,000 is equivalent to the Mao Dun Award.

However, some editors of publishing or magazine companies were in a dilemma. The jury office had already sent an invitation letter, welcoming submissions.

However, there was a sentence at the end: It is advisable to recommend three to five works of each type.

Is this to encourage recommendations or limit the length?

Of course, there are also those who don’t care about these. There is no hard and fast rule in the letter. What’s wrong with recommending more works? It just costs more mailing fees. Because the jury office stipulates that all submitted works must be sent five copies at a time, so that the jury members can read and communicate with each other.

As a result, the parcels and letters from various magazines and publishing houses flew in like snowflakes. The daily work task of the six staff members of the jury office was to register and make a list. For this reason, Fang Minghua simply contributed the laptop computer sent by Stephen Chow to the staff of the jury office.

The staff of the jury also had to conduct a preliminary review to see if the publication time met the requirements, and then mailed it to the members of the reading class distributed all over the country.

Fang Minghua was also a member of the reading class.

In addition to him, there were Lu Yao, Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongshi, Bai Miao and Wang Yu, the editor-in-chief of "Novel Review" from Qin Province.

At first, some people advised him to be a judge directly, but Fang Minghua finally declined.

It’s better to keep a low profile when you are organizing it yourself, and let the big guys serve on the jury.

Fang Minghua’s work began to get busy. Not only did he have to read the submitted works carefully as a reading class, but he also had to write a written evaluation of each work, including the advantages and disadvantages of the book, etc., and then wait for the reading class discussion next year for everyone to make a comprehensive evaluation.

At the same time, as the person in charge of the jury office, he also had to deal with some specific matters.

For example, today, I suddenly received a call from overseas.

“Teacher Fang, a Korean called you.” Wang Zi ran to Fang Minghua’s office and said loudly.

“Korean? International student?” Fang Minghua asked.

“No, it’s from Korea. His Chinese is really hard to understand.”

Korea?