Fri, January 22, 2010
China's best-selling writer Han Han announced the launch of Chorus of the Soloists this month and he'll be the magazine's editor-in-chief.
Though there is no specific date for the magazine's publication, it spices up the rivalry between Han and Shanghai-based Guo Jingming, another best-selling young writer.
Guo launched his fiction mook (magazine book) Top Novel in 2006, and sells 500,000 copies on average per issue, with the highest run of 700,000, said Guo in an interview with Moneyweek magazine.
Targeting teenage readers, Top Novel includes novels by Guo, Di An, Luo Luo and other young writers. The magazine topped the "Best 10 Chinese Fictional Journals" list in 2008 and 2009, following an online poll by a research organization from Tongji University.
Han revealed his plan for a literary magazine last May, triggering a heated discussion about the payment he planned to offer, from 250 to 2,000 yuan ($36-293) per 1,000 words, some 10-40 times higher than is usual.
Han says Chorus will be totally different from Guo's magazine.
"Apart from the fact that they're both printed on paper, there won't be any similarities between the two," said Han. He also said in an interview with Southern Metropolis Weekly that he and Guo are completely different - "like men and women".
Guo didn't comment on Han's remarks, but said "the market is open to the increase or fall of a magazine".
The two pop writers' rivalry has been long and heated. Han and Guo are roughly the same age, respectively, 28 and 27. They both kicked off their careers after winning the New Concept Writing Contest held by Meng Ya magazine and several leading universities. Han won it in 1999 and Guo in 2001, and both were high school students at the time.
Although their emergence triggered debates over the merits of the Chinese education system, they have since become icons of the post-80s generation.
Han's representative works include Triple Gates, Minus One Degree Centigrade, and Guo's are The City of Fantasies, Never Flowers in Never Dreams.
Han said that novels and essays by young authors Zhou Yunpeng and Luo Yonghao will be included in his debut issue.
But he advised readers not to expect too much: "Just regard it as a Zhiyin magazine (the Chinese equivalent of Reader's Digest)."
Han said he would like the magazine to be like free land for literary seeds to grow.
Han revealed in a recent blog that the publishing date of the first issue is still being decided.
"The flight is delayed, not due to mechanical troubles, but poor weather conditions," he said, ironically.
Culture critic and researcher Zhu Dake compares Han to painter/writer Chen Danqing, as they are both "independent and critical", and Guo to scholar Yu Qiuyu, who is "zealous in pursuit of honors".
"None of their discords are personal. Their differences are caused by divergent values, which reveals not only the differences between people born in the 1980s, but also a Chinese society in transition," Zhu said.
Besides Guo and Han, other young writers are joining the magazine business.
Under Shanda Literature Ltd, Rao Xueman, a writer born in the 1970s, launched 17@Seventeen magazine earlier this month, aimed at teenage girls.
Zhu said the rush to print is partly due to the realization by publishers that these young writers are a lucrative business.
Online writing contest returns to popular acclaim
The 4th Rongshu Xia Original Internet Literature Contest kicked off on Jan 4, after a gap of nine years, to the same enthusiasm that it triggered in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
Established in 1997, www.rongshuxia.com quickly grew into a leading website for online reading and writing and gave birth to such writers as Anne Baby and Ning Caishen, known, respectively, for the novel Farewell Viva and the TV script, My Own Swordsman.
But after 2001, the website ran into financial problems. It has now passed into new hands and they have revived the popular contest.
"We are different from traditional contests. Contributors don't need to appeal to the tastes of magazine editors. We provide a platform, and they find a way to attract online readers," says Zhang Enchao, who manages the Rongshu Xia website.
The contest invites contributions in two categories - long, narrative works of at least 100,000 words, and shorter novellas, essays, poems and prose of less than 100,000 words.
The deadline for submissions is the end of June, with the top prize of 50,000 yuan ($7,300) and the chance to be published.
Zhang says the most prominent feature of the contest is that the prize money is kept separate from the payment for the copyright. "If the winners want to give the copyright of the works to us, we'll pay extra," he says. "We hope this will attract more writers."
By Tuesday, Rongshu Xia had received more than 7,000 works, including some in English, according to Zhang, who says one English-language editor is in charge of these entries.
All submitted works will be put on the website, with frequent updates on the number of hits and editor recommendations. Readers will then be invited to vote and a final list will be sent to a panel of professional judges comprising writers, literary critics, senior editors and publishers.
The contest is aimed at promoting an appreciation of literature and encouraging creative writing.
Literary critic and Peking University professor Chen Xiaoming says there will be a big surge in Internet literature this year.
"The contest will give impetus to its development," he says.
