Urban elegance

Author: Sun Li
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: In the spring of 1981, Mr. Mao Dun bequeathed 250,000 yuan of his manuscript fees to the Chinese Writers' Association, donating it as a fund to establish a long award to reward the best long novels each year. This marked the origin of the Mao Dun Literature Prize. In the following two decades, this highest award in contemporary Chinese literature has always attracted widespread attention and had a profound impact. To date, the Mao Dun Literature Prize has held five sessions, with 22 long novels winning the prize (with two more works receiving honorary awards). Our publishing house has been publishing the "Mao Dun Literature Prize Winning Series" since the spring of 1998, which has successively included eleven works published and awarded by our house. Subsequently, many authors, readers, and relevant individuals expressed the desire to see the complete collection of all winning works of the Mao Dun Literature Prize; they believed that fully reflecting the achievements of the highest award in contemporary Chinese literature was both necessary and beneficial. With the strong support of authors, their families, and relevant publishing organizations, the "Complete Collection of Mao Dun Literature Prize Winning Works" has finally been published. The "Complete Collection of Mao Dun Literature Prize Winning Works" edited and published this time has undergone textual collation for all works. Some multi-volume works that won awards in part have been included in their entirety this time. The novel centers on the urban construction of a major northern city, portraying the ecology and mentality of people from the mayor to street women, reflecting the complex aspects of current urban reforms. Mayor Gao Boyan has recently been facing both official and personal misfortunes. His unmarried daughter Gao Jie has had an abortion and is lying at home. His wife Shen Ping suspects that her secretary Zhang Yimin is responsible, while her daughter claims she did it willingly with someone else. Mayor Yan Honghuan is young and talented, determined to improve transportation and rebuild streets to address residents' housing difficulties. However, the Premier summoned the mayor to report on work without notifying the Party Secretary, leaving the latter feeling a strange sense of loss. The Chen Baozhu family on Pudian Street also faces numerous hardships. His father was originally a tricycle driver, and after his mother left him, she adopted Baozhu. During the Cultural Revolution, his father became the deputy commander of the Red Guards and was later suppressed for multiple crimes. Baozhu was sentenced to two years for participating in a mob fight and his mother, in anger and frustration, became paralyzed on one side. The kind neighbor Yang Grandmother and her son Yang Jianhua from the municipal engineering team inspired Baozhu to regain the courage to start over. Baozhu excels in his work at the engineering team and uses his mother's savings as a bonus for the workers. However, his past involvement in a case of stealing 50 yuan from a melon distribution scheme resurfaces, forcing him to face consequences. His heart remains with the construction site, and everyone hopes he will reform well and perform better after his release. Yang Jianhua and his mother lead a hard life but maintain self-respect and independence. Yang Grandmother married Gao Boyan at the age of 15 and even captured an enemy machine gun during the Liberation War. After Gao Boyan moved to the city, he married the young and beautiful nurse Shen Ping. Yang Jianhua has never met his father and worked in the Inner Mongolia production and construction team during the Cultural Revolution, marrying the educated youth Liu Ruofei and having a child. Later, when policies were implemented, Liu returned to the city to a wealthy family, and their marriage dissolved. Yang Jianhua performs excellently at the engineering team and receives recognition from the mayor, but the Party Secretary Gao Boyan, easily deceived by slander, sends an investigation team to review the matter, causing dissatisfaction among the workers. Liu Ruofei's brother Liu Ruochen, also affected by his capitalist family background, only became an engineer at a research institute after the reform and opening-up and later served as the vice mayor. He married Xu Li's daughter, Xu Li, but the two had an unhappy marriage. Originally, Xu Li had loved Mayor Yan Honghuan, but her father opposed it, and Xu Li could not break away from her feelings for Yan. As the chief engineer of the municipal engineering bureau, she devoted herself entirely to bridge design. Suddenly, she was diagnosed with cancer but still designed dozens of plans for the Fenghuang Bridge overpass. However, they were not adopted. Later, she designed the best plan for the Guangming overpass despite her illness and eventually reconciled with Liu Ruochen.