Story of Cat City

Author: Chen Cun, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-04-01
Features: The online original literature award held by the Rongshu Tree website has already entered its second year. Over the past year, there has been ongoing debate about what constitutes "online literature," but more and more attention has shifted to writing and reading works. In terms of quantity, just the Rongshu Tree website alone has accumulated over 100,000 poems, essays, and novels. In terms of quality, there are both widely popular works like The Journey of Monkey that are well-suited for online reading, as well as works like The Fragrance of Fireworks that stand up to close scrutiny. During the judging process, works such as the prose The Movie in the Evening and the poem North of North received much praise. Yu Hua repeatedly commended Changsheng Street, calling it a portrayal of China's small towns. Thousands of netizens voted enthusiastically for their favorite works. From the reading feedback, it is clear that more subjects have entered the scope of online writers, and their writing techniques have become richer. Longer works have gradually become more common, and the quality has improved significantly. Compared to the vast amount of non-original content online, online literature is the healthiest force in the Chinese internet world. The only puzzling aspect is that the creations of established writers have shown a decline. They certainly need time to calmly reflect and change their perspectives, but their passion for creation seems to have cooled too quickly. Without a doubt, the results of this award show that writers are learning and improving, and it also suggests that online literature has attracted more people to participate. Some authors from traditional media have refused to enter the competition. In my view, this refusal goes against the open and equal spirit of the internet. True online literature cannot be confined or become stagnant. More and more people are joining online writing, and this is a trend that no one can stop, which is extremely beneficial for the development of online literature itself. To allow more people to see the new developments in online literature and the beautiful works it produces, the Rongshu Tree website and Huacheng Publishing House have continued their collaboration to compile this series. We have included the winning works and some of the shortlisted entries. Due to space constraints, we had to list the longer works separately. This year, we were unable to include poetry, but we hope to do so in the next edition.