It is a common consensus among Chinese writers that the Mao Dun Literary Award is the prize of prizes for a novelist, the yardstick by which to measure the achievements of contemporary Chinese writers.

Four novels, "Decision (Jue-ze)," "Song of Everlasting Sorrow (Changhen Ge)," "When Dust Sets Down (Chen'ai Luoding)" and "Trilogy of A Tea Family (Chayuan Sanbuqu)" were announced winners of the Fifth Mao Dun Literary Award last month.

The ceremony to present the prizes, awarded every five years, was held earlier this month in Tongxiang of Zhejiang Province, hometown of the late novelist Shen Yanbing (1896-1981), after whose pen name the award is named.

"Decision" was written by Zhang Ping from North China's Shanxi Province, "Changhen Ge" by Wang Anyi from Shanghai, "When Dust Sets Down" by A Lai from Southwest China's Sichuan Province and "Trilogy of A Tea Garden Family" by Wang Xufeng from Zhejiang Province.

The literary award was founded in 1981, right after Shen's death, with a donation from what he had saved from sales of his novels for future Chinese writers.

It might be because Shen tended to be concerned with contemporary reality in his writings that realism has become an important criterion for panel members who nominate literary works for the award.

Of the 18 novels that have won previous Mao Dun Awards, most were selected because they reflected, in one way or another, the real and complicated struggles that ordinary people are forced to endure in the modern age.

For example, "Hibiscus Town" by Gu Hua, a previous winner of the award, is about the miserable experience of a female beancurd maker in a small town named Hibiscus.

The major characters portrayed epitomize four different types of people during the "cultural revolution (1966-76)."

The woman was a diligent villager, who made and sold beancurd to make a modest living, but who was labeled a "bad element" and persecuted during the "cultural revolution" simply because her business was considered a capitalist practice.

One of the protagonists who suffered along with the beancurd maker was a teacher. An intellectual, he fell victim to the movement because he had been educated in Old China and, because of this, did not share the same perspective as the Red Guards.

A woman cadre, a leader who came to the town to guide the movement there, was also persecuted but finally managed to redeem herself and rose very high in the social echelon.

Finally, there was the good-for-nothing who stood at the front of the movement, who pointed fingers and persecuted the so called "demons and snakes" (labels given to intellectuals or to those whose family members had been capitalists or landlords).

To a large extent, it is quite common for novels within the genre of Chinese realism to create particular characters that epitomize a certain kind of person or reflect a certain social phenomenon.

Another well-known novel, "Xu Mao and His Daughters," was also one of the winners of the First Mao Dun Literary Award. In this novel, Zhou Keqin (1936-90), a farmer-writer, tells about what a great impact the "cultural revolution" had on the lives of Chinese farmers by depicting the life of a rural family.
In one way or another, the novels that captured the previous Mao Dun Literary Awards were the Chinese realist genre, but the Fifth Mao Dun Award marks somewhat of a departure.

Of the four winners just announced, only "Decision" follows the tradition of the previous award winners. Zhang Ping's novel centers around the recently launched anti-corruption campaign. After being published, it attracted the attention of the Central Committee of the Communist Party when it was adapted and made into a film.

It is placed at the top of the award list because its theme has drawn attention from both ordinary readers and authorities, an article in China Youth Daily commented.

"Two of the other novels, 'Song of Everlasting Sorrows' by Wang Anyi and "When Dust Sets Down" by A Lai, are what gives this year's Mao Dun Award its distinction," a literary critic, who declined to be identified, said.

These two novels both choose to ignore political and social problems and instead to probe into the lives of characters and their personal relationships.
Wang Anyi's "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" tells about the tragic experience of a woman who comes third in a beauty contest.

The woman later becomes the mistress of a senior Kuomintang official who dies in an air crash just before Shanghai is liberated by the People's Liberation Army.

She works as a nurse to make a living after 1949 and she has numerous lovers. During this time she gets no offers for marriage and has no desire to seek them out, although she does have a child.

Finally, she is killed by a friend of her daughter's who wants to steal the gold she had hidden for herself for many years.

Although steeped in history, the novel concentrates less on context and more on the tragedy of the individual life it portrays. The writer describes the heroine's feelings about and attitude towards love, friendship and what happens around her.

"When Dust Sets Down," told through the eyes of a hereditary tribal headman's son, depicts the life of a tribe of the Tibetan ethnic group. With poetic force, 40-year-old A Lai unlocks the complicated, contradictory relationships that exist within the headman's family, between the headman and the people under his rule, and between the headman and the Kuomintang warlords.

Among the writers interviewed by Beijing Evening News reporter Xie Xizhang, many described these two works as representative of the highest level of contemporary Chinese writing.

Tremendous commercial success, combined with the fact that these two novels were among the top 10 novels in the 1990s selected by 100 literary critics across the country, seems to confirm this sentiment.

(China Daily 11/21/2000)