Magic City.
Eros Garden.
This was where the Hu Shang Writers Association was located.
The editorial offices of several magazines, including "Harvest," Sprout Magazine, and Hu Shang Literature, were all based here.
On the second floor of Sprout Magazine, competition submissions were piled up like mountains.
The room had long since run out of space, and even the balcony outside was crammed full.
There were actually only sixty thousand-plus contestants this year, yet the number of submissions had reached over four hundred thousand. That worked out to an average of seven entries per person.
Chen Guiliang had submitted only four pieces, which was already very conservative.
With over four hundred thousand preliminary-round submissions, reviewing had become physical labor. Naturally, the famous writers could not be burdened with it.
The first step was a rough screening.
It was carried out by ordinary editors, who selected roughly ten thousand submissions of acceptable quality.
The second step was detailed review.
It was carried out by chief editors, deputy chief editors, senior editors, as well as second-rate writers and literary critics living in Magic City. From those ten thousand submissions, they selected four hundred contestants—Group A plus Group B—to enter the semifinals.
Famous writers on the level of Yu Hua and Su Tong would not participate in the review process at this stage. They would only appear once the semifinals began.
Whenever something involved profit, someone was bound to come slice up the cake.
The New Concept Writing Competition was no exception.
For example, certain well-known high schools, especially those in Magic City, could recommend students to enter the competition.
Of course, they still had to keep up appearances.
The usual process went like this: a top-tier Chinese Language and Literature teacher would "polish" a student's work, then recommend it in the school's name. Just like that, a premium preliminary-round entry was born—one that would absolutely pass the rough screening and stood an excellent chance of reaching the semifinals.
Once they made the semifinals, they were guaranteed at least a finalist award. With some luck, they might even win second or third prize.
It could not add points to the College Entrance Exam, nor could it secure admission to a prestigious university. But with an award on their record, they could use it to work other angles.
So who knew how many of those four hundred semifinal spots belonged to contestants recommended by elite schools?
At this moment, the preliminary-round review had already ended.
The rejected submissions were bundled in stacks of one hundred, labeled with stickers reading "One Hundred Entries from Such-and-Such Group," then tossed bundle after bundle onto the editorial office balcony.
They certainly could not just sell them as scrap paper. They would need at least half a year to deal with them.
Zhao Yan and Hu Weishi were repeatedly reading through the accepted entries.
First, they had to select twenty or thirty pieces for next year's "Selected Award-Winning Essays from the New Concept Competition." Second, they had to pick out a few promising contestants and list them as key promotional and development targets for Sprout Magazine.
"Li Haiyang's essay is good. His writing is very seasoned," Zhao Yan said.
Zhao Yan was the chief editor's biological son, a senior editor and reporter at Sprout Magazine, and a future famous suspense novelist. At present, he still frequented Long Kong and had published an online novel through it.
He could be considered an ancient Online Literature god.
"I called Li Haiyang yesterday," Hu Weishi said. "He said he's working on a novel. He's already finished the beginning, and it's called 'The Youth Zha Biliang Injury Incident.' But his senior year is demanding, so he plans to continue after the College Entrance Exam."
After reading several dozen more essays, Zhao Yan sighed. "Although submissions have exploded this year, the quality has continued to decline. Most of the pieces are all cut from the same cloth. There's simply nothing compelling about them."
"They're too utilitarian," Hu Weishi commented. "They're all New Concept formula essays. They've already strayed from the original purpose of holding this competition."
The central idea of the New Concept Writing Competition was "new," yet the submissions received in recent years had been unbelievably "old."
Count them up, and there were mainly just two writing styles.
One imitated Han Han's fake world-weariness. In reality, it was just showing off obscure references and trying to be clever. They quoted rare books or famous sayings, wrote childish words that pretended to be profound, and made supposedly biting satirical comments about social issues.
The other imitated Guo Xiaosi's melancholy, forcing themselves to mourn in order to write new verses.
There were pitifully few submissions that broke free of those two styles, and even fewer that managed to do so well.
When the editors reviewed hundreds of thousands of submissions, it was no different from panning for gold in a pile of shit!
Whenever they came across something fresh, they had to read it over and over to cleanse their eyes. Trash manuscripts, meanwhile, took only seconds to finish; one extra glance was exhausting.
"Take a look at Chen Guiliang's submissions," Hu Weishi said, tossing over a stack of manuscripts. "Four pieces. One is parallel prose in four-and-six-character lines, one is a science fiction story, one is a rural essay, and one is a reading journal. All of them passed the rough screening. Very impressive."
"People still write parallel prose these days?" Zhao Yan said with a smile.
"I even suspect he hired someone to ghostwrite for him, or copied it from somewhere," Hu Weishi added. "He's Guo Xiaosi's schoolmate."
Hearing that he was Guo Xiaosi's schoolmate, Zhao Yan could not help frowning.
Chen Guiliang's four pieces had been clipped together by the review team.
When Zhao Yan read "A Proclamation Against America's Invasion of Iraq," he immediately laughed. "This really doesn't read like something a high school student would write. It was definitely polished by a Chinese Language and Literature teacher. Those teachers are counting on their students to win awards and become famous."
Two years ago, the perfect-score College Entrance Exam essay "Death of Red Hare" had also been written in classical Chinese, and its author had even been exceptionally admitted to Nanjing Normal University.
But that had merely been vernacular classical Chinese.
Chen Guiliang's piece, however, was parallel prose in four-and-six-character lines!
Of course, it was impossible to judge which was more difficult.
After all, "Death of Red Hare" had been written during the College Entrance Exam, with extremely limited writing time, and ordinary people did not have the nerve to attempt it.
Below Chen Guiliang's essay was Hu Weishi's comment: "It is exceedingly rare for a high school student to possess such a foundation in classical Chinese. 'One hundred thousand living souls become new ghosts; a millennium of civilization falls into nine abysses.' This line lays bare the cruelty of war and reveals the anti-war core of the piece."
After finishing the first piece, Zhao Yan read the second and immediately brightened. "It's actually cyberpunk!"
"Isn't it science fiction?" Hu Weishi asked. "What's cyberpunk?"
"Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre," Zhao Yan said. "The Matrix is cyberpunk."
"Are memory deletion, customization, replacement, and sale common in cyberpunk novels?" Hu Weishi asked.
Zhao Yan shook his head. "Doesn't seem to be. It's a shame this is only a short story. It would be great if he could expand it into a novel."
He promptly wrote his comment: "Its imagination is strange and fantastical, and it makes one's hair stand on end. Though only a five-thousand-word short story, it sketches a vivid, distorted Future World."
He then read the remaining two pieces and wrote comments for both.
Over the past two or three years, fewer and fewer essays had been worthy of comments.
Even among the pieces selected for "Selected Award-Winning Essays from the New Concept Writing Competition," more than one-third received no reviewer comments.
Their quality was merely so-so. Writing comments for them would be a waste of ink.
"Knock, knock, knock."
An editor knocked on the still-open office door. "Editor Hu, the chief editor wants to see you."
"I'm coming."
Holding several manuscripts, Hu Weishi headed straight for the chief editor's office.
"Knock, knock, knock!"
"Come in."
Two people sat inside the chief editor's office.
One was Zhao Changtian, chief editor of Sprout Magazine.
The other was Li Qigang, general secretary of the New Concept Competition.
Hu Weishi waved away the smoke in the air as she entered, teasing, "Are you two worshipping the gods in here? How many cigarettes have you smoked?"
"No more smoking. We should respect our female comrade," Zhao Changtian said, getting up to open the window wider.
"What problem have you run into?" Hu Weishi asked.
Li Qigang's expression was grave. "The major universities have further lowered their standards for cooperation. Only two are still willing to offer admission without examination, and both are arts schools. Starting next year, they'll cancel it completely!"
"It's that serious?" Hu Weishi froze.
Chief Editor Zhao Changtian nodded. "They're further standardizing independent admissions, and all the universities must implement the policy. This competition has already begun, so those universities find it inconvenient to change their tune at the last minute. They understand our difficulties too. Therefore, each school will still send representatives, but it will only be going through the motions."
"What's Qingbei's stance?" Li Qigang asked.
"They may lower the admission threshold by ten to thirty points, but they still need to discuss the exact reduction," Zhao Changtian said. "Actually, how many points they lower it by isn't the key. The key is whether they give us any slots. Even if they agree to lower it by two hundred points, so what? They can give us zero slots, or add interviews and weed them out that way."
The actual situation was even more complicated.
For example, Guo Xiaosi had received Xia Da's agreement for exceptional admission, provided he passed the First-tier University Line. Guo Xiaosi exceeded that line by a full fifty-four points, yet because he scored only thirty points on his essay, Xia Da went back on its word and refused to admit him.
Those were all excuses. The truth was very simple: the university had changed its mind at the last minute due to public opinion and policy pressure.
"What about the other key universities?" Hu Weishi asked.
"Some require students to pass the key university line, some only require them to pass the undergraduate line, and some require them to exceed the key university line by a certain number of points," Zhao Changtian said. "Next year's New Concept Writing Competition is finished. Without guaranteed admission to prestigious universities as a selling point, fewer and fewer students will enter, and the media won't give it much attention either."
This had happened because the public controversy was too great, and because the competition itself had become increasingly lackluster.
It was also because the country was further standardizing the College Entrance Exam, guaranteed admissions, and independent admissions.
The triggering event was this year's leak of the College Entrance Exam mathematics paper, which brought about a series of examination and admissions reforms.
Because of the College Entrance Exam reforms and investigations into all sorts of irregularities, a whole batch of ugly scandals would be exposed next summer.
For example, teachers at a certain school proactively contacted candidates. As long as their College Entrance Exam scores were not too far short, they could be admitted by paying ten thousand yuan for every missing point.
Or a top arts academy was conclusively exposed for favoritism and fraud in its arts examinations, and it had been so brazen that it could not even be bothered to hide it.
Another university even appeared on Focus Interview, forcing candidates to pay one hundred thousand yuan before admitting them. The final investigation found that seven national-defense targeted students had been extorted by the school's teachers for a total of five hundred and fifty thousand yuan.
Those were only some of the cases, and they involved prestigious universities!
The major universities lowering their cooperation standards and abandoning guaranteed admission for New Concept Competition contestants was purely collateral damage from the College Entrance Exam reforms.
"We have to think of something," Li Qigang sighed.
"Standardizing admissions is the general trend. We can't try to stop a chariot with our arms," Zhao Changtian said.
Li Qigang thought for a while. "Then we'll organize our own event and bring in the media to hype it up."
"What do you have in mind?" Zhao Changtian asked.
Li Qigang explained, "Invite back all the previous first-prize winners, especially famous figures like Han Han, Guo Xiaosi, and Zhang Yueran. Have them talk with famous writers like Yu Hua and Su Tong about the development trends of contemporary Chinese literature."
"That works." Zhao Changtian nodded.
Li Qigang added, "We can also select a few promising winners from this year to attend."
"You want to create a new Han Han or Guo Xiaosi?" Zhao Changtian asked.
"Han Han has gone off to race cars, Guo Xiaosi is busy running a magazine, and Zhang Yueran can't carry enough buzz," Li Qigang said. "Besides, Guo Xiaosi is caught up in a plagiarism scandal. We have to promote another newcomer to maintain attention on Sprout Magazine and New Concept."
Zhao Changtian said to Hu Weishi, "The task of finding promising talent goes to Little Hu."
Hu Weishi took out Chen Guiliang's four essays. "As it happens, there's a contestant who seems quite good. He's also Guo Xiaosi's schoolmate."
"That's a good gimmick," Li Qigang praised. "We can have the senior and junior schoolmates chat in front of the media."
After reading all four pieces, Zhao Changtian said worriedly, "These essays were probably coached by a teacher."
He stopped just short of calling them ghostwritten.
"So we still need to see how he performs in the finals," Hu Weishi said.
"Pay close attention to this one in the finals... What's his name?" Li Qigang said.
"Chen Guiliang," Hu Weishi said.
"Right. Pay close attention to Chen Guiliang," Li Qigang said. "As long as he has genuine ability and writes well in the finals, we can promote him heavily."
Before you continue