"How is this classical Chinese? Huh? How is this classical Chinese?" Qiu Wuji grabbed Chu Ge by the collar in indignant anguish. "This is obviously vernacular! I only used a little parallel prose for the scenery!"
Chu Ge had a bit of a headache too.
Calling it classical Chinese was definitely wrong. Her writing was actually in the old vernacular style, the same sort used in the Four Great Classical Novels. If you read Journey to the West, the sheer volume of poetry and verse in the first chapter alone could make your head spin, but most of the narration and dialogue was still quite colloquial. By modern standards, at most you could call it half-classical, half-vernacular. It was still some way from classical Chinese.
Chu Ge certainly hadn't expected a story in this style to perform well, but he'd never had any expectations for its performance in the first place, so he'd let her post it.
He just hadn't expected it to be rejected, unable to even make it into the catalog.
After all, he wasn't an editor or a member of the review team. Everyone had different standards for reviewing submissions.
"Ultimately, that opening passage of parallel prose describing the scenery went too far. You didn't need to show off quite so brutally. Just write 'towering green mountains' and be done with it. Instead, you've got 'a rhapsody devoted to this scene,' and things like 'the river stretches far; where are the fishers and woodcutters? Clouds and mist lie deep; a boy faintly appears, returning home.' You spent a full two or three hundred characters going on about this. There's no need. Really, no need..."
Qiu Wuji bit her lower lip, looking indignant and aggrieved. "I spent ages thinking that up! The scenery provides necessary atmosphere too. I've