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Chapter 58 0057 [The New Concept Writing Competition Finals Begin]

The semi-finals will be held at Shanghai Medical University, which is right next to the hotel.

The school is on holiday, and the campus is quieter than usual, but you can still see some college students occasionally.

Both groups of contestants were high school students. They were very curious when they entered university, looking around like tourists.

Chen Guiliang quickly found the corresponding examination room and desk according to his competition number.

The invigilators, like the registration staff yesterday, were also past winners of the New Concept Writing Competition.

They either live in Shanghai or work and study there, and they came purely voluntarily to help out and get acquainted with the writers.

Deceiving someone for sex is an extremely rare occurrence.

Chen Guiliang didn't recognize either of the two proctors in this examination room.

The test papers were handed out quickly.

Choose one of the two questions to write an essay.

Question 1: The world I cannot reach.

"Question 2: There is a very small bird that can fly tens of thousands of miles and cross the Pacific Ocean. All it needs is a small twig. It holds the twig in its beak, and when it gets tired, it throws the twig onto the water and rests on it for a while."

Chen Guiliang instinctively wanted to choose the first question.

It's so easy to write.

The world we long to reach but cannot reach can be an "ideal land" or a "paradise on earth".

The beautiful world of our imagination is something we can only long for but never reach, something we desperately seek but cannot obtain.

But Chen Guiliang stopped himself from writing.

This is a trap!
I'm afraid that 90% of the contestants this year will choose the first question and then write something that is all the same.

But how should I answer the second question?

On the draft paper, Chen Guiliang wrote down keywords such as "persistence", "perseverance" and "self-improvement".

Then he wrote about "wisdom" and "making good use of resources".

Write "The Foolish Old Man Who Moved Mountains" and "Don Quixote" again.

After thinking for several minutes, Chen Guiliang found it difficult to put pen to paper.

Writing this well is much harder than the first question. You can easily fall into clichés or produce empty and superficial content.

It is not easy to write.

After thinking for a full twenty minutes, Chen Guiliang finally started writing, expanding the fable into a myth.

The little bird was a black bird from Kunlun Mountain, but the Kunlun Immortal Palace was in ruins, and the Queen Mother of the West was nowhere to be found. It heard that in Yingzhou, thousands of miles away across the ocean, one could learn the art of becoming an immortal, so it flew across the land and the sea.

The snow of Kunlun froze on its feathers, and fierce winds tore its wings apart. It grabbed a withered branch and threw it into the vast river, trying to find rest but nearly drowning in the Weak Water.

Legend has it that fairies bestowed their blessings upon it, and the black bird struggled to flap its wings and fly to the sea. Even the Kunpeng (a mythical bird) was stranded there, and the dragon wailed in anguish at the bottom of the sea. Hundreds of feet high black waves crashed down, the mermaids wept blood, and the mirage was shattered by the giant waves.

As he was writing, Chen Guiliang stopped.

He felt the emotional impact wasn't strong enough; words couldn't adequately describe that fantastical world.

Moreover, the implied meaning is not profound.

Is it just about seeking immortality?
The Black Bird can represent "me," the pursuit of immortality can represent "the pursuit of knowledge to serve the country," and the dilapidated Kunlun Immortal Palace represents "the Chinese nation that is waiting to be revitalized."

However, if written in a normal style, it can easily become empty slogans, sounding pretentious and awkward.

Should we use classical Chinese?
Alternatively, one could write a long poem in classical Chinese style.

Classical Chinese poetry is free in its rules and does not strictly require tonal patterns, parallelism, and rhyme, making it very suitable for writing when there are no reference books available.

Chen Guiliang immediately summarized the main points of the previous draft and rewrote it into a long poem in classical style.

I spent over an hour deleting and revising.

After reading it several times, Chen Guiliang felt very satisfied, but he was also afraid that the judges would not understand it.

It's really possible that you won't understand it!
Some writers who became famous in the 80s were very good at writing in vernacular Chinese, but their classical Chinese proficiency was probably not much better than that of a high school student.

They are not even as good as today's high school students.

To put it simply, even the "Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng" had errors in its annotations in Chinese textbooks at that time, and these were very serious common-sense errors, resulting in the entire sentence being translated incorrectly.

The textbook cites reference books, but those reference books are all wrong...

After much thought, I realized that the classical-style poem couldn't be changed, so I decided to write another preface to help the judges understand it.

In the winter of the year Guiwei, I went to Shanghai and came across a fable, which I then wrote down to explain its meaning.

It is said that in ancient times, Jingwei carried tiny twigs to fill the ocean, and Yu Gong moved towering mountains by knocking on rocks and soil. Observing the universe, the smallest things can accomplish the greatest deeds, and the simplest things often contain the most complex principles.

Now there is a black bird, weak and frail, which flutters its wings in vain to cross the vast ocean, carrying a withered branch in hopes of ferrying it across the boundless waves. Its will grows ever stronger, and its actions ever more courageous…

Two proctors were pacing back and forth.

When they see an interesting article, they will stop and stand aside to appreciate it carefully.

This made many of the contestants very nervous!

Pan Yihan is a winner of the fourth competition. She lives in Shanghai and has not yet graduated from university.

She volunteered to help proctor the exam, hoping to get to know some well-known writers and become more familiar with the editors at Mengya.

At this moment, Pan Yihan stood next to Chen Guiliang, staring at the revised essay that was being copied, speechless with astonishment.

Noticing that she hadn't moved for a while, another proctor, Gan Shijia, also came over—Hmm, the guest screenwriter for "iPartment 3".

As if Chen Guiliang's essay had a freezing spell, Gan Shijia also suddenly stood there motionless.

A man and a woman, the two proctors, stood beside Chen Guiliang like his bodyguards. Since essays couldn't be copied, they didn't need to keep an eye on the other contestants; they weren't exactly neglecting their duties.

In this exam room, someone has already finished writing.

Some people even put down their pens and racked their brains for ideas.

Anyone not writing anything quickly noticed the two proctors' unusual behavior.

They probably guessed that this year's New Concept Writing Competition would likely produce another blockbuster article.

……

At this very moment, the judges were also busy.

They are reading the best preliminary essays, and their main task is to provide comments, which will be printed in the "Selected Winning Essays of the New Concept Writing Competition".

A book needs a famous author's review to become a selling point.

This lousy book has a print run of several million copies, more than the combined first-year sales of "Triple Gate" and "Ice Fantasy"!

Yu Hua read through more than ten preliminary submissions without writing a single comment, and then casually handed them to Tie Yi next to him.

Tie Yi also had a stack of manuscripts in her hand. She gave them to Yu Hua in exchange, saying with a smile, "You should at least write a few words."

Yu Hua said, "I'll write about anything that's interesting."

Those who are truly frowning are the university professors, many of whom are heads of Chinese literature departments. If they encounter a promising student, they might offer one or two spots for admission through the independent enrollment program with lower admission scores.

But after reviewing it for a while, the overall quality was terrible.

It gets worse every year.

Through alternating readings and repeated reviews, most of the renowned authors barely put pen to paper.

They simply couldn't bring themselves to do it!

Only writer Ma Yuan was kind enough to comment on seven or eight essays in one go.

Yu Hua exchanged three batches of manuscripts and read Chen Guiliang's "A Proclamation Against American Aggression." He wanted to write a comment, but he held back.

The article is very good.

But it's really good; it doesn't seem like something a high school student would write. It's very likely that it was ghostwritten by a teacher.

You can easily tell the difference between articles written by high school students and those written by adults!
Their ideologies are different.

To put it simply, Group C, which is usually overlooked by the media, produced articles of far higher overall quality than Groups A and B.

Groups A and B consist of high school students, while Group C consists of non-high school students under the age of 30 (including university students and young adults). They are only a few years apart in age, but the things they write are vastly different.

Oh well, let's just consider it completing a task.

With strong skepticism, Yu Hua wrote comments on Chen Guiliang's preliminary essay.

The preliminary essays from the 200 finalists were quickly reviewed by professors and writers, but the final exam was still a long way off.

Due to public pressure, the competition process has become more formalized, and no one dares to casually take out essays from the examination room to look at them anymore.

A separate retake is even worse!

Now all the papers are collected and delivered together.

The professors and writers started chatting, gossiping about gossip and current affairs, and some even made plans to go out for drinks sometime.

"Old Liu, Tsinghua University doesn't have a single opening this year?"

Cao Wenxuan, a professor in the Chinese Department of Peking University, asked Ge Fei, the deputy director of the Chinese Department of Tsinghua University, when he had nothing better to do.

Gefei is a pen name; his real surname is Liu.

"There really aren't any spots available. We've discussed this in meetings many times." Ge Fei shook his head.

Cao Wenxuan sighed, "The enrollment reform is tough on everyone."

Peking University had 150 places for independent enrollment last year, but in response to the call for reform, it voluntarily reduced the number to 50.

These 50 places will be allocated preferentially to key high schools in all provinces across the country!

Cao Wenxuan talked himself hoarse, but all he managed was to secure a spot in the New Concept Writing Competition.

And what about Tsinghua University?

They simply didn't give the New Concept Writing Competition any face and didn't give them a single spot.

The independent admissions process at various universities is gradually returning to normal this year. However, those who were already uncooperative last year are unlikely to show any favors this year.

However, some polite words still had to be said. The head of the Chinese Department at Tsinghua University stated: "Our independent admissions this year are more biased towards STEM fields. I will report Peking University's successful experience to our Tsinghua administration. We will strive to combine the New Concept Writing Competition with Tsinghua's humanities winter camp, and use the winners of the New Concept Competition as our reserve talent pool for humanities!"

Saying it means not saying it.

Fudan University provided the strongest support, allocating five slots to the New Concept Writing Competition last year!
I don't know how much I'll have to give this year.

All of the above are admissions with reduced score requirements, not direct admission without examination.

University professors walked around, probing each other, all wanting to know what was going on with each other.

The male writers left in twos and threes to go outside and smoke together under the trees.

Yu Hua was squatting down, smoking and bragging, when Hu Weishi arrived in a hurry, carrying his essay answer sheet and accompanied by several invigilators.

"Are you done with the exams?" the writers asked.

Hu Weishi beamed, his joy tinged with excitement: "After waiting for several years, this year I've finally published a masterpiece!"

Upon hearing this, everyone quickly gathered around.

(End of this chapter)