A Writer Born in the 1990s Just Won a Literary Prize. The Ordinary People in Her Stories May Look Familiar

Very down-to-earth — and here, "down-to-earth" is not an insult.

On the afternoon of September 19, the first Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize announced its winner in Beijing: Wang Zhanhei, a writer born in the 1990s, won for her short story collection 《空响炮》 (Blank Shots), and with it a prize of 300,000 yuan (RMB).

The result surprised most people. Next to the other writers on the shortlist — A Yi (《早上九点叫醒我》, Wake Me Up at Nine), Shuang Xuetao (《飞行家》, The Aeronaut), Zhang Yueran (《我循着火光而来》, I Came Following the Fire) — Wang Zhanhei was little known, and very young. When she entered, she had published exactly one book, Blank Shots. Her second, 《街道江湖》 (Street Jianghu), does not come out until this October.

The judging panel for the first Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize was made up of the writer Yan Lianke; the writer and executive editor-in-chief of Shanghai Literature, Jin Yucheng; the literary critic and writer Tang Nuo; the scholar and cultural critic Xu Zidong; and the musician Gao Xiaosong.

By their own account, they argued from start to finish. On the first-round conference call, Xu Zidong said, they "almost got into a fight." At the final judging meeting on the morning of the 19th, Gao Xiaosong told the room that the judges had "no consensus whatsoever" and were "pulling in opposite directions" — "for the same piece of work, one person gives it a 9 and another gives it a 1." It took three rounds of voting to reach a result.

The judges' citation for Blank Shots read: "This young writer, born in the 1990s, works to extend and carry forward the realist tradition running from Chekhov to Shen Congwen — plain, natural, weaving dialect into her prose, advancing her stories through detail. She writes about the present condition of ordinary city people, but without lamenting their misfortune or raging at their lack of resolve."

At the ceremony, the five judges gave some of their reasoning. Jin Yucheng said Wang Zhanhei writes about suffering and lived experience differently from the previous generation of writers: not with the usual heavy load and heavy face, and not with what only looks like cold observation. She is restrained, but her stance is also teasing and wry. Yan Lianke said the maturity of her fiction went beyond anything he had imagined, and that her writing moved him completely.

Xu Zidong said: "Wang Zhanhei writes about the Shanghai people I know from everyday life. In real life I find these people quite unbearable — playing cards in the street with their shirts off, swearing, 'ce na, ce na' (a Shanghainese curse). And the square-dancing crowd, whom I usually can't stand at all. Now they even want to dance their way to Paris and Sweden — what a joke! I think these people are really awful. But when I read her stories, I find them rather endearing. It's rare, these last few years, for me to read a story that makes my nose sting."

He also had complaints. "I have my objections to her fiction too. Wang Zhanhei occasionally lets herself run out into the story. Does that do the story any good? I honestly don't understand it. And reading her, I worry: can she keep writing about these people forever? What else is there left for her to write?" he said.

Wang Zhanhei herself thinks winning was fairly accidental, though it may also be a way of encouraging young people. "Too many writers never get discovered. Even once they're published, not many people read them. If this can encourage young people like me, that's a good thing," she said.

The prize, run jointly by the publishing house Imaginist and the Swiss watch brand Blancpain, has one distinguishing rule: entrants must be under 45 (going by the author's age when the work was published). That gives younger writers more of a chance.

Wang Zhanhei was born in 1991 in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, studied Chinese at Fudan University, and now teaches high school Chinese in Shanghai. Blank Shots and Street Jianghu both belong to a series of stories she has written about old neighborhoods in the cities of the Jiangnan region, which grew out of a writing project she calls "Street Heroes." Her main characters are the retired workers, laid-off workers and migrant laborers who live in the housing compounds and workers' new villages built in the 1980s and 1990s.

"I had the idea for this project back in high school. At the time I thought a lot of the uncles and aunties in my compound were impressive — I mean in the way they handled people, handled daily life, in their bearing. I wrote the first piece then, about the compound's gatekeeper, and then I went to college and it stalled. I didn't pick it up again until graduate school, and I rewrote that first piece. I realized I shouldn't be prettifying them, turning them into legends or heroes. They had grown old, and most of their lives hadn't gone the way they wanted. So I wanted to write them more truthfully and in more detail, while keeping the word 'hero,' because I think that word can belong to ordinary people, even to anti-heroes. Before I knew it I had written about a lot of people, but the whole time I was trying to avoid repeating myself, hoping to get to 'every kind of person there is,'" she said in an interview with the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize committee.

She is not the least bit fixated on writing, either. "I've been writing my street material all along. But if one day I don't want to write it anymore, or I can't write it anymore, I absolutely won't force myself. I can go find something else, something new, to do," Wang Zhanhei said at the event.

To give you a fuller picture of this young writer, we've put the event's Q&A below.

Q = Liang Wendao and the assembled press

Wang = Wang Zhanhei

Q: What do you think is the most important quality that won you the prize?

Wang: My guess is that being picked in the end was largely chance, since it came down to a vote. It may also be about encouraging young people, because so many writers never get discovered. Even once they're published, not many people read them. If this can encourage young people like me, that's a good thing.

Q: What about the work itself?

Wang: If it's a matter of comparison, there are several of the other books I haven't read, so it's hard for me to say where exactly I stand out. Going by what ordinary readers say, it's probably as Xu Zidong put it: the ordinary people you see every day — you wouldn't expect them to turn up in a novel, and if they did, you wouldn't expect them to be the main character. In most films and TV dramas, people like that are extras. But in my fiction, maybe, you can see that they are taken seriously.

Q: What do you make of the judges' comments on your work?

Wang: I remember two of them said I should think about writing something else, and not keep rolling around in the same space forever. I will think about it. But for now I want to finish what I've already set out to write. Then I'll think about whether I can write something else — or whether I want to.

Q: How far do you want to take it?

Wang: Right now, for "Street Heroes," I want to do a third installment, and I also want to write a novel. But it's better to actually do these things before talking about them, so I'll stop there.

Q: Did you feel from a very young age that you had to write?

Wang: When I was very young — (a two-second pause) — all I knew was playing. It was probably in high school, when there was some spare time beyond classes and homework, that I started using it to write things. But that was a completely unselfconscious period. Later, in college, I barely wrote anything for four years, because the more I learned the more I felt how ignorant I was. So for a stretch I especially didn't want to write. Even when I wanted to, I pushed the urge down, afraid of writing out of pure ignorance. Then in graduate school I suddenly felt that if I only kept taking things in, I'd want to throw up. Shouldn't I be putting something out? At that point I became very conscious that I needed to put something out, and I started producing a lot, and kept it up for the next three years. You could say my graduate studies were a total failure — I did almost no research, I just kept writing, as if I owed a debt from before and was doing everything I could to pay it off.

Q: How do you think about the identity of "writer"?

Wang: I've thought about this. I find the sense of identity very strange. Over the past few years, while I was writing these stories, I was an author, but nobody thought of me as a writer — nobody even read me. When I finished something, I'd force it on the friends around me. Later I posted the stories online, some were published in magazines, and now they've come out as books. And now people say Wang Zhanhei's identity is "writer." But now, I'm not a writer, I'm a teacher. Sometimes when people talk about the writer, I think: the one who was writing is my past self. If you're asking about one particular story, the person who wrote it a few years ago is the writer, not the person sitting here talking away. I have no right to represent the person who wrote that work. So identifying with the role of "writer" seems paradoxical to me, because there's a time lag in it.

Q: In an earlier interview you said writing isn't something you feel you absolutely have to keep doing. Can you say more about what that state is like?

Wang: Over the past four or five years, when I badly wanted to write, it was of course the most important thing. Take my street material — I've been writing it all along. But if one day I don't want to write it anymore, or I can't write it anymore, I absolutely won't force myself. I can go find something else, something new. I just follow my own instincts. When you want to write, you'll put up with any amount of hardship. When you don't, the best conditions in the world won't help.

Q: Where does the street material stand now?

Wang: I'm still inside that tunnel, and I'm enjoying the walk. I'll keep writing further in, and the more I write the more interesting I find it.

Q: After writing so much on the same material, do you ever feel emptied out?

Wang: I don't think material is something you pick up and use on the spot. What we call experience comes out of your whole life over the past 20-odd years, memory and experience combined with your own identity and stance. It isn't a warehouse where you take in stock today and sell out tomorrow, take in more the day after and sell out the day after that. It doesn't run like an assembly line. So this experience is drawn more or less at random, unconsciously, out of a very large space. You don't really run out of experience the way you're describing. But I have thought about it: if I started doubting myself, if I felt the various people I write are all more or less the same, repetitive, that I'd used up every kind of person — then I probably would need to stop, or turn in another direction.

Q: What are your plans after winning the prize?

Wang: Before taking these two days off, I also took half of Monday off, because I went to Hangzhou over the weekend to give a talk for Yixi. I was the last speaker, so I couldn't get back to Shanghai that night and had to take another half day. I felt very guilty about it. Then, in the behind-the-scenes footage of the Yixi interview, they picked out something I'd said offhand: "Once I'm done with Yixi and the Beijing event, I have to get back to work, or my boss will yell at me." That's something I should actually follow through on. At the very least I need to concentrate and see my graduating class through to the end.

As for writing — the time lag I mentioned earlier comes from the fact that both of my story collections were essentially finished before June 2017. I got my master's in June 2017. In the year and more since I started working, I've written only three stories. I can feel myself improving, but the pace really is slow, and it takes an enormous amount out of me. I work during the day and write at night or on weekends, which leaves no time for anything else. I can't keep that up long-term. So what I've settled on is writing during the winter and summer breaks. Beyond that, I can't say.

Q: I wanted to ask what it feels like being a high school Chinese teacher. How do you teach your classes? Is there anything distinctive about it?

Wang: That's hard to say, since I only have a year of work experience. And I'm "working without a license" — I'm really not joking. But basically, I teach according to my own ideas.

Q: Can you be more specific?

Wang: Some classes don't follow the textbook at all — one class might read four novels in a semester. Some skip literature entirely and do something closer to cultural studies, with investigations and discussions of society and culture. And in some classes, where the level is more basic, we just work through the canonical texts step by step.

Appendix: Shortlist and Longlist for the First Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize (ordered by the stroke count of the first character of each author's name)

Shortlist:

Shuang Xuetao, The Aeronaut (《飞行家》)

Wang Zhanhei, Blank Shots (《空响炮》)

A Yi, Wake Me Up at Nine (《早上九点叫醒我》)

Zhang Yueran, I Came Following the Fire (《我循着火光而来》)

Shen Dacheng, The Person I Keep Remembering (《屡次想起的人》)

Longlist:

Datou Ma, A Guide to Writing Non-Bestselling Novels (《不畅销小说写作指南》)

Shuang Xuetao, The Aeronaut (《飞行家》)

Shuangchimu, The Rooster Prince (《公鸡王子》)

Wang Zhanhei, Blank Shots (《空响炮》)

Wen Zhen, Seven (《柒》)

Ren Xiaowen, The Good Person Song Meiyong (《好人宋没用》)

Li Jingrui, Northern Avenue (《北方大道》)

A Yi, Wake Me Up at Nine (《早上九点叫醒我》)

Zhang Yueran, I Came Following the Fire (《我循着火光而来》)

Shen Dacheng, The Person I Keep Remembering (《屡次想起的人》)

Zheng Zhi, Swallowed Raw (《生吞》)

Zhou Jianing, Basic Beauty (《基本美》)

Zhao Song, Building Blocks (《积木书》)

Cover image: Wang Zhanhei. Image: Imaginist