Creative writing project focuses on rural China's changes

Over 30 chief editors of literature publications and heads of publishing houses across China recently attended a signing ceremony.

The ceremony was about an expansion plan for the creative writing project about China's mountain villages to enter into a new era, looking for original full-length novels, which showcase the great changes of rural China and Chinese agriculture.

The Writers Publishing House is in charge of the first stage of the creative writing project, which will last five years, starting in 2022.

Since the project was launched on Aug 1, over 800 pieces of writing have been submitted, 30 of which were chosen by the committee and four already came off the press after revision.

Writer Yang Zhijun's novel Xueshan Dadi (Snow Mountains and the Earth), which was recently published thanks to the project, is about the great changes in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau over the past years, showcasing the Han and Tibetan people's lives and values via the story centering on a family over three generations.

These attended publications and publishing houses will cooperate with each other to organize meetings to revise drafts, publish new works of the project, hold promotion events and share their experience in regular conferences.

Wu Yiqin, vice-president of the China Writers Association, said that the project aims to cultivate young writers and literature workers from the grassroots and publish good-quality novels that have various themes such as the country's poverty alleviation and rural vitalization.