TKU Chinese PhD candidate Yu-lung Hou captured the Outstanding Special Award out of 35 student candidates at 2009 MOE Literary & Artistic Creation Contest, winning NT$50,000. His impressive winning work is a collection of poems in classical style, Poems of Wandering in Mountains.

To encourage students to create good literary and artistic works based on the recognition of Taiwan entity and the loving care for society, the MOE has offered the creation awards since 2001 to raise literary and artistic creation atmosphere and to promote cultural life accomplishment. Poems of Wandering in Mountains include 15 poems, expressing Hou’s daily life feelings and attitudes towards current events.

Yu-lung Hou once won the 1st prize for classic poetry in the 9th Nantou County Yushan Literary Contest, and now, again he won the MOE award for classic poetry. He smilingly said, “I really like reading classic poetry. If I come to a bottleneck in my own composition, I will calm down and seek for inspiration in reading.” He thanked Professor of Chinese, Kun-yang Yen for teaching in class, “While composing a poem, one should defer to the different literary style according to the characteristics of the subject.” He was especially grateful to his supervisor Professor of Chinese, Wen-hua Chen who emphasized specially on the transition of meaning and melodious rhythms in poetry composition.” The Chair of the Department of Chinese, Shung-in Chang also encouraged Yu-lung Hou, and said, “It was indeed not easy to capture the first prize among so many competitors. I hope he will continue to work on classical poetry and make great strides forward diligently!” ( ~Dean X. Wang )