The results of the 20th Wu Fu Kang Literature Awards were announced on May 7. Yang Ying-jing, a fourth year graduate student of the Institute of Chinese Studies has won both the top awards in both fiction and the short story categories. She was very thrilled by the news even though winning has not been a new experience to her. She won the category of ‘creative poetry’ on a previous occasion. This year the same category goes to Chou Wei-hong, a sophomore at the Chinese Department. Gao Pei-hwa, a junior at the night school of the Chinese Department won the ‘prose’ category.
The jurors on this year’s panel agreed that it was a tough call for selecting the best in the ‘fiction’ category. All the works were of a high standard so it was difficult for the panel to choose one that outshone the rest. One of the jurors, Yang Chang-nian from the Taiwan Normal University suggested that it would be even more exciting if this event were to be held with that of his university. On the other hand, the quality of the works in the ‘short story’ category was not satisfactory at all. Too many of them resembled ‘prose’ rather than a ‘short story’, the jurors commented—a result that could have arisen out of the misunderstanding of the term ‘short story’.
Yang Ying-jing’s fiction entitled ‘Status’ is a successfully ‘story from a psychological Perspective’ with a unique subject matter, and a tight plot certainly deserves the first prize. The second prize goes to actually three works: “No time for that”, “Toilet” and “Mirror”, so there are no third prize. Both “The day the County Mayor came” and “A woman’s marriage” won the ‘good work’ prize.
In the short story category, Yang’s work ‘Watch’ won the top prize. Its detached way of observing and analyzing issues of life and death makes it a work of depth among all the competing works. She explains the meaning of watches in her work, which should symbolize time as our life. It is a metaphor of life’s beginning and ending. The second prize goes to “McDonald’s Doll” which uses satire to describe the phoney facade of our society. It lost to the first prize by one point to the “Watch” due to a weaker story structure.
The quality of the creative poetry was regarded highly as well. The top prize, “Glass, me”, by Chou Wei-hong, for example, cleverly starts with the process of making glass dolls into the issue of ‘split’ personality and then ends with the concept of reincarnation. One of the jurors, Chang Jian from the Chinese Department of Chinese Culture University praises this work for its clear subject, creativity and structure. Chou thanks his teacher from the Creative Poetry class who inspired him greatly. The second prize, ‘Early rising cat, my sorrow’ is also unusual in its way of ‘humanizing’ a stomach ulcer.
As for the ‘prose’ category, it was even more difficult to decide as each juror had his/her favorite. Finally, after an agonizing process, the prize falls on Gao Pei-hwa.
