Book Awards laud quality of literature
Winners show increasing attention for Chinese civilization’s evolution
This year’s Wenjin Book Award winners were part of a growing trend of original high-quality domestic books, according to judges for the annual nationallevel award organized by the National Library of China since 2004.
The 20 award-winning and 49 recommended books were announced at the Summer Palace in Beijing on April 23, which coincided with World Book and Copyright Day that falls on that date every year.
Awards were presented to 20 books, including eight from the category of social sciences, six in popular sciences and six children’s books.
Five were translated from foreign authors, including Chinese Painting and Its Audiences by renowned British art historian Craig Clunas.
The list of winners showed increasing attention has been paid to the evolution of Chinese civilization and related archaeological discoveries, especially focusing on prehistoric times to the Song Dynasty (960-1279). People’s knowledge about these times has been greatly enhanced by some major archaeological digs in recent years.
Chen Shengqian, an archaeology professor at Renmin University of China, said during the award ceremony that China has been transforming from a traditional agricultural civilization to a modern industrial and commercial society for decades. Chen said that he has been honored to live through this major turning point in humanity’s journey, and it is also meaningful to look back to the last such major turning point, which happened more than 10,000 years ago.
His award-winning book Prehistoric Modernization: From HuntingGathering to the Origin of Agriculture looks into the dawn of ancient China’s farming society.
A number of the other books receiving
awards touched upon current events as the world is still fighting the COVID-19 pandemic and more and more public health issues have been brought to the table.
As the Communist Party of China celebrates its 100th anniversary this year, Kindling: The Search for China’s Road to Rejuvenation by Party and military historian Liu Tong features the germination and infancy of the Party from 1900 to 1929.
“It uses detailed historical materials and a large number of facts to clarify the uniqueness and inevitability of the Party, which led the Chinese people to independence, self-improvement and rejuvenation,” said Wang Hairu, one of the judges.
Wang Yusheng, former director of China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing and one of the judges, spoke highly of the translators’ contribution to popular science translations
as this work is extremely precise and requires a very high degree of accuracy.
According to a report issued on April 23, Chinese adults read on average 4.7 physical books last year, slightly higher than 4.65 in 2019. The survey, conducted by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, showed that 11.6 percent of Chinese adults read 10 or more physical books last year.