Following Mo Yan's Nobel Prize , the usually silent Chinese literary circle got warmed up again. A Shanghai writer named Jin Yucheng surprised nearly everyone by making his novel full of Shanghai dialect.

Published in 2012, the 350,000-word Blossoms （Fan Hua） is a novel about the changes in Shanghai over 30 years, drawing clear images of the city through the stories of many common people. There is no main story like most novels, but every story in it could run independently. While putonghua is the standard choice for Chinese literature today, Jin's use of the Shanghai dialect appears both different and bold.

"I have seen too many novels that look similar to each other. Chinese literature is getting monotonous in both language and form. I want to be special with my own language, " Jin told the Global Times.

In the novel, Jin makes a breakthrough by mainly using dialogues to unfold various plots and represent typical characters on a daily basis. He also abandons the use of some punctuation like quotation marks （引号）, showing a return to the traditional Chinese huaben genre.

Since its publication, the book has been widely recommended on Sina Weibo with many netizens rating the novel high for its unique use of dialect and vivid description of life using plain speech.

Jin said that he got the idea of writing the novel while chatting in an online forum where people use the Shanghai dialect. The praise he received from the netizens encouraged him to continue writing the random stories.

"I'd like to see more writers to follow my lead. It will enrich our literature and make it diverse," he said.

Jane Austen ever popular

This summer, the UK will honor its favorite writer, Jane Austen (1775-1817), by making her face on the new £ 10 note. In the 200 years since her death, Austen’s fame has increased from the modest amount she enjoyed in her lifetime to the global fame she receives today.

And yet Austen’s work is so very English that it’s rather strange she should be so popular all over the world. Her novels are so of her time that it’s remarkable that she’s still appreciated in this very different age. Her most famous works — including Pride and Prejudice, the one for which she is most known — are set in the world of the English gentry (绅士阶层) in the 18th century.

Most of her fiction is about young women of that time. Women of the gentry could not work so their chances of happiness or even basic living depended upon finding a husband. This is a very serious subject, of course, but the joy of Austen’s stories is her ability to make wonderful, but also touching comedy out of something so serious.

Take Pride and Prejudice as an example. Elizabeth Bennet is one of five daughters in a countryside family that struggles because daughters can’t inherit (继承) the property. Her mother wants to marry off as many of them as possible. The pushy and annoying Mrs Bennet is one of the great comic characters in English literature.

The main plot of the novel is driven by the love-hate relationship between Elizabeth and Mr Darcy, a wealthy noble. At first, they don’t get on. Elizabeth finds Darcy too proud; she feels he thinks he is better than everyone else in the countryside. She thinks that he looks down upon her family in particular. Darcy, while admiring Elizabeth, believes that she has treated him unfairly. The pleasure of the novel is reading how these obstacles (阻碍) are overcome and how the comical and unexpected ending is achieved.

If we think about this story, it’s obvious why Jane Austen is still popular 200 years after her death, and why readers can still identify with (与……产生共鸣) characters from the long dead world of the 18th century English gentry. Although there have been many changes since that time, it’s still the greatest challenge in life for men and women to find the partner of their dreams.

   For about three years, I have been writing poetry. It was not until my junior year in high school that I developed an interest, love and skill in writing poetry.

Back in elementary school, I _____ to write stories. I would write stories on Post-it notes and anywhere I could. ____ , when I had to write a limerick (五行打油诗) for a _____ , I could not wrap my head around poetry. I had a very hard time figuring out how to _____ words and have the words make sense. ____, I tossed the paper with the _____ limerick into the trash. I did not try my _____ at poetry again until several years later.

In my freshman year of high school, my English teacher _____ a poetry project as a task. I still _____ my limerick task in elementary school and was ______ of doing the poetry project. For the project, we had to______ a poem and write a comment on it. I chose to ______ on Robert Frost’s poem Fire and Ice. I also wrote my own first poem. I became really ______ when writing the poem.

Two years later, I ______ writing poetry as a hobby and for fun. To ______ how good or bad my poems were, I handed them in to some magazines and ______ . I won second place in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s Sherry Pruitt Award Contest with a poem called The Ocean, and had my two poems ______ as high-merit poems. I have ______ to write poetry, and have even self-published three collections of poetry in both print and e-book formats (版式).

Now, I love writing poetry,______ I don’t hate writing short stories. I just find it more ______ and not my style of writing, though I still write short stories occasionally.