Zhongshan

[Zhong Mountain]

Literary periodical

Zhongshan is one of the so-called ‘four most famous magazines’ in the literary field. It began publication as a quarterly in January 1979 in Nanjing, and changed to a bimonthly in January 1982. It has a format of 16 mo and a capacity of 200 pages per issue.

In the beginning, Zhongshan was sponsored by the Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, but in 1982 the Jiangsu Writers’ Association, a department of the provincial government, become the new sponsor. Today, however, the magazine receives strong financial support from a local cigarette factory because the government subsidy has been continuously reduced since the early 1990s.

Since the early 1980s, almost every writer of note, especially authors of fiction and prose, has published his or her work in Zhongshan, including Gao Xiaosheng, Lu Wenfu, Su Tong, Ye Zhaoyan and Zhu Sujin. The editors have paid great attention to so-called avant-garde/experimental literature (xianfeng wenxue), especially in the mid 1980s. A special one-year column called ‘Great Show of New Realistic Fiction’ (Xin xieshi xiaoshuo de lianzhan, 1989–90) was both a timely response to, and influence on, the literary changes of the day.

WANG XIAOMING