About Meiwen

Meiwen

Meiwen (“Beautiful Prose”, also translated “Beautiful Essay”) is a prose magazine published in Xi'an, Shaanxi, founded in September 1992 and edited by the Shaanxi novelist Jia Pingwa. It is the flagship journal of the “big prose” (da sanwen) concept that Jia championed, favouring plain, free, realistic and emotionally truthful essays over flowery, formulaic writing. Published as a semi-monthly with separate upper- and lower-half-month editions, its upper edition addresses adult readers, while a youth edition aimed at middle-school students was launched in October 2000. It is one of China's best-known journals devoted exclusively to the essay and prose writing, and it is distinct from the Tianjin-based Sanwen (Prose).

Founding in September 1992

Meiwen was founded in September 1992 in Xi'an. The founding was an act of literary polemic as much as of publishing. By the early 1990s, in the account given by scholars of Jia Pingwa's prose theory, Chinese prose writing had fallen into decline: an older manner of hoarse, object-chanting prose had been spurned, but in its place had appeared sweet, greasy and vain work — small feelings, trivial things, flowers and plants. Jia Pingwa, already one of China's leading prose writers, stood up as what one study calls a prose revolutionary, calling for “true feelings” and “great prose”. To reverse the decline, Jia and his colleagues actively applied for a periodical issue number for a prose journal, and in September 1992 Meiwen — Beautiful Essay — was published. In his “Introduction to Beautiful Essay” that year, Jia stated the purpose plainly: to advocate the restoration of the true feelings of prose, to call for a big atmosphere, to make prose vivid, and to make a real effort to prosper China's prose creation.

Jia Pingwa, founder-editor

The journal's editor is the Shaanxi novelist Jia Pingwa, one of the most prominent Chinese writers of his generation, whose fiction about Shangzhou, the Qinling Mountains and the city of Xi'an — including the controversial 1993 novel Ruined City (Feidu), set in Xi'an and winner of France's Prix Femina étranger in 1997 — made him a central figure in contemporary Chinese literature. Prose was never a sideline for him: his prose creation exceeds two million words, is influenced by Wei-Jin dynasty culture, and has been called the highest achievement of China's prose creation in the new period. It was on that authority that he theorised as well as practised the form: he put forward the concept of “great prose” in 1992, formed his own prose ideological system, and founded Meiwen in the same year as the concept's institutional embodiment. A national prose journal edited from Xi'an by a writer of Jia's standing is a rarity in a publishing system usually centred on Beijing, and it is the foundation of the magazine's identity.

The “big prose” idea

Meiwen is the flagship journal of da sanwen, “big prose” or “great prose”, the concept Jia Pingwa championed from 1992. As his prose view is summarised in scholarship, Jia holds that prose is, in a sense, all articles — the form is not a narrow lyrical enclosure but the free space of writing itself — and that its governing values are true feelings, freedom and an epic breadth. Against prose that was flowery, formulaic and confined to small feelings and decorative subjects, big prose demands plainness, freedom, realism and emotional truth, and a scale of attention that can take in history, society and ordinary life whole. The magazine operationalises the theory: by existing solely for prose, selecting for truth of feeling over ornament, and presenting the essay as a major rather than a minor form, Meiwen turned a critical slogan of 1992 into a durable publishing institution, and the concept and the journal have been discussed together in Chinese prose studies ever since.

A journal devoted exclusively to prose

Most Chinese literary journals mix fiction, poetry, prose and criticism. Meiwen's distinction is its exclusivity: it is one of China's best-known journals devoted entirely to the essay and prose writing. That single-genre focus, sustained since 1992, gives it a defined place in the journal system. Writers of prose in China have many general literary journals open to them, but a national magazine whose whole contents are prose — edited by the form's leading theorist-practitioner — functions as the form's home address, the place where the state of Chinese prose can be read issue by issue. The magazine is distinct from the Tianjin-based Sanwen (Prose), the other well-known Chinese title devoted to the form, and the two should not be confused: Meiwen is the Xi'an journal, founded in 1992 under Jia Pingwa.

Editions: upper, lower and youth

The magazine is published as a semi-monthly with separate upper-half-month and lower-half-month editions, a structure that lets one title serve more than one readership. Its upper edition addresses adult readers, carrying prose for the general literary audience. In October 2000 a youth edition aimed at middle-school students was launched, extending the magazine's franchise from adult literary prose to the school-age readers for whom the essay is also a curricular form in China, where prose writing is central to language education and examinations. The two-tier structure — an adult semi-monthly and a youth edition under the same Meiwen name — made the title one of the most widely encountered prose brands in China, present both in the literary world Jia Pingwa addressed in 1992 and in classrooms his founding manifesto never mentioned.

Xi'an and Shaanxi setting

The magazine is published in Xi'an, Shaanxi, the ancient capital where Jia Pingwa has lived for decades and about which he has written some of his best-known prose, including his celebrated essay on the city of Xi'an itself, with its thirteen dynasties of history, its old streets and lanes, and its Qin opera sounding under the moss-covered roots of the modern city. A journal of prose edited from Xi'an by Shaanxi's most famous living writer carries that sense of place in its identity even when its contributors are national: it represents the strong tradition of Shaanxi writing within contemporary Chinese literature, and it demonstrates that a genre-defining national journal can be run from a provincial capital when the editor's authority is national. The magazine's Shaanxi base and its editor's Shangluo and Xi'an roots are part of what readers understand the Meiwen name to mean.

Standing in Chinese prose publishing

More than three decades after its founding, Meiwen holds a standing no other Chinese prose journal quite shares: it is at once a commercial magazine structure with adult and youth editions, a scholarly reference point — Jia Pingwa's prose view and the 1992 founding are standard material in academic studies of contemporary Chinese prose — and a living monument to a literary argument. The argument was that Chinese prose in 1992 had become small, sweet and false, and that it could be made big, plain and true again. Whether or not every reader accepts the manifesto, the magazine built to prove it has outlasted most of the journals of its generation, still appearing semi-monthly from Xi'an under the name Jia Pingwa gave it: Meiwen, Beautiful Prose.

Scholarly attention to the founding

The founding of Meiwen is documented in the scholarly literature on Jia Pingwa's prose theory, and that documentation shows how deliberately the magazine was conceived. Academic study of Jia's prose view records the sequence precisely: prose creation in China had declined into sweetness and triviality; Jia formed his own prose ideological system around true feelings and freedom; he put forward the concept of great prose in 1992; and, to reverse the decline in practice, he and his colleagues took an active part in applying for an issue number for a prose journal, with Beautiful Essay published in September 1992 as the result. The same scholarship notes that Jia's own prose career gave the venture its authority — his “First Record of Shangzhou”, published in the journal Zhong Shan in 1983, had aroused widespread concern in the literary world a decade earlier, and his prose output would grow beyond two million words. Meiwen is thus unusually well evidenced as a theory made into a magazine: the manifesto, the licence application, the first issue and the editor's own body of prose can all be dated and quoted, which is why studies of contemporary Chinese prose treat the journal's founding as an event in literary history rather than a routine launch.