About Shiyue

Shiyue

Shiyue (the name means "October") is a Chinese literary magazine published in Beijing by Beijing Publishing House. Established in August 1978, it is considered the first literary magazine published in China after the Cultural Revolution, and its appearance marked the restart of serious literary publishing in the People's Republic. It appeared quarterly at first and has been published bimonthly since 1980. Founded by Wang Shimin, director of the Literature and Art Department of Beijing Publishing House, with a foreword to its first issue by the novelist Mao Dun, Shiyue made its name by concentrating on novellas — the medium-length fiction that came to define post-Mao literature — and later published Gao Xingjian's The Other Shore in 1986, fourteen years before Gao won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Conceived in October 1977

The idea for Shiyue arose in the autumn of 1977, a year after the Cultural Revolution ended and as China stood on the edge of reform. Wang Shimin, then director of the literary and art editorial office of Beijing Publishing House, gradually formed the idea of running a literary journal while attending a meeting in Jinan. His diary records the germ of the project: on 17 October 1977 he went to Jinan for the meeting, and on 24 October he set down his wish to name the new publication "October." The title he chose in that month — Shiyue — fixed the magazine's identity to the moment of its conception. Back in Beijing, Wang developed the plan in conversation with his colleague Zhang Shouren, and the publishing house drew the founding editorial team from its own literary and art editing room.

The Founding Editorial Team

The original editorial department of Shiyue was small and experienced. Its core members were Wang Shimin, Zhang Zhongye, Zhang Shouren and Xiao Desheng, several of whom had experience in the editorial department of People's Literature, the flagship literary magazine in Beijing — a direct line of editorial inheritance from the older journal to the new one. The preparatory work divided literature into four working groups: long novels, short stories, poetry and song art, and literary theory, with personnel drawn directly from the publishing house's literary and art editorial office. This structure, created inside a general publishing house rather than a writers' association, reflected Shiyue's origins: it was a publisher's magazine, planned by professional editors who had waited through the Cultural Revolution decade for the chance to publish serious literature again.

The First Issue, August 1978

The inaugural issue of Shiyue was officially released in August 1978. Mao Dun, the elder statesman of modern Chinese literature and the founding editor of People's Literature, wrote a foreword for the first issue, lending the new magazine his authority. The cover was distinctive: a light white background with spring flowers, and the two large characters of the title, "October," written in red by Li Huajin, an artist at the Central News Film Studio. The catalogue of the inaugural issue already contained names that would later shine in the literary world. When the first issue launched, it drew readers from all classes of society — a response remembered in the magazine's own history as evidence of the public's hunger for literature after ten years of drought. In 1978 Shiyue ran two issues, and the venture was expensive for its parent: the journal consumed a striking share, reported at ten percent, of the whole publishing house's resources that year, so the editorial department could only economise as it planned the magazine's future.

First Literary Magazine After the Cultural Revolution

Shiyue's historical claim is precise and widely repeated: it is considered the first literary magazine published in China after the Cultural Revolution. The year 1978 is generally taken as the starting point of contemporary Chinese literature: Deng Xiaoping secured leadership of the party and the country and introduced the policies of Reform and Opening Up, moving China away from the literature of the Maoist period. Shiyue's founding in August of that year placed it at the very head of the official literary revival — ahead, indeed, of the unofficial journals, such as the Beijing poets' Today, founded later in 1978 as the first nonofficial literary journal since 1949. Where Today was an unofficial venture, Shiyue was an official publishing house's deliberate act of reconstruction, proof that the institutions of Chinese literature themselves were returning to life.

A Magazine Built Around the Novella

Shiyue's most distinctive editorial decision was its concentration, in its early phase, on novellas — medium-length fiction. This set it apart from the literary periodicals readers had known in the past, which generally published short stories. The novella, typically between 20,000 and 80,000 Chinese characters, became the genre in vogue in post-Mao fiction, offering room for the psychological depth and social breadth that the short story could not easily hold and that the times demanded. Shiyue's early focus on the form helped establish it nationally. By the mid-1980s, international observers of the Chinese literary scene listed Shiyue — under its English name, October — among the famous "big four" thick, large-sized literary magazines enjoying nationwide circulation, alongside Contemporary, Harvest and Flower City, the journals through which the era's dominant longer fiction reached its readers.

Publication Pattern and Publisher

Shiyue was established in August 1978 as a quarterly periodical in Beijing. Since 1980 it has been published bimonthly, the pattern it retains. Its publisher is Beijing Publishing House, the municipal publishing house whose Literature and Art Department Wang Shimin directed, and the magazine is based in Beijing. The move from quarterly to bimonthly publication after only two years reflected the magazine's rapid establishment: what began as a cautious quarterly experiment by a publishing house testing whether literary journals could live again became, by 1980, a fixture of the national literary system appearing six times a year. Its name, its Beijing base, its publisher and its bimonthly rhythm have remained constant ever since, giving Shiyue one of the most stable publication profiles among China's large literary periodicals.

Shiyue and Gao Xingjian

The most internationally famous writer associated with Shiyue is Gao Xingjian, the playwright and novelist who in 2000 became the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gao, born in Ganzhou in 1940 and a graduate in French from Beijing Foreign Studies University, worked as a translator before becoming resident playwright at the Beijing People's Art Theatre, where his experimental play Absolute Signal was premiered in 1982 and his absurdist Bus Stop followed in 1983; Bus Stop was published by Shiyue and was then condemned during the campaign against spiritual pollution, in terms one senior party figure reportedly called the most pernicious piece of writing since the founding of the People's Republic. In 1986 Shiyue published Gao's experimental play The Other Shore (Bi'an). Its production was halted by the authorities, as Bus Stop's had been; Gao left China in 1987, and The Other Shore was the last of his major early plays to appear at home. That the journal of the Beijing publishing establishment carried both Bus Stop and The Other Shore shows the room for formal experiment that Shiyue, in its first decade, was willing to defend in print.

The Founding Editor and the Mao Dun Connection

Two elder figures framed Shiyue's birth. Its main founder, Wang Shimin, was director of the Literature and Art Department of Beijing Publishing House — not a writers' association official but a working publisher-editor, whose diary preserved the October 1977 moment when the magazine got its name. For the first issue he secured a foreword from Mao Dun, the novelist who had edited People's Literature at its founding in 1949 and remained the most authoritative literary editor in China. The connection was meaningful in both directions: Mao Dun's foreword certified that the new journal belonged to the legitimate line of Chinese literary publishing, and the founding team's own roots in People's Literature's editorial rooms carried the older magazine's working methods into the new era. Shiyue thus began with institutional memory as well as ambition — editors who knew how a great literary magazine had been run before 1966, rebuilding the form for the years after 1976.

Place in Post-Mao Literary History

Shiyue's standing rests on three verified pillars: its priority, as the first literary magazine published after the Cultural Revolution; its form, as the journal that concentrated on the novella when that form was remaking Chinese fiction; and its contents, which ranged from the first issue's foreword by Mao Dun to Gao Xingjian's Bus Stop and The Other Shore. In the standard periodisation of modern Chinese literature, the post-Mao era begins in the late 1970s with movements such as Scar Literature and the modernist experimentation that followed; Shiyue was present from the era's first season, publishing through all of it as one of the capital's large literary bimonthlies. To literary historians it functions as a founding document of the new period: the moment, in August 1978, when an official Chinese literary magazine existed again.

Shiyue Today

Shiyue continues to be published bimonthly in Beijing by Beijing Publishing House, more than four decades after its founding. It remains a general literary magazine in the tradition it established in 1978, publishing the longer forms of fiction with which its reputation was made. Its name still recalls the October of 1977 when Wang Shimin, at a meeting in Jinan, wrote down the title of the journal he intended to found; its continuous publication since August 1978 still makes it the senior survivor of the post-Cultural Revolution literary revival, a Beijing bimonthly whose first issue — spring flowers on a white cover, the title in red, and a foreword by Mao Dun — announced that Chinese literary magazines had returned.