The Hong Kong Young Writers Awards have sparked the imagination of the city’s young wordsmiths for the past eight years. And, maintaining that high level of interest and enthusiasm, this year’s contest attracted a record 990 entries across the various age groups in categories for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, digital storytelling and cover art.
The writers and artists were set the theme of “New Tales of Old Shanghai”. Surrounded by a defensive wall, the Old City continued to be the seat of Chinese authority even after foreign powers took control of parts of Shanghai in the 19th century.
The subject inspired everything from epic tales to sharply focused pieces packed with descriptive detail. From a shortlist of 112 young authors, the panel of judges led by Nury Vittachi, one of Hong Kong’s leading literary figures, had the difficult task of choosing the 19 winners announced at a ceremony held in March at Cyberport.
Repeating her success in 2016, this year’s overall winner was Gabrielle Tse Mei-ying. The 17-year-old student at Carmel Pak U Secondary School wrote Siege, a romantic tale of nameless young lovers caught at a crossroads in history.
“It is set in the final years of the golden age of Shanghai, right before the Sino-Japanese War,” Tse says. “I wanted my lovers to resemble the background characters in an oil painting - you want to guess what their story might be.”
She was inspired by Taiwanese author Pai Hsien Yung’s descriptions of old Shanghai.
“Another inspiration was the poetry of Yu Kuang Chung. I chose an excerpt from his poem The Double Bed as the epigraph of my story. The title Siege comes from that as well.”
Tse plans, one day, to write a full-length novel. “That’s always been my dream,” she says.
Arista Lai, a 15-year-old student at the German Swiss International School, the joint overall winner for 2017, has already started on a fulllength work.
Her entry, Reimagining History, which won the Fiction - Group 4 award, centres on a venerable pagoda about to be swept aside for property development.
In her story, an artist is commissioned by a historian to visit the pagoda, delve into the different rooms and, thereby, explore the different eras of Shanghai’s history, she explains.
Given her own love of history, Lai wanted her story to show how important it is to remember where we come from. “As a Chinese person, I’ve always loved traditions and the pagoda is a fundamental facet of Chinese culture,” she says.
Other writers examined real-life events, places or characters in their submissions.
Building a Metropolis by 16-year-old Elin Chan Yi-lin, a student at Sha Tin College, took the prize in the Non-Fiction - Group 5 section. She chose to write about a broad spectrum of events affecting Shanghai.
“There’s more to the city than just finance,” Chan says. “It is filled with history and very colourful. There’s the art, the nightlife, so many things that make Shanghai.”
She made reference to past events, going back to when the city was first subject to western influences, to show how Shanghai became the place it is today.
“I started to get very interested in writing when I was in Year 6,” Chan says. “I’ve now started to look deeper into my thoughts and emotional experiences and am writing about that.”
Clara Bunting, a nine-year-old student at Kau Yan School, took first prize in the Non-Fiction - Group 1 category, with her piece entitled, “An Old Shanghai that is fading away…”.
She describes how, along with its old buildings, other signs of Shanghai are gradually disappearing.
“The people who used to live in the buildings have been forced to move away and are losing their friendships,” she says, noting that their experience resembles that of her own family.
“My mother used to live in Beijing and saw lots of buildings being knocked down. We live in an old building in Sai Ying Pun and, when I walk to school, I see many old shops - one has a cat in it that is very cute.”
The Poetry - Group 1 award went to Cheryl Trinity Lai, a seven-year-old student at St Paul’s Co-educational College Primary School, for her poem Wishing Tree in Old Shanghai.
“It’s about a plane tree seed being brought to Shanghai a century ago,” Lai says. “The seed was planted in a garden and slowly grew bigger and stronger, as did Shanghai.”
Despite surviving a civil war and a world war, the tree is now threatened with the axe.
“I wanted to tell everyone that, when we are expanding our economy, we are also destroying our environment and nature,” Lai says.
She cites The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein as a source of inspiration.
The poem New Tales of Old Shanghai won eight-year-old Lily Mei Peckham first place in the Poetry - Group 2 category.
“My poem is about Shanghai, and how the city has changed,” says the Kennedy School student. “It is about youth and age. In the poem, a young girl’s grandmother remembers what Shanghai used to be like.”
Obviously serious about her work, Peckham tries to write in her diary every day and plans to make a book of her poems.
All those who made the shortlist for their writing or artwork had the thrill of seeing their work published in an anthology titled New Tales Of Old Shanghai.
One of five finalists in the Fiction - Group 1 category was Cyrus Chu, an eight-year-old student at Sha Tin Junior School. In The Battle of Shanghai, he tells the story behind the construction of the Old City’s huge defensive wall.
A fan of martial arts stories, Chu recalls how proud his mother was on receiving the email to say he had been shortlisted.