Work on tangible culture wins Wenjin award

This year’s winners of the Wenjin Book Award, announced by the National Library of China on April 23, are from three main categories — children’s books, popular science and social science titles.

Ten books won the top honors that are named after Wenjinge, or the “chamber of literary tastes”, one of China’s most renowned imperial libraries.

The annual awards announced on World Book Day are meant to “establish a bridge between readers, writers and publishers to create a conducive atmosphere for reading books, and fulfill the duty of libraries to promote culture and educate the people”.

Initiated in 2004 and first celebrated in 2005, the award’s panel of judges is drawn from a pool of celebrated scholars and journalists.

Zhang He, a senior culture reporter from the People’s Daily, says the awards are considered the most honorable in China’s book world because it keeps a distance from marketing and media hype, or influence from writers and publishers, and fully focuses on the quality of the books.

Every year, the award selects 10 books from those published within the past 12 months, covering three areas: humanities and social sciences, popular science and children’s books. The judging panel also makes dozens of book recommendations for the public.

From 2005 to 2014, with a break in 2012, judging panels selected 99 books and recommended some 421 others from a pool of 6,000 titles.

This year, more than 1,400 titles were submitted to the panel, which was made of experts from 60 top libraries.

Critics praised the winning books, especially Zhongguo Gudai Wuzhi Wenhua, or Tangible Culture in Ancient China, published by the Zhonghua Book Company in July 2014.

The writer Sun Ji, 86, a retired scholar with the National Museum of China, is one of the most respected archaeologists and culture experts in China.

Based on a series of his lectures on Chinese culture, the book has 10 chapters that attempt to answer people’s questions about various aspects of ancient Chinese people’s lives. Some such questions were: When did Chinese men start to wear Western trousers? What were the differences between ancient Chinese carriages and those from the West? Did Chinese enjoy tea in ancient times?

Chen Li, a writer and one of the judges on this year’s panel, says that the book has the “newest, most comprehensive and systematic accounts” on tangible Chinese culture.