The Prix Goncourt is awarded through votes from the Goncourt Academy, with works going through both a shortlist and a final selection. The finals take place at the Drouant restaurant on Rue Gaillon in Paris's 2nd arrondissement, where ten judges cast votes across fourteen rounds.
For the record, the Academy isn't some school with professors and classrooms. It's more like a judging committee. The English word "Academy" also carries the meaning of a scholarly society. Think about the Oscars, which are officially called the Academy Awards of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Same idea.
Even though the prize money is a measly ten euros, the Goncourt Prize is still a global tier-one literary award. Just look at its very first panel of judges, which included Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, and Alphonse Daudet.
"Don't come near me!" Chu Zhi also saw the news of his win spreading online and couldn't stop himself from yelling.
The Emperor Beast had been expecting to win something, sure, but not like this. The problem was he'd recently found out that the Goncourt Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature basically stood in opposition. If you won the first, you could kiss the second goodbye. That was true on Earth, and it was true in this parallel world too.
Never mind whether the issue was about literary style or political leanings.
"So should I just rip off this mask myself now?" Chu Zhi muttered.
A tier-one literary award in the world. Just pulling off his mask at this point would look badass enough.
But it still didn't pack the same punch as the Nobel. And now that the chance looked slim, if he never managed to win another heavyweight prize, it'd all feel incomplete. His thoughts got interrupted by a ding from his alt email account, a notification sound. Only Ronin Publishing knew about that address.
Sure enough, an email had come from Ono Akio: [Congratulations, Mr. Huainan, on winning France's highest honor, the Prix Goncourt for Poetry. Please come to Strasbourg on September 11 to receive the award. Will Mr. Huainan be appearing in person this time?]
Chu Zhi didn't reply right away. Instead, he decided to leave it up to Dice Girl. Odds, he'd go. Evens, he'd stay. He rolled the die…
Keeping dice at home wasn't unusual. The die spun across the table and stopped on a six.
"Looks like Heaven's telling me not to go," Chu Zhi said as he replied to Ono Akio, asking him to pick up the award on his behalf again.
[Host, all six sides of your die are six.] The system was pointing out there'd never been any point in rolling.
"See, that's what you don't get," Chu Zhi answered. "Life needs ritual."
He turned to the newcomer at home. "Right, little fatty?"
He was talking to his new orange kitten. After redeeming the rare item Paradise Bird, he'd gotten an extra pet, which the Emperor Beast named Little Fatty.
No need to go over the Paradise Bird's abilities again. Readers with sharp memories would remember them.
Chu Zhi poured out two bowls of cat food. Little Fatty wagged its tail and trotted over to chow down. He watched for a while, feeling like orange cats had no idea how much they should eat. No matter when or where, if food was served, they'd dig in.
The Emperor Beast headed for the vocal practice room, but don't be surprised at how he got there. In his new den, all the doors were hidden. The kitchen looked like it had a built-in double-door fridge, but opening it actually led into the practice room. The real fridge was tucked neatly in the corner.
For the record, his discharge from Huashan Hospital had been fully legal and approved by doctors. He didn't sneak out.
The Nobel could wait. What mattered now was the eighth-anniversary concert. The team had spent months preparing, and Little Fruits were all eagerly waiting. The Emperor Beast didn't want to let them down.
"How could I give up a chance to cash in at a concert? No way!" Chu Zhi said as he started vocal warmups.
Go without practice for a month or two, and even with cheats, singing and dancing still got rusty.
His songs didn't just bloom outside the walls, they sent fragrance drifting back inside. The sales and awards of Mr. Cogito across Europe and America drew waves of onlookers back home.
#Huainan#
#Asia's First Poet#
Once again, he was at the center of online attention.
About a year or two ago, thanks to a major blogger called "Relentlessly Ruining People's Days," his identity had gone viral once before. Sales of several of his poetry collections in Chinese had crossed half a million, and the frenzy of guessing Huainan's identity had peaked.
But hype always fades, and now the topic was back again. People knew Huainan was popular overseas, but not this popular. Getting nominated for the Femina Prize and winning the Goncourt Prize back-to-back?
"He's the first Asian poet to win the Goncourt, right? Gotta buy a copy of his book just to pay my respects."
"Reporting from France. I can say with certainty that the two most famous poets here are Hanshan from ancient times and Huainan in modern times."
"Reporting from America. Agree with the guy above. Over here it's also Hanshan and Huainan. Webster's Dictionary even added a new word [hashunan], combining Hanshan and Huainan. It means 'outstanding Chinese poets.'"
"In Japan it's a bit different. The two most famous Chinese poets here are Bai Juyi and Huainan."
"In South Korea it's Huainan and Yun Dongju. Though to be honest, most Korean scholars already claim Yun as their own. At least they haven't tried to Koreanize Huainan yet."
"In England, Du Fu is still a bit more famous than Huainan, mainly because the BBC made a documentary about him. Movies spread faster than books."
…
Plenty of netizens compared reputations across regions, giving everyone a crash course.
Take the Tang-dynasty monk Hanshan. In China, where poets are countless, he's barely known. The only thing people might recall is that old quote: [In the past Hanshan asked Shide, "People in the world slander me, mock me, insult me, laugh at me, despise me…"] That exchange might ring a bell, but no one remembers his verses. Yet in America during the 40s and 50s, the hippie crowd adored Hanshan's poems. Even Jack Kerouac, the face of the Beat Generation, dedicated his book The Dharma Bums to Hanshan.
As for Yun Dongju, he was a patriotic poet of China's Korean ethnic minority…
Of course, where there's praise, there's hate. Among the applause, detractors showed up too.
Take Qian Wangyan, dubbed a modern male-god poet. Obviously a pen name. Nobody cared about his real name anyway. He lived off his looks, scribbled shallow verses, and sold books for cash.
Qian Wangyan posted: [#Asia's First Poet#? Ever heard of modesty? His collections The Tour and I'm a Willful Child were decent, but this new one Mr. Cogito is utter nonsense. Total garbage. Makes no sense. Pure hype!]
Why was he so bold? Because Huainan himself had never once appeared in public. No book signings, no meet-and-greets. His readers couldn't possibly fight harder than Qian's rabid fanbase.
And he was partly right. Once he spoke, fans swarmed in to back him up. He dropped a couple selfies, rode Huainan's name for clout, and grew his followers. His scheme seemed flawless.
But Heaven has its way of punishing scumbags. Experts suddenly stepped in.
Real experts.
Professor Dai, Dean of the College of Western Languages at SISU, who barely updated his Weibo once every couple years, posted:
"In the new poetry collection Mr. Cogito, countless elements of European classical culture are woven throughout, playing crucial roles of contrast, metaphor, irony, and satire. Without a deep grounding in European history, it's understandable that some might not get it. Take the lines: [At dawn they were taken / To the courtyard of rocks / Standing in a row beneath the wall…]. The poet never spells it out, yet the entire piece breathes the atmosphere of small European nations during World War II. Tie that back to war, and you'll see five people about to be executed. Then look at the ending, where their final thoughts are [about a brothel encounter / about car parts / about sea voyages / about holding a spade in hand]. Every thought is mundane. This stark contrast between ordinary life and the brutality of war immediately raises the anti-war sentiment.
Huainan is a poet who knows his own country's history and Europe's as well. That's why he can translate his own work into French and English. From a macro perspective, he speaks to the cruelty of war.
Poets fall into two categories. Some write from personal experience, filled with emotion and the mark of their era. Others reflect on history and human culture itself. Huainan belongs to the latter, and he's an exceptional one.
Readers aren't obligated to study background before opening a poetry collection, so calling it 'hard to understand' or 'too high-brow' is fair. But for a fellow poet to dismiss it, that's just narrow-minded ignorance."
The expert smacked the internet poet down in public, and the onlookers loved it.
Chu Zhi's alt identity was once again trending, but while his main account stayed quiet, the entertainment industry spun into chaos.
With no news about the Emperor Beast for a whole quarter, up-and-coming stars like Zhou Yiyu were clawing for the spotlight. In fact, without him, the hot searches were full of battles for top billing, center positions, and resources. Fan wars raged like wildfire, with people writing essays, exposing fake fans, and staging betrayals. It was brutal.
Of course, the industry had always fought. Stars lived closest to the vanity fair. But there'd always been an unspoken rule: "If Emperor Chu doesn't fall, all you rebels are just usurpers." So the fights had never gone too far.
Now? Zhou Yiyu, once only daring to stir things up behind the scenes through his manager, was straight-up throwing shade in interviews.
The drama started when Zhou Yiyu and Sun Shi joined iQIYI's anniversary stage in September. The promo posters didn't rotate, and Sun Shi was always the center. Zhou got pissed.
Sun Shi wasn't happy either. Why should a guy whose singing couldn't be fixed even with autotune get the closing slot? At least with him, post-production could always clean things up.
Fans went to war. Yumaos (Zhou Yiyu's fans) and Persimmons (Sun Shi's fans) mass-reported each other. It even escalated offline.
"Dumbass Sun Shi. Riding on a sugar mama's coattails, thinks he's hot shit now?" Zhou Yiyu sneered while glancing at online chatter between film shoots. He saw himself ranked just below Chu Zhi, believing "Heaven's number one, Earth's number two, Chu Zhi's number three, I'm number four."
"Teacher Zhou, we need to reshoot that last scene," the assistant director approached.
"Reshoot?" Zhou looked confused. "Wasn't it fine? Why reshoot?"
"Director Feng wasn't satisfied with your performance, so…" the assistant started, trailing off.
By "Director Feng," he meant Feng Yuemin, the drama's lead actress, one of the current top three actresses, known as a ratings guarantee.
But why should her dissatisfaction mean a reshoot? Zhou Yiyu's face darkened. "There can only be one captain on this ship. If the director asks, I'll reshoot no questions asked. But her? Who the hell is she to demand that?"
Honestly, the assistant didn't want a reshoot either. The scene had been fine. But he couldn't offend either side, so all he could do was smile and beg Zhou to go along.
The badminton boy flatly refused. For him, the issue wasn't about the quality of the scene. It was about hierarchy. Two tigers couldn't share one mountain. Even if one was male and the other female, there still had to be a clear lead. If he agreed to a reshoot, he'd be admitting Feng Yuemin had the upper hand. Impossible.