Lecturers and students at Suzhou University in east China's Jiangsu Province, as well as literature fans from outside the campus attended a forum wherein Chinese literary writers Mo Yan and Li Rui addressed the audience as guest speakers.

At the forum, Mo Yan, whose novel entitled Red Sorghum was adapted into a film with the same title that later won the Gold Bear Prize at the 38th International Film Festival in West Berlin in 1988, went into great detail about literary writing and resources from folklore; while Li Rui, whose representative works include the novel Houtu (Fertile Land), elaborated on the relationship between the Chinese people and their native land.

The forum is part of a new one-year program launched Wednesday by Suzhou University in cooperation with the Contemporary Writers Review Journal, published in Shenyang, capital of northeast China' s Liaoning Province, to promote Chinese writers, their literary works and increase communication between writers, critics and readers.

In a special interview with Xinhua, Lin Jianfa, chief editor of the Contemporary Writers Review Journal, said his magazine would also open a column featuring discussions at the forum, with literary critics Wang Yao and Luan Meijian, both professors with Suzhou University, as the hosts.

Along with China's reform and open-up drive in the late 1970s, a great number of Chinese writers have emerged, producing a large number of literary works that depict historical changes in every aspect of life, some of which are very good in terms of soul searching, said Lin, who believes that the forum will help enrich the diversity of college education.

According to Lin, in the future, other outstanding Chinese writers including Wang Meng, Zhang Chengzhi, Han Shaogong, Jia Pingwa and Wang Anyi will also be invited to be guest speakers at the forum on a irregular basis.

(Xinhua News Agency October 26, 2001)