On Monday, the results of the 6th Luxun Literary Prize was unveiled in Beijing. While most of the awards were handed out to those writers favored to win, the zero votes famous writer A Lai received in the literary reportage category came as a huge surprise.

The author was nominated for Zhandui - 200 Legendary Years in Kang-pa published early this year.

Although launched in 1986 by the China Writers Association, the 1st Luxun Literary Prize was not given until 1998.

From that point on the event has been held every three years, mainly focusing on outstanding works in seven different categories: short stories, novellas, literary reportage, poems, essays, literature criticism and foreign literature translation works.

This year, however, it was announced that the event will now be held once every four years.

In order to increase transparency, another major change made this year was that the results of the voting, including the names of the judges and who they voted for, were made public.

For example, 50-year-old author Ge Fei won an unanimous 10 votes for his work Invisible Clothes in the much coveted prize for best novella.

In the literary reportage category, another hot category in recent years for its ability to reveal social issues, four of the five winners received unanimous votes for their works examining problems related to migrant workers, food safety, desertification and private education.

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