援交學入門 (Compensated Dating 101)

Judge's Comment

This is also a medium-length novel, approaching 50,000 characters, about two Hong Kong women from grassroots backgrounds who graduated from university but ended up running a compensated dating (sex work) business. The work's strengths include fluent prose and a fairly complete story structure; the portrayal of the female protagonist Lam Yun-kei and her younger brother Chun-jai is relatively three-dimensional, and the description of Lam's business methods is informative and entertaining—both can be called successful. However, the ending, which describes Lam and her former partner and later arch-rival Cheung Hoi-ting both being arrested and imprisoned, feels overly coincidental and somewhat forced—a technique akin to deus ex machina, which might work in stage drama but sits poorly in a realist novella. The work connects to the social movement through Cheung's university roommate Mandy, but this connection also feels slightly contrived; removing it would not necessarily diminish the work. There is a substantial amount of sexual content in the work: while to some extent this enhances the immediacy and even the appeal of the story, too much leads to diminishing returns and becomes tedious, ultimately impeding reading. Most of these passages could be condensed, with only one or two key scenes retained; the space saved could be better used to explore the inner worlds of the main characters—after all, middle-class women turning to sex work must inevitably wrestle with considerable internal conflict. That would enrich the work considerably. This is a difficult but very worthwhile direction for revision, and given the writing ability this work demonstrates, the author is quite capable of achieving it.

— Lian Yi-zheng (練乙錚)