China: Elite literature prize stirs questions on credibility

China’s prestigious Lu Xun Literature Prize has come under fire after its most recent award winner for poetry was denounced as a “shame on poetry.”

Zhou Xiaotian, a poet and professor of the literature and journalism college of Sichuan University, won the prize on Monday for his poem collection “Jiang Jin Cha” or invitation to tea.

Not long after the announcement, Zhou’s verses were posted online by Internet users with the charge of being “nothing more than doggerels unworthy of the prize.”