From: wlin@byron.u.washington.edu (Wei Lin)
Subject: Introduction to HXWZ / HXWZ calls for contribution of articles
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 09:07:19 GMT

The following was carried in CND News Global, Wednesday, April 8, 1992
 
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2. HXWZ Celebrates Its 1st Anniversary:
        Calling for Reader Contributions .............................. 73
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From: CND Hua Xia Wen Zhai Group <cnd-cm@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>
 
April 5th marked the first anniversary of Hua Xia Wen Zhai (HXWZ), the
world's first electronic Chinese magazine.  Launched by the China News
Digest (CND) in 1991, HXWZ aims to promote Chinese culture in the computer
age and serve readers by providing useful information.
 
With the publication of the 53rd HXWZ issue, the HXWZ staff would like to
take this opportunity to express our thanks to the readers for their con-
tinued interest and support. Many readers and organizations have contri-
buted articles for publication, as well as providing us with encouragements
and helpful comments.
 
HXWZ currently has over 6,000 direct subscribers, some of whom regularly
relay HXWZ issues to secondary readers. In addition, an estimated 4,000
people read hardcopies of HXWZ by printing out the Postscript version,
available via anonymous ftp at ahkcus.org under "gb/cnd-cm" directory.
 
Since HXWZ is operated by volunteers with little outside funding, we would
like to see more active participation from our readers. Whenever you come
across a good article, please type it into the computer and send it to us.
We also welcome your own writings. There should be no concern about copy-
rights, however, since HXWZ is only a digest and is run strictly on a non-
profit basis.
 
Also, HXWZ seeks further cooperation with the editors of other Chinese-
language publications put out by the Chinese communities at home and
abroad. A lot of Chinese organizations publish newsletters and literature
journals using Chinese software. Usually, their files are readily usable
for HXWZ, and we would be very grateful if they could send us their files
for our selection.
 
One of the major difficulties facing HXWZ is the lack of source material
in a computerized format. Very often, our executive editors have to type
in articles themselves, which makes the editing work excessively heavy. On
average, an executive editor spends more than 20 hours of his/her spare
time preparing one issue of the weekly HXWZ.
 
When more typing is required, more time has to be squeezed. Last November
a coordinated effort was made by nine editors in order to bring Wang Meng's
novel "Hard Porridge" to our readers. The team, which called itself "the
Over-Educated Yet Slowest-in-the-World Typists, Inc.," finished typing the
novel and related material in two weeks, amounting to about 20,000 charact-
ers.
 
The HXWZ staff are mostly graduate students in various disciplines ranging
from physics, journalism, psychology, to computer science. We are scattered
in various parts of the world, each connected by the electronic network.
Every new issue of HXWZ is proofread by off-duty editors who provide
comments and suggestions for improvement on-line. Each issue usually
undergoes three or more revisions before it reaches our readers.
 
The most critical times are when the network is not functioning properly.
One executive editor, living in Sweden in a different time zone from our
technical base in north America, had to make a phone call and wake up our
main resource person in Chicago at 6 a.m., and post the HXWZ issue to avoid
interruption. The international long-distance call was paid out of the
editor's pocket.
 
HXWZ staff have accumulated some experience over the past year and we have
developed a series of editing utility programs. We would like to share them
with our friends on the worldwide computer networks, and especially help
those CSS publications not using Chinese word processors in getting various
affordable software.
 
Any CSS publication wishing to cooperate with HXWZ can send their messages
or articles in uuencoded files to <cnd-cm@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu>. Con-
tributions, suggestions, criticism, and other comments from readers can
also be sent to the same address.
 
HXWZ's standard in selecting articles is that they should be informative,
interesting, and of high-quality. Feedback and contributions from our
readers are very important in updating this standard constantly.
 
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|              Executive Editor:  Zhang Yalin & Zhang Tielin             |
|           Coordinating Editor:  Tang Deming                            |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  China News Digest (CND) offers the following services:                |
|    (1) Global News (Daily)        (2) US Regional News                 |
|    (3) Canada Regional News       (4) Europe & Pacific Regional News   |
|    (5) Hua Xia Wen Zhai (Weekly Chinese Magazine)                      |
|    (6) Several Information Packages                                    |
|  To subscribe or get help, mail to:  CND-LM@BRONZE.UCS.INDIANA.EDU     |
|  To contribute news, please send to: CND-EDITOR@BRONZE.UCS.INDIANA.EDU |
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