(A short story with no female lead, expected to be around 80,000 words. Thank you to all my new and longtime friends for your encouragement and support!)
The annual year-end performance review season has arrived, and Liang Yongquan, the wordsmith in the Provincial Government General Office, is stuck.
According to the required quota for outstanding ratings, the office can nominate only two out of its nine staff members.
He had planned to settle things through an internal discussion, as they had in previous years. But a few light knocks at the door threw everything into disarray, and seemed to knock some sense into him, too.
Good heavens, could anyone be more shameless?
This year's selection of outstanding employees is truly more troublesome than writing reports.
The calls of concern from above, the silent resistance of the honest, one work mishap after another, and the fierce inner struggle between emotion and reason all leave him frazzled.
When everything is finally settled, Liang Yongquan feels that his path to promotion has grown tens of thousands of miles longer...
It's short and concise, well-conceived, with many real and perceptible details that are thought-provoking. What a great book! 👍😄