Chen Zhongshi (1942–2016), born in Baqiao District, Xi‘an City, published his first essay in early 1965, and joined the China Writers Association in 1979. He won the National Short Story Award in 1979 for his work Trust, the 1990–1991 National Reportage Award for Weibei Plateau: Personal Memoir, and the 4th Mao Dun Literature Prize (1998) for the novel White Deer Plain. He used to be vice--chairman of the China Writers Association, chairman of the Shaanxi Writers Association, and honorary chairman of the Shaanxi Writers Association.