Macao's most influential Portuguese-language newspaper Ponto Final on Monday carried the first of five fictional series, which will go weekly as the stories developing according to feedbacks from readers.

The creative writing will be the newspaper's initiative in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Macao Special Administrative Region, which will fall on Dec. 20 this year.

Among the five chosen authors, there is one Macao-born Portuguese, Henrique Senna Fernandes, who is a productive novelist in his 80s with two of his works shot into films. The rest are popular novelists or journalists from Portugal. On Monday, the newspaper published the first part of the novel Crouching Tiger, written by Joao Aguiar, who was once a journalist in Macao for many years.

Director of Ponto Final, Richardo Pinto, who brought forward the idea of this interactive writing, told Xinhua that the newspaper asked the five authors to tell stories that are set in Macao. The newspaper would publish each of the stories weekly in two pages, which will end in September.

Pinto said that with the effort, the newspaper hoped to encourage literary creation in Portuguese community around the world, and to attract people's interest in Macao.

"Over the past four years, nothing significant has been published in Portuguese in Macao. We hope our initiative to coincide with the SAR's fifth founding anniversary will stimulate people's literary creativity," said Pinto.

He said that the newspaper is inviting participants via its website, which has its readers in Portugal, Brazil, America and Portuguese communities around the world, who can join the literary creation either by giving their suggestions on how stories would develop, or make their own versions, which are required to start with the first paragraph of the designated authors' novels. The newspaper has planned an award of 50,000 patacas (US$6,250) to the candidate that contributes the best version.

On Dec. 20, the date of anniversary, Ponto Final will hold a ceremonial launching of the publishing of the five novels and announce the winner of the readers.

(Xinhua News Agency February 3, 2004)