 In 1955, he published "July Rain" (), his first short-story collection.He published a second collection, "The Morning Sun Rises" (), and a novel, "Spring Morning along South River" (), in the next two years, earning himself recognition as an emerging writer.During the Hundred Flowers Campaign, when the Communist government invited opinions and criticisms from intellectuals, Cong published the essay "A Few Questions Concerning Socialist Realism" in the April 1957 issue of the journal "Beijing Literature and Art", in which he questioned the need for the adjective "socialist" in socialist realism and argued that the term excessively emphasized politics and encouraged formulaic writing.