20世纪80年代以前的中国小说一般分为长篇小说、中篇小说和短篇小说三大品种。20世纪80年代中期以后,微型小说才作为一个新兴的独立的小说种类,跻身于小说之列,成为小说家族的第四个成员。一直以来,无论国内还是国外的学者对微型小说的界定都没有形成统一的标准。比如,中国文学理论家江曾培先生在《微型小说是一 Chinese novels before the 1980s are generally divided into three major varieties: long novels, novellas and short stories. After the mid-1980s, micro-fiction was only a new type of independent novel, among the novels, becoming the fourth member of the fiction family. All along, domestic and foreign scholars have not formed a unified standard for the definition of microfiction. For example, Mr. Jiang Zengpei, a Chinese literary theorist, was