Online literature spearheads China's cultural industry
- By staff reporter Verena Menzel
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E-mail China Today, December 14, 2016
Why China?
But what makes web literature so successful in China, while in many Western countries it tends to be a niche sector? Why is this new form of literature so appealing to both readers and entrepreneurs?
Answering these questions calls for a closer look at the development of China's literary industry since the onset of reform and opening-up. In the past, literary journals traditionally constituted the main driving force of China's literary world as well as the most important literary mainstream medium. Readers loved these journals, and they often acted as stepping stones for promising new writers.
However, after implementation in the late 1970s of the reform and opening-up policy and the growing market-orientation and niche formation it engendered, China's literary journals gradually lost their function as a mainstream medium.
The Internet started to fill this gap at the end of the 1990s. Owing to its low entrance threshold and thanks to the fresh possibilities for expression it offered, the web became a new creative playground for young and as yet unknown authors, as well as for an army of amateur writers.
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Han Han, one of the first popular web authors. |
In 1997, the first Chinese online literature web portal Rongshuxia.com, which literally means "Under the banyan tree," appeared. Users of this new website both submitted their own literary works and read those of others, for free. In just a few years, many young writing talents thus matured "under the banyan tree," among them such famous names as Han Han, Ning Caishen, Jin Hezai, and Murong Xuecun.
Since then, the online literature market has experienced a golden age of development. The first years of self-discovery and willingness to experiment, however, were gradually superseded by growing commercialization and the establishment of online publishing houses.
However, this development has not spoiled readers' enthusiasm for the new genre. Statistics from China's biggest Internet industry website sootoo.com show that online novels score the highest points among young, urban readers living in big cities like Beijing or Shanghai, 85 percent of whom have yet to celebrate their 40th birthdays. Most new web authors are also part of the emerging Chinese middle class born in the 1970s or later.
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