Chinese writers make global splash

Garnering many awards, literature from the mainland left a lasting impression on the international stage last year

Chinese novels came of age in 2016, bagging many international awards.

Children's writer Cao Wenxuan won the Hans Christian Andersen Award; Hao Jingfang took the Hugo Award (following Liu Cixin, the first Chinese winner of the award in 2015); and Wang Anyi, grabbed the 2017 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature from the University of Oklahoma in September.

Veteran literary critic Meng Fanhua says the power of Chinese stories comes from the rural areas, "where we have the strongest literary traditions".

Another veteran critic - Bai Ye, from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences - says that while traditional and established novel writers continue to produce works, younger writers who were born in the 1970s, 80s and 90s are also gaining ground.

"Every year there are about 5,000 novels published in the country. But, this year, I noticed writers are more keen to reflect the pulse of society, and their writings are close to everyday reality and easier for general readers to accept."

Bai, who produces an annual report on Chinese novels, adds that rural life is one of the key elements in the books published last year. As urbanization expands, the nostalgia for rural life grows, as seen in Jia Pingwa's work The Jihua Flower, he says.

The novel, about the plight of an abducted girl, stirred a debate about gender equality soon after its release in March. Other themes writers tackled last year were urban life and history.

"It was also a trend for writers to personalize their take on history, offering a touch of warmth to a cold past," Bai says, pointing to Mao Dun Literature Award winner Ge Fei's Wang Chun Feng (or The Spring Breeze) as an example of this kind of work.

Wang Chun Feng is about a village's transformation as seen through the eyes of a young boy.

Giving other examples of these kinds of works, Bai points to Fang Fang's Bare Burial, a story about a lost family history during and after the country's land reform, and Lu Nei's Mercy, about a factory worker's life before and after China's reform and opening-up.

Another example is Hong Kong-based writer Ge Liang, who was born in 1978, and his semibiographical referring to younger writers, Bai says that those born in the 1980s are making a noticeable impression on their audiences.

Zhang Yueran made a mark with The Cocoon, which is about two young people searching for the facts behind the disappearance of their fathers. Online writer Tangjia Sanshao (real name Zhang Wei) also caught Bai's attention with an autobiographical novel about how a self-made writer achieved fame with help of his wife.

Online literature is offering more choices to readers. It "fills a blank in the Chinese book market", says Shao Yanjun, a web literature expert at Peking University who says he expects internet literature to be assimilated more into the mainstream.

Eight internet writers were elected to the national committee of the China Writers' Association at the group's annual meeting in December. Tangjia Sanshao was elected to the presidium of the association.

Explaining how internet literature is growing from strength to strength, Shao says it has now become a major source of adaptation for movies and games, and because of its large readership there is a spurt in the sales of TV and film rights of online works in China.

For instance, The Interpreters, a TV series based on a work by Miao Juan about the professional and love lives of two language translators, attracted millions of viewers when it hit TV screens in May.

As for the money online writers are making, Liu Chang, who started writing science fiction novels full-time in 2012 under the pen name Biting Dog, says that the TV and film adaptation rights for his work Global Evolution is worth around 2 million yuan ($300,000; 270,000 euros; 246,500).

"Internet literature is becoming more diverse in terms of quality and topics," says Peking University's Shao, citing Zeng Dengke (pen name Crazy Banana) as a good example. Zeng writes historical fantasy and tries to match classical literature.

Another significant trend noticed by Shao and her students is that Chinese internet literature is attracting Western readers, who are also translating Chinese online novels into English on online forums such as Wuxiaworld.com. The site was started by Chinese-American Lai Jingping, known as RWX on the forum, who quit a foreign service job to start the translation website.

As for literary genres that made it big last year, sci-fi was near the top. Wu Yan, director of the Sci-fi Study Center at Beijing Normal University, says he sees more attention being paid to the genre, with a growing number of forums and campus seminars.

Even though Hugo Award winner Liu Cixin joked that Chinese scientists were keeping their distance from sci-fi writers, Wu says the China Association for Science and Technology took many initiatives to use sci-fi to promote popular science to the public. Its efforts included organizing the China Sci-Fi Festival, the first large-scale sci-fi event, in Beijing in September.

Moreover, sci-fi works have begun to infiltrate classrooms, which once dismissed such works.

"Even startups are focusing on sci-fi," he says. "But, despite the good news for sci-fi in China, I did not see too many good works produced in 2016."

However, despite his disappointment, Wu recommended a few works. Among his picks were young sci-fi writer Jiang Bo, who recently finished the last installment of his trilogy The Heart of Galaxy, which won the World Chinese Science Fiction Association prize.

Wu also recommended River of Time, a work on time travel by 68-year-old Wang Jinkang, who has been writing science fiction for more than 20 years.

Other notable mentions included the works of overseas Chinese-Americans published in China, such as short stories by sci-fi writer Ken Liu, whose translations of the works of Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang helped them win their Hugos.

Another Chinese-American who earned a mention was Karen Bao, a graduate of Columbia University, who recently published the first installment of her sci-fi series The Dove Chronicles in China.

On a more somber note, 2016 was also the year when China lost two literary stars: Chen Zhongshi and Yang Jiang.

Contact the writers through xingyi@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 01/13/2017 page18)