translation websites.
Web novels have become the primary driver for boosting China’s
original popular culture. Analysts believe that if there is one thing in
China that can rival Hollywood and Japanese manga in the future, it
must be web novels.
“It takes time for Chinese web novels to enter the Western main-
stream market. Fifteen or twenty years perhaps. After all, building a
huge cultural brand like Nintendo’s Super Mario and Pokemon cannot
be achieved overnight,” Lai told ChinaReport.A Breath of Fresh Air
“Chinese web novels are able to make me forget everything else
when I read them, focusing fully on just reading and I always feel a
need to read more when I have caught up on the released chapters,”
26-year-old Dane Tina Lynge Hansen told ChinaReport.
It was Coiling Dragon that first brought Hansen and other readers
into the wild world of the Chinese imagination. Before Chinese web
novels surfaced in the English-speaking world, Japanese light novels
and manga had proved popular among Western readers. Light novels,
very popular among teens and young adults in Japan, refer to easy-
to-read works with light-hearted plots, simple language, short para-
graphs and manga-style illustrations.
But readers gradually grew tired of the stale tropes in Japanese nov-
els and started to look for alternatives. With Coiling Dragon’s intro-
duction into the English world, Chinese web novels gained ground
as a breath of fresh air.
Chinese web novels are works of literature serialised online with a
diversity of genres.
Some genres are more familiar to Western readers, such as sci-fi and
fantasy (xuanhuan), and some are more esoterically Chinese such as
wuxia and xianxia. Wuxia, which literally means martial arts heroes,
generally tell martial-arts stories that take place in the “real” world.
Xianxia, which means “immortal heroes,” is a genre heavily inspired
by Daoism, featuring magic, demons, ghosts, immortals and mortals
who learn to become immortals through self-cultivation and medita-
tion.
Hansen has already read 40 translated Chinese web novels, among
which Martial Universe (武动乾坤) and Sealed Divine Throne (神印
宝座) are her favourites. She particularly likes the works of Tang Jia
San Shao (or TJSS, 唐家三少), the most successful web novelist in
China.
Hansen had never imagined that reading Chinese web novels could
change her life as much as it would. In September 2016, she made a
significant life decision: to quit her job in a primary school and be-
come a full-time web novelist.
“I was very keen on reading Chinese web novels and the more I
read, the more ideas came to mind. I eventually started to write, just
to get these ideas out of my mind as they kept on troubling me,”
Hansen told our reporter.Now Hansen is an original writer for Gravity Tales, the second
largest Chinese web novel translation website in the US after Wux-
iaworld. Two of her original works, Blue Phoenix and Overthrowing
Fate, have been serialised on the platform.
“Cultivation” is a Daoist concept and a major theme in wuxia and
xianxia novels, but something which non-Chinese readers have little
or no idea of from their past reading experience. In stories of these
genres, mortal cultivators of different sects, schools or clans can train
themselves in martial and mystical arts to become more powerful,
increase longevity and even become immortal deities.
“I enjoy how the stories are built up with cultivation and with the
many aspects of Chinese culture. In the xianxia novels, characters’
strength is constantly, and often rapidly, increasing. In the WesternAdapted from the same-titled web novel by
Chinese author Tang Qi, fantasy television
drama Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of
Peach Blossoms (2017) became instant hits not
just with local audiences but also abroad
The founder of the translation website Wuxiaworld Lai Jingping (Left) and the
popular webnovelist Tang Jia San ShaoPhoto courtesy of the interviewee