At ChinaDaily Xu Jing reports that a 'Golden age' dawns for Chinese web-writers as Chinese Internet literature apparently continues to flourish.
I particularly like the categorization of writers ("into five levels by their income and number of fans"): poor guy, low rank god, middle class god, super god, and platinum/Supreme God writers -- at the top level apparently the title is even capitalized (well, at least in translation: it doesn't really work that way in Chinese).
The big question -- and I'm surprised this isn't asked much more frequently and widely -- is: why China, and why not elsewhere ?
I recently got a copy of Michel Hockx' Internet Literature in China (see the Columbia University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) and expect to get to it soon. It is certainly an interesting (and under-explored) phenomenon.
I particularly like the categorization of writers ("into five levels by their income and number of fans"): poor guy, low rank god, middle class god, super god, and platinum/Supreme God writers -- at the top level apparently the title is even capitalized (well, at least in translation: it doesn't really work that way in Chinese).
The big question -- and I'm surprised this isn't asked much more frequently and widely -- is: why China, and why not elsewhere ?
I recently got a copy of Michel Hockx' Internet Literature in China (see the Columbia University Press publicity page, or get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk) and expect to get to it soon. It is certainly an interesting (and under-explored) phenomenon.