Online fantasy tales leaping off the page

Market reach extends abroad, leading to TV adaptations, and translated works

The online blockbuster fantasy series Legend of Fuyao premiered in China in June and generated nearly 14 billion views in less than two months, and it's not only been a hit in China but has attracted millions of fans worldwide.

The show, which first aired on Zhejiang TV from June to August, is based on the novel Empress Fuyao by Tianxia Guiyuan. It focuses on Meng Fuyao, a servant with magical powers who was brought up in a martial arts clan. Meng journeys across five mythical kingdoms trying to unravel the mystery behind her innate powers.

Its online success testifies not only to the novel's mass appeal but shows that China's online literature has extended its reach well beyond the country's borders.

Online literature refers to original works created and distributed on the internet.

China Securities (International) Co, a Hong Kong research company, says the translated works have won followers in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas. According to the company's latest report, Chinese online literature's foreign readership now stands at 7 million.

CSCI expects this audience to grow rapidly in the next few years, with the potential user base in Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas estimated at more than 500 million.

"Content-wise, I see huge demand for Chinese literature," says Steven Liu, CSCI's head of research. He says growing interest in Chinese culture will increase demand for online novels and adaptations such as video games, movies and TV series.

Publishing industry experts say Chinese online novels revolve around universal themes, making them highly appealing to global audiences.

Ren Xiang, academic course adviser and research fellow at the Australia-China Institute for Arts and Culture at Western Sydney University in Australia, says that popular titles in Chinese online literature "have key elements of genre fiction that not only attract international readers but also help remove the barriers of intercultural communication".

Ren, who has published several papers on Chinese online literature, says most of the popular online novels can be classified as wuxia and thus appeal to global fans of fantasy literature. Wuxia is a genre of fiction that chronicles the adventures of martial artists in ancient China. Legend of Fuyao falls into this category.

"In wuxia, fans can easily find commonalities between the imagined supernatural universes of Chinese wuxia and Western fantasy novels," Ren says.

He cited the concept of qi - the vital life force that Chinese martial artists need to harness, and which figures prominently in wuxia stories. Ren says most readers outside China can relate to qi, as they view it as the Chinese version of "the force" in the Star Wars movies.

"This really helps international readers to engage with the storytelling of Chinese online fiction, despite different cultural contexts and usually poor translation," Ren says.

Jing Ruyi, an internet literature expert at iResearch Consulting Group, says international readers enjoy fantastic plots and the protagonists' struggles in Chinese online novels.

"Martial arts, fantasy-themed and video game-themed literary works have also found favor among internet literature readers in the overseas market," she says.

Ren says the "cross-media convergence" of adapting online literature into TV dramas, comics, animations and other media formats has led to Chinese online literature reaching a global audience.

"In Vietnam, for example, Chinese TV dramas adapted from online literature are very popular, and this helps to attract more readers," he says.

In China, online literature emerged in the late 1990s, pioneered by amateur authors who published their stories on electronic bulletin boards and personal websites. Reader discussions in electronic forums boosted these works' popularity.

By the early 2000s, that popularity had led to a nascent digital publishing industry.

One of the most successful publishers is Qidian, which launched China's first online reading payment program, with readers having to pay to unlock the latest chapter of a serialized novel.

In 2015, Qidian, QQ Reading and Hongxiu.com merged under the wing of Tencent-backed digital publisher China Literature. This transformed China Literature into the country's biggest digital publisher. According to business consultancy Frost & Sullivan in the United States, China Literature accounts for more than 70 percent of the Chinese online literature market.

Other Chinese tech giants are tapping this booming market.

Alibaba Group created Alibaba Literature and launched an online reading app. China Mobile's digital content subsidiary Migu includes online novels in its diverse portfolio and has partnered with Amazon to launch a co-branded electronic reading device.

Publishers have recognized online literature's global potential and are introducing translated works to appeal to an international audience.

One of these companies is Wuxia-World, a website that offers translations of online Chinese novels in English. The startup was founded in 2015 by Chinese-American Lai Jing-ping, a former US diplomat. He says the site receives about 2 million visitors each month from 115 countries.

IReader Technology, a software provider in Beijing, is not only pushing its e-reading devices overseas, but also has had some of its online Chinese novels translated into English, Russian and Korean, according to CSCI.

But CSCI's Liu says such overseas expansion may be limited by the quality of translated works and the number of translators available.

Neil Wang, global partner and China managing director at Frost & Sullivan, says China's digital publishers "have been striving improve translation accuracy and increase their content's diversity" to get a bigger share of the global market.

Wang cites Webnovel, an English-language website and mobile platform launched by China Literature in May last year. He says China Literature has more than 200 translators and trains them regularly to ensure that Webnovel only publishes high-quality translated work.

Wu Wenhui, China Literature's co-CEO and executive director, says Webnovel has attracted more than 13 million visitors since it launched. It has more than 3,500 original titles, including 160 works translated into English.

Wu says that his company can simultaneously release original Chinese works and their English-language versions through Webnovel.

"Webnovel enables overseas readers to access the updates of online novels as quickly as possible," he says.

Wu says that China Literature is going beyond the English language market by offering original Chinese novels translated in other languages, including Thai, Korean, Japanese, French and Turkish.

Authorization has been given for more than 300 original novels owned by China Literature to be published both digitally and in paperback in Asia, Europe and the US, he says. Several of the company's titles have been adapted into other formats, not only in China but overseas.

Legend of Fuyao is just one of China Literature's most successful titles. Wu says another of the company's fantasy novels - Way of Choices - was adapted into a TV series and screened at an exhibition in Russia. The romance novel Full Marks Hidden Marriage is being developed into a TV series in Vietnam.

China Literature is also going beyond offering translated and adapted works to get a bigger share of the global market. Despite the fact that the company already has more than 7 million Chinese writers, it is using Webnovel to sign up foreign authors.

Wu says Webnovel has a function on its website that international readers can use to submit original stories, and more than 2,000 foreign writers have registered and over 3,500 titles have been created.

While these titles have spanned various genres, Wu says most of the user-generated works were deeply influenced by Chinese online literature with typical cultural themes.

He says China Literature is confident of expanding further overseas as Chinese online literature will continue to gain more headway abroad.

"As the business model for Chinese online literature becomes more mature and professional, its scale and number of users in the global market will continue to expand," he says.

prime@chinadailyapac.com

( China Daily Africa Weekly 11/02/2018 page16)