中国网文为何能走红海外？丨Writing community with a shared futur...

导读

随着网络文学的IP改编占据越来越多主流视听平台，世界各个角落都冒出了很多迷恋《全职高手》《庆余年》《鬼吹灯》等网络文学作品的爱好者。他们或是略通中国武侠文化，或是动漫爱好者，或看了一部电视剧/动漫，因为更新太慢，主动找起小说原文看。最新数据显示，中文网络文学的外国爱好者，已经从邻近国家，拓展到了世界更大的范围。

Almas Ilyas, a Pakistani, would never have imagined she could finish reading a novel that has more than 400 chapters. But she did. And by the time she finished reading a translated Chinese novel online, the experience opened up a whole new world of opportunities for her.

Briton Jack Garden Shawn has read such voluminous Chinese novels a few times and says he now does not feel like reading anything that has less than 1,700 chapters. He has no dearth of choices online.

At 1,500 English words per chapter, each novel Shawn picks up has at least 2.5 times the number of words in the seven-volume Harry Potter series, and nearly 10 times that in James Joyce's tome Ulysses.

The astronomical number of chapters in typical Chinese online novels is one of the first 'wow' factors for readers outside China.

最初，外国读者们都很震撼于中国网文的篇幅，动辄两三千章，其英文翻译版也基本保持在每章1200-3000的英文字数。可是，没想到自己很快就看进去了，而且不知不觉看了好几百章。现在，像Jack Garden Shawn这样的英国读者，会很坦诚地告诉你，“我一般不看少于1700章的文”。

Online literature has been developing for more than two decades in China and readers are accustomed to its length and have embraced it. They enjoy the fact that many of the novels have been adapted into television dramas, films, games and animations. Some have even been serialized on Netflix.

Now the online literature is finding takers overseas. According to the China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association, the number of overseas readers of Chinese online literature reached 32 million toward the end of 2019.

Both Ilyas and Shawn are avid readers of literature online on this new medium that gets updated daily, is interactive between the creators and readers, and often offers, in Shawn's words, 'an experience of growing with the main character'. Not satisfied with just reading, both Shawn and Ilyas felt the urge to write stories of their own.

When the first chapters of their English-language work were uploaded on Webnovel, which is managed by a Chinese company called China Literature Corp, their writing spread wings and changed their lives by fetching them enough money to support their decision to quit their full-time jobs.

Overseas writers

Jack笔名JKSManga，现居杭州。去年春节的时候跟着女友回东北探亲，结果新冠疫情把他暂留在那里，外面冰天雪地，出不了门，索性开始模仿着自己喜欢的中国网文作品，用英语写自己的故事，My Vampire System （《我的吸血鬼系统》），也用连载的形式，是一部杂糅了“哈利·波特遇见孙悟空”（Jack语）这样的各种网文要素但却异常地顺畅而又好读的作品，结果一炮打响，赚到了让远在英国的父母都难以相信的收入。他索性辞去教职，专心写作。

和他一样的，还有用英语书写霸道总裁文的Almas Ilyas。这位巴基斯坦姑娘开写的时候没来过中国，但是人设、环境设置都是中国都市的，人物命名也是用的拼音。这样的外文原创作者据统计一共有10万人，遍布在西班牙、意大利、美国、新加坡、荷兰、波兰等多国。

Ilyas' debut novel, Mr CEO Loves the Devilish Beauty, is a contemporary romance in which a powerful company boss falls in love with a mysterious beauty who has other plans.

For almost two years now, her stories have been set in Chinese cities although she had never been to China until her visit to Shanghai in November to receive an award.

'The Chinese setting in my novel comes from imagination, from the Chinese novels I have read, the dramas I have watched, and the research I have done,' she says. She writes under the pen name of XiaoMeeHee, which means 'little adventure'.

Under the pen name of JKSManga, Shawn's ongoing work, My Vampire System, gets updated daily. With 500 chapters already uploaded, it is by far the most popular English-language online story on Webnovel.

The fantasy novel has got 17.3 million views, has been rated 4.7 out of 5 by 3,500 readers, and received the 'Most Popular Overseas Original Work' title at the First Shanghai International Online Literature Week in mid-November.

About his online success, the 24-year-old Shawn says: 'Back home, my dad said, 'I know nobody at your age who's doing what you do and earning as much as you earn'.'

Unlike Ilyas, Shawn has been living in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, for three years.

Raised up in Slough, the United Kingdom, Shawn was influenced by his father to watch Asian movies and drama in his formative years. Later in life he moved to Hangzhou as a music teacher at a primary school while also creating comics for a manga company.

He gradually began picking up the tricks of the trade in Chinese novels online — cultivation (similar to the model employed in video games, in which one fights the monsters, gains points and goes up one level in the quest to become immortal), leveling up, martial arts and more.

'I'd unconsciously been noticing how Chinese authors built their plots and employed writing techniques,' Shawn says. 'Later on, I began noting down the plots that came to my mind and constantly asked myself: How would I describe my story to someone in 30 seconds?'

He came up with the answer himself, deciding that combining the techniques employed in Harry Potter and Sun Wukong, or Monkey King, will 'immediately grab readers' attention and help paint pictures in their minds'.

In Shawn's ongoing story, the commonly seen 'system' and 'leveling up' elements of Chinese online literature are in harmony with vampire legends and interstellar sci-fi settings.

Shawn used to wake up at 4 am and write two chapters every day before leaving for work. Until one fine day in August, when he decided to quit his teacher's job and focus wholly on writing.

According to the White Book of 2020 Online Literature and China Literature Corporate, Chinese writers apart, Webnovel had some 100,000 overseas writers creating multi-chapter stories and uploading them daily for readers around the world in November.

Evolving from nothing

Cheng Wu, CEO of China Literature Corp, says Webnovel now offers some 160,000 original online novels written in English and those might be translated into more languages soon.

'Online literature, featuring a large number of users, a wide range of topics, and interactivity, has expanded the scope and significance of international cultural exchanges,' Cheng says.

So there is an IT engineer living in Barcelona who created the first of the English-language hits under the pen name of Alemillach. Then there is an English and Chinese double-major graduate from Texas called Logan (pen name AuthorWiz), who explored afterlife with Reborn: Evolving From Nothing.

'It was in response to the increasing demand of these people to create their versions of the stories they've been reading, that we began offering Webnovel as a channel,' says Chen Shanshan, head of China Literature's overseas business section.

Topic and theme apart, these authors know well about the tricks of online writings, Chen says. 'Like, there should be a climax every three chapters, and a twist every five chapters.'

'We received feedback that a large readership was forming outside, and some of the overseas readers were even volunteering to translate the stories and share them for free on various social media and other online platforms,' Chen says.

Chinese-Singaporean Jeremy Oon Hong Wen, who has a master's degree in physics, has been a volunteer translator since 2015.

As a fan of kung fu stories, Oon translated True Martial World and Lord of Mysteries under the pen name of CKtalon.

Oon has a theory about why online novels click with readers from varied cultural backgrounds, and he believes the feeling is, in a certain sense, universal.

'It has a charm that is able to connect common points in the human psyche. Brotherhood, friendship, loyalty, desire to be recognized, etc,' he says.

'Such stories can always be presented with freshness that exceeds the limits of one's imagination.'

Liu Yuren, director of content at Webnovel, says: 'Chinese online literature has in a sense become a cultural symbol that suits the growing number of millennials worldwide.'

Sharing culture

中国网文发展了20余年，成为了一个令人瞩目的文化现象。是什么在不断吸引外国读者、译者、作者、投资者等投身其中？是中国独有的文化基因、文化要素，或是原创的运营方式？还是世界单边主义抬头，目光日趋紧缩，而中国人则继续坚持宏大叙事，坚持心怀全世界共同的未来和远方？

Besides the increasing number of translated works and the emerging original foreign-language writers, the White Book points out that a third new trend is adaptations or IP-related operations for reaching out to more audiences overseas.

Some of the titles have been published in print versions overseas, like The City of Sand in English by Penguin-Random. The King's Avatar is a real sensation in its animated and TV adaptations; the writers mentioned above are its fans.

'No matter how stressed the world is, online literature serves as the perfect cushion, besides offering greater understanding about the Chinese culture of faith in inclusiveness and harmony,' says Chen Dingjia, a scholar with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

For Yan Feng, a professor at Fudan University, Chinese online novels emphasize a sense of right and wrong that the world badly needs at this moment of great confusion.

'Chinese stories feature grand plotlines and scenarios, unlike trivial narrations in some other parts of the world,' Yan says. 'That's why people all over the world crave for such connections, and 'a community with a shared future for mankind' for spiritual, material, technological and cultural exchanges.'

记者：梅佳

Click here for audio and translation of the story

Check the link below for the whole story