{"id":259806,"date":"2008-01-25T22:14:05","date_gmt":"2008-01-25T22:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/01\/25\/chinese-literature-online\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:34:38","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:34:38","slug":"chinese-literature-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/01\/25\/chinese-literature-online\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese Literature Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

After all the ACE<\/span> info of the past few weeks, it was interesting to find out that it is responsible for this fascinating series on the “State of Internet Literature in China” available at Paper Republic.<\/a><\/p>\n

If you’re not familiar with Paper Republic, it’s the best website out there covering Chinese literature, featuring reviews, samples, and news (such as the aforementioned internet literature project).<\/p>\n

In terms of the project on Chinese internet literature, I feel like I should read more of these posts before making any comments or generalizations. That said, what jumps out at me is how different\/vital\/necessary internet publishing is in China. This interview<\/a> with Zhao Song—one of the main people in charge of the Helian literary website—makes that clear:<\/p>\n

\n

Heilan first came into being in 1996, as a traditional paper literary magazine. It was started by Chen Wei (the other site administrator) in Nanjing, and only put out one issue before being closed down. \u201cYou know that period of time,\u201d says Zhao, \u201cthe authorities were very anxious then. It was an unofficial publication, and even though there was no sensitive content, the fact that it was unlicensed was enough to get it shut down.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Helian now consists of a few main components—a monthly magazine, digital publications, and a literary prize—and is looking to expand its traditional publishing arm over the next few years. <\/p>\n

There are two other bits of this that I found really interesting—the first about the state of Chinese literature:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe Chinese literary scene is suffering,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cThe political upheavals of the past decades have broken our link with the past. We\u2019re like orphans, in some regard. In the west there\u2019s a very strong line of continuity in the development of literature, but in China we\u2019ve lost our footing.\u201d He characterizes the two decades of 1980-2000 as a period of recovery and restoration. \u201cBut now that we\u2019re ready to move forward, where do we go? It\u2019s time to reconnect to our past and our traditions, but reconnect how?\u201d The May Fourth literary movement (begun in 1919) represented a renaissance, but it was ended before it really came to fruition. The 1980s saw a frenzy for foreign literature, but in Zhao\u2019s opinion that was mostly just an expression of excitement at being allowed to read again. \u201cPeople didn\u2019t understand what it was they were reading \u2013 the context or background.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And this section on the challenges of finding good writers for the website:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just really hard to find good writers. We go out actively looking for writers, and trying to lure them in to the site. We do most of our looking online, at other literary websites \u2013 we spent some time looking in traditional paper literary magazines, but were almost universally disappointed in the quality we found there. They almost all belong to the Writers Association, and that influence is visible in all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After all the ACE info of the past few weeks, it was interesting to find out that it is responsible for this fascinating series on the “State of Internet Literature in China” available at Paper Republic. If you’re not familiar with Paper Republic, it’s the best website out there covering Chinese literature, featuring reviews, samples, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[7456,1836,9836,1646],"class_list":["post-259806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-chinese-literature","tag-cwp","tag-paper-republic","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259806"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327106,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259806\/revisions\/327106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}