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On October 11, 2012, the Swedish Academy awarded that year's 
Nobel Prize in Literature to Chinese writer Mo Yan. For the development of Chinese literature, this event cannot be underestimated. Mo Yan became the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and ended China's history of winning no Nobel Prize in Literature. This shows that Chinese literature is going global and gradually winning attention and recognition of world literature from a special angle. The prize won this time not only made a dream of Chinese literary circles come true, but also made Chinese people treat the "Nobel Prize" calmly. Meanwhile, Chinese literature also strengthened reflection on its development. According to Nobel Committee's prize announcement, Mo Yan in his novels "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary," and his reflection on history and analysis of human nature moved not only Chinese people, but also readers in other countries. This shows that the literature that can transcend time and national boundaries is the literature focusing on real life and writing about people's souls instead of the literature expressing political views or catering to the book market and consumption culture. Apart from Mo Yan, many contemporary Chinese writers with unique personalities have creative strength and potential such as Jia Pingwa, Chen Zhongshi, Wang Anyi, Yu Hua, Su Tong, Liu Zhenyun, Bi Feiyu and Chi Zijian. Their works contain different perceptions of life, and build their spiritual homes from different perspectives. There are also a lot of overseas readers of their works.
In view of the remoter history, Chinese literature can at least be traced to more than 3,000 years ago. From that time to the early 20th century, Chinese ancient literature came down in one continuous line, lasted thousands of years, nourished the souls of Chinese people of all generations, and established the Chinese nation's cultural identity. In the early 20th century, all-round transformation of Chinese literature took place, including literary concepts, contents and language and even the relationship with world literature. Thus Chinese literature entered a new stage.
In the new century, with the continuous enhancement of China's overall strength and gradual improvement of China's international status, more and more people began to pay attention to China. The deepening of China's reform and opening up also promoted exchange between China and the world, laying a good foundation for Chinese literature to further go global. As an important component of Chinese culture, Chinese literature enters the arena of world literature and merges with world culture continuously. Literature carries China's profound history, reflects the complex and changeful reality of today's Chinese society, and embodies Chinese people's dream of a better future. Literature is the best spiritual garden for communication between China and the world. Manifesting the whole world's common concerns and displaying the whole mankind's human feelings and human nature should be Chinese literature's responsibilities.
Since ancient times, this has been a tradition of Chinese literature.
Literature occupied an important arid unique position in ancient China. Cao Pi, Emperor Wen of Wei (on the throne from 220 to 226), said "writing is a great cause of administering a country and a great event of eternity," thinking literature was an important matter bearing on the governance of the country and posterity. Ancient China's imperial examination system was also very important in selecting officials according to literary standards, especially the poem and article writing ability. China's literary traditions with a long history shaped unique literary concepts and artistic methods in their development, and exerted far-reaching influence on the literature of later ages. Read more
• Unique Literary Concepts
• Abundant Artistic Methods
• Separation of "Language" and "Literature"
• Superiority of "Poems" and "Essays"
In ancient China, the "essay" was one of the most important literary styles and the most widely used and practical literary genre. Compared with poems, novels, dramas, etc., essays pursue trueness of contents to a larger extent. The concept of Chinese ancient prose is very extensive. Articles other than parallel verse and rhymed verse can also be called "prose." According to different modes of expression and written contents, prose can be classified into lyric prose, narrative prose, argumentative prose, landscape and travel prose, etc. Read more
• Prose of Pre-Qin Schools of Thought
• Sima Qian and Records of the Grand Historian
• Eight Great Prose Masters of Tang and Song Dynasties
In a broad sense, ancient poems include many forms such as poems, ci poems and songs. Poems of different periods have different historical and cultural characteristics.As people usually say, the poetry of the Tang Dynasty is emotional and the ci poetry of the Song Dynasty is rational. Different regions' poems also have distinctive local features. For example, though both The Book of Songs and Verses of Chu are pre-Qin classics. The former depicts the northern region with the Yellow River basin as the center in a plain style, and the latter mainly depicts life in the Chu State in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River with passionate emotion and abundant imagination. Read more
• The Book of Songs: The First Collection of Poems
• Qu Yuan: Romantic Lyric Poems
• Tao Yuanming: A Hermit's Pastoral Poems
• Su Shi: Creating a New State of Ci Poetry
• Li Qingzhao and Graceful and Restrained Ci Poetry
• Xin Qiji and Bold and Unconstrained Ci Poetry
Generally speaking, Chinese ancient novels underwent three courses of great development: first, people of the Tang Dynasty "began to write novels" including representative legends of the Tang Dynasty such as Story of Liu Yi, Story of Yingying, Story of Li Wa and Story of Huo Xiaoyu\ second, the emergence of storytellers' scripts in the Song Dynasty and the emergence of novels written in the style of storytellers' scripts in the Ming Dynasty promoted ancient novels' development; third, chapter-based novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties represented by Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber pushed the development of ancient novels to the peak. Read more
• Historical Novel: Romance of the Three Kingdoms
• Gods and Demons Novel: Journey to the West
• Ghost Novel: Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
• Masterpiece: Dream of the Red Chamber
Chinese new literature with the "May 4th" Movement as the beginning Chinese Modern and Contemporary Literatureis usually divided into the two stage of the modern era and the contemporary era. Modern literature began with the "literary revolution" that occurred around 1917 and ended with the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949; contemporary literature refers to literature since 1949. Though modern literature has a history of only about 30 years, it is a huge and fundamental turning point in the development course of Chinese literature with the historical quality of a connecting link between the preceding and the following like no other period of Chinese literature history. Contemporary literature underwent a complicated and changeful course of development. It is becoming closer and closer to social life and opening to the outside world like never before. Read more
The earliest modern novels are short ones. During the "May 4th" Movement, realistic creations represented by Ye Shengtao and romantic creations represented by Yu Dafu were mostly short works. Read more
• Lu Xun: Founder of New Literature
• Ba Jin and His ＂Torrents Trilogy＂
• Lao She and His Beijing Civil Society
• Shen Congwen's World of West Hunan
Around the May 4th Movement, Hu Shi's Experimental Collection, Guo Moruo's The Goddesses, Liu Bannong, Shen Yinmo, Liu Dabai, etc. shook the orthodox position occupied by old-style metrical poems for thousands of years with vernacular poetry, and created the new style of free vernacular new poetry. Read more
• Guo Moruo: Destruction and Creation
• Xu Zhimo: Crescent Moon Poetry
• Ai Qing: A Modern Poem Rooted in Earth
• Mu Dan: Abundance and the Pain of Abundance
Poems created in the new period directly face life, reflect on history, change the reality and reveal the truth of life. Poets, especially young poets, under the dual influence of Western modernism and Eastern classical poetry, reflected and manifested the world with their special aesthetic feelings, aesthetic evaluations and pursuit of ideals. Read more
• The Rise of ＂Obscure Poetry＂
• Hai Zi: The Catcher in the Rye
In the new period, an abundance of novels were created, displaying and reflecting various aspects of the times and society from diversified perspectives in an all-round manner. Read more
• Jia Pingwa and Root-seeking Novels
• Su Tong and New Historical Novels
• Mo Yan and Hallucinatory Realism
From the late 20' century to the early 21st century, China's economy grew rapidly, science and technology kept developing, consumer culture was increasingly influential, and electronic devices such as TV sets, computers and mobile phones were widely popularized and became indispensable communication and entertainment tools in people's life. The emergence of new media such as the Internet broadened people's vision and diversified people's life. Chinese society entered a period of highly enriched material and cultural life. Meanwhile, emerging literary power also began to burgeon and grow. The most prominent phenomena were "youth writing" and "Internet literature." Read more