New Trends of Chinese Literature in the New Century

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."

In the new century, young people born in the 1980s gradually became mature, played important roles in social life, and showed their individuality, talent and ability. These young people are called "post-80s." As a group, "post-80s" and "post-90s" have some common characteristics: most of them have no sibling, enjoy comfortable living conditions, and have simple life experiences; are well educated and have a deep understanding of campus life; are well informed, have broad vision and can effectively obtain information and materials on the Internet. "Post-80s" and "post-90s" emerged in the literary circles, their literary works gradually entered people's sight and won young readers' favor, and "youth writing" suddenly became a vogue and reality.

In the tide of "youth writing," Han Han, Guo Jingming, Zhang Yueran, Jiang Fangzhou, Li Shasha, Chun Shu, Xu Peng, Liu Weidong, etc. are outstanding leading figures. Their works mostly manifest the details of campus life and adolescents' growing pains, show young and romantic colors, and at the same time reveal some decadent feelings. They make great efforts to display their personalities in their works, and manifest their attempt to subvert traditional values and break with conventional thoughts and tendencies. However, "post-80s" writers7 creation styles are not the same, and different writers have different characteristics. Among them, Li Shasha born in the country side is among the few "post-80s" writers from the countryside. His novels are full of young vitality with precise and flowery language, and his prose works are refreshing and plain, making readers feel peace and distance from the maddening crowd. His representative works include long novel Red X. Zhang Yueran is loved by readers for exquisite description of details, use of novel and diversified images and the sincere writing attitude. Her works record the psychological path of young people's growth, and sincerely manifest adolescents' desire and pursuit. Her representative works include Sunflower Missing in 1890 and Oath Bird. Jiang Fangzhou graduated from Tsinghua University. As a precocious and intelligent writer, she completed prose collection Unlatched the Window onto the Paradise at the age of 9, completed long novel We are Growing at the age of 11, and later published works such as The Rainbow Rider, Number One Schoolgirl and Features of Rumors successively. She breaks with the traditional writing mode, and his easy and casual words seem disorderly but are free, intelligent and novel to readers.

Among "post-80s" writers, Han Han and Guo Jingming have the most extensive influence in the society and are also fashion figures active in various media. Han Han is a race car driver, writer and magazine editor. He began to write in junior high school, won first prize in the first "New Concept Writing Competition" with his essay Seeing Ourselves in a Cup in 1999, and aroused attention from the literary circles. In the same year, Han Han in Senior Grade 1 chose to leave school and began his career of free writing. He successively published novels such as Triple Door, Riot in Chang'an City, A Fortress, Glory Days and 1988: I Want to Talk with the World and novel collections such as One Degree Below Freezing, Press Release 2003 and And I Drift. His representative work Triple Door manifests parent-child relations, teacher-student relations and classmate relations in young people's life from a high school student's perspective, and struck a responsive chord with teenager readers. In addition, the novel obviously uses oral language and is humorous. After being published, it became a bestseller, was later adapted into a TV series, and evoked great repercussions. Guo Jingming is not only a writer, but also a businessman and editor. His representative works include novels The City of Fantasies, Left Hand Shadow, Right Hand Years and Never Flowers in Never Dream, prose collection The Edge of Love and Pain, musical novels Hide-and-seek and Sword Heroes' Fate, and the Island magazine series edited by him.

Different from Han Han's sharp and jocose style, Guo Jingming's works show self-pitying and even narcissistic sentiments. His language is beautiful, classical, pure, elegant, and full of lonely and sad emotions. This keynote just conforms to adolescents' psychological state and touches young readers' hearts.

Today, "post-80s writing" has become a literary phenomenon in China's modern literary circles that cannot be ignored. As writers such as Chun Shu, Han Han and Li Shasha appeared on the front cover of the U.S. Time magazine, the world also began to pay attention to the growth of China's new generation of writers.

In the new century, "Internet literature" as a new literary form also rose quietly and kept developing. The popularization of the "Internet" brought new media carriers and dissemination modes for literature. Many Internet writers, especially "post-80s" and "post-90s" writers, began to publish their original works in the virtual space of the Internet, and carried out literary interaction. Blogs, forums, bulletin boards and some special websites have become platforms for communication of the latest Internet works.

As an emerging literary form, Internet literature has its salient features different from traditional literature. First, because of the open and virtual nature of the Internet, the existence of Internet literature is destined to be relatively free, so the success rate of works released by ordinary writers is much higher. After an original literary work is released, readers can give responses immediately and even directly participate in creation, so original literary works can be revised more freely. However, as a result of the existence of freedom, many Internet literary works do not have high quality and are even vulgar. This is also an important problem of Internet literature. Second, Internet literature manifests the mental attitude of resisting nobility in a certain sense. In comparison with traditional literature pursuing spiritual value of works and elegant linguistic styles, Internet literature is more prone to getting closer to ordinary people's daily life. To subvert traditional values, a lot of Internet literary works deconstructing classics have emerged. In terms of contents, Internet literature gives top priority to entertainment and amusement, and ridicule, derision and irony have also become their important linguistic characteristics. Third, the themes of Internet literature are diversified and the forms are flexible and numerous. Among them, "Internet novels" are most numerous and influential. According to themes, they can be classified into time travel novels, love novels, officialdom novels, fantasy novels, swordsman novels, historical novels, tomb-raid novels, etc.

In the course of Internet literature's development, "Internet writers" have played a critical role. From the 1990s to now, Internet writers became popular one batch after another, received social attention and won readers' recognition, but their works have short lifespans. Though there are a lot works, they usually do not last long.

As a new literary phenomenon, Internet literature has injected fresh blood into China's literary circles. At present, the development of Internet literature is not mature. Though there are excellent works, a lot of shoddy works also exist. How to correctly guide the development of Internet literature is an important issue facing the present era and society.