The letters of the law His online writing means that police officer Li gets barely four hours' sleep a night, but it nets him three times his official salary
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Still, there's no question that fantasy and love stories are the biggest online draws for Chinese men and women, respectively. Most of the romance novels in Chinese bookstores today started life online, with a particularly popular variety being maiden-meets-prince sagas set in imperial times. Ren Xin, a 31-year-old tai chi instructor in eastern Jiangsu province, noticed that female protagonists were missing from print wuxia novels, a historical martial-arts genre with the same escapist lure as medieval knight tales or western shoot-'em-ups. So in 2009, she logged on to Qidian, China's largest user-generated publishing platform, which is owned by Cloudary. "Readers like my female characters because they are independent and strong," says the woman whose pen name is White Feathered Swallow. Ren's books now garner around 1 million clicks each, and she has secured a contract with a print publishing firm to write a modern romance. "It's so hard for a new writer to get published in China," she says. "There's no way I could have gotten a contract if I hadn't started writing online first."
But popularity can be dangerous. Most best-selling online titles are pirated — a systemic problem that plagues all forms of Chinese media. And if novelists are late in posting a new chapter, frustrated readers often will write their own. "There's a whole different ending out there for one of my books, and there's nothing I can do about it," says tomb-raider novelist Xu. "Sometimes I struggle to convince people that's not what I really wrote."
But the biggest danger with recognition is triggering attention from the authorities. The unpredictability of official interference is wearying, even within the looser filaments binding the Web. Successful writers have been charged with pornography, and time-travel shows have elicited a surprise scolding from China's media czars, who on occasion have effectively banned such programs for "treating serious history in a frivolous way." Thus, while the TV version of Every Step, which aired late last year, was a huge hit and even spawned copycat programs, the show was never rebroadcast during prime time in China, as most top-rated shows are.
"You never know what's going to be censored," sighs Zongheng's Zhang. "It could just be anything." Xu says even the most innocuous character could be forbidden. "You know how in X-Men, the Wolverine helps American soldiers out in different wars?" he asks, using a Hollywood example. "In China, you could never have such a character because then you'd be getting into sensitive history and wars. I'd love to develop a character like him, but I know where the line is, and I'm not going to cross it."
Those lines are hardening. Last year, the Communist Party announced a campaign to strengthen "cultural security" and promote "socialist core values." In January, entertainment programming on satellite TV, including shows based on online novels, was slashed to make way for content emphasizing "social responsibility." Movie studios have been told to get in on the socialist-values act. Could online novels and their print analogs be next? "I don't know what those government scholars are thinking every day," says police novelist Li. "If they were to ban the kinds of topics I write about, then it would be a very sad situation because I could do nothing about it."
In the end, though, the biggest demands facing the online-writing business may not come from above but below. Grave-robber writer Xu makes a chopping motion against his neck when talking about the pressure from insatiable readers. Fiction websites say twice-daily updates are needed to keep readers hooked. Three times is even better. Once readers lose interest in a novel, it's almost impossible to lure them back since there are so many engaging stories out there. "Some writers can spend 10 years working on one book," Xu says enviously. "But on the Internet, you sometimes have to produce 10,000 characters a day because it's all about the money. Can you really call yourself a writer in that circumstance, or are you just a worker who happens to use words?"
Back in Xiangyuan, Li hunches over a keyboard in his monastic cell of a bedroom, determined to churn out 8,000 Chinese characters a day to appease his 20,000-strong fan base. Chain-smoking to keep himself awake, he rarely falls asleep before 4 in the morning before reporting for duty at the police station by 8. "The work load is unimaginable," he says. Li makes triple his police salary with his online writing. But he won't quit his day job. Xiangyuan is a conservative place where Chairman Mao's portrait still hangs in the main square. His family isn't convinced that a job sending words into the ether is a proper career. "They think that only working for the government or a coal mine is a serious pursuit," says Li. "To them, my writing is just a game." For millions of Chinese — including the authorities — it's already much more.
— with reporting by Chengcheng Jiang and Jessie Jiang / Beijing