World embraces emerging Chinese icons

Novels charm readers

At first glance, Chinese wuxia novels may be hard to understand for foreign readers due to the genre's complicated cultural background and connotations. But more and more fans have been devoting themselves to the translation of these books, as well as the promotion of Chinese culture.

Wuxiaworld.com is a magnet for Chinese wuxia novel fans. Founded by Lai Jingping, a Chinese American, the online community has attracted dozens of novel translators and thousands of readers.

"Wuxiaworld starts like a fan website and is proof of the concept that Chinese culture, if done properly, has the chance to be spread to Western markets," said Lai, better known by his pseudonym RWX.

"I think it (Chinese fantasy novels) offers a different point of view," said Zak Dychtwald, an author from California who has been engaged in China-US cultural and people-to-people exchanges for years. He offered several examples of how Chinese fantasy novels offer a different perspective.

"There are different ideas of what it means to be a hero. There are different ideas of what it means to be family-oriented ... different ideas of what it means to be masculine or feminine," Dychtwald said.

Those Chinese versions of fantasy novels are really fascinating for the young generation, who for the most part have only come into contact with Western versions of such ideas, Dychtwald said. What's more, the Chinese versions can diversify readers' understanding of the world, he added.

In a Twitter poll on why Chinese novels have become popular, nearly 30 percent of the 3,000 participants said that the cultural elements attract them the most.

Many people further commented that Chinese fantasy novels, to some extent, help spread traditional Chinese philosophies like Taoism, which emphasizes harmony and balance in life.

Nearly half the participants said they identified with such values as justice as they are presented within the works, while around 22 percent said they enjoyed indulging themselves in the alternative reality created by the authors.