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Chinese Web Novels Are Rewriting The Entertainment Business

Chinese Web Novels Are Rewriting The Entertainment Business
Zeng Yuan

BEIJING — It seems not so long ago that people were still looking at online literature with disdain. But no one can deny that, at the very least, it is a very real business opportunity.

Last year, Choose the Day, a very popular Chinese online novel, was adapted into a webgame by Giant Interactive, a Chinese developer and operator of online video games. The same story was also adapted by digital giant Tencent into an animated film and has spawned various peripheral products.

In total, this online novel has so far generated tens of millions dollars worth of revenue. As of today, it's estimated that China has an online literature market of up to seven billion RMB ($1.1 billion), and will only grow bigger as mobile access expands.

The success story of Choose the Day is not an isolated case. Empresses in the Palace, a TV series based on the Internet novel of the same name and has swept through China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan, is another good example. It is expected to make its debut in the U.S. later this year and will be aired on the HBO cable network – the first ever Chinese TV series to be aired on a major American TV channel.

Written by Liuyanzi, one of China's most popular young novelists, Empresses in the Palace — also known as The Legend of Zhen Huan — depicts power-hungry infighting in the Qing emperor's harem and imperial court. Even for more conservative and older readers, Liuyanzi's fiction is much more exciting than the official Qing history.

Netflix, an American company, produced and broadcast last December a television drama series based on Marco Polo, a story which is largely based in China during the Middle Ages. It is particularly vexing for Chinese audiences to see Americans telling their history. However, the upcoming push-back by those delicate but malicious ladies of the court against the American-led Mongol armies will surely help Chinese people restore some pride in the face of America's "cultural aggression."

The birthplace of China's internet literature is Jinjiang Literature City, a paid-for literature website that began as a small Bulletin Board System (BBS). Today the website generates 60 million visits daily. Four hundred thousand authors and 650,000 novels are registered with it, meaning that on average an item is published each minute and a chapter is updated every three seconds on its website.

The number of clicks is the only criteria for online literature. The eReading by silent readers, probably somewhere in a subway, in a basement or in a villa, contributes to the potentially massive flow of popular online works of literature, and this has revolutionized the business models of editors and publishers in the old world.

Perhaps the most attractive aspect of all for readers is that not only can they search for books that they want to read thanks to the real-time popularity rankings, they may also change a writer's writing direction, by a simple click and payment.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War

They Tracked Down Ukraine's Missing Children In Russia, But Can't Get Them Home

An investigation by Russian independent news outlet Vazhnyye IstoriiImportant Stories found nearly 2,500 orphaned children who may have been forcibly deported from Ukraine and are being raised as Russians. There is no mechanism set up for their return.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presented with drawings by a young girl

President Volodymr Zelenskyy Opens Center for the Protection of Children’s Rights as part of the effort to return children illegally taken by Russia during the invasion of Ukraine

Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya

MOSCOW — Russia has a state database on orphans and children left without parental care, which publishes profiles of children available for adoption. Russian independent news outlet Vazhnyye Istorii/Important Stories found that children deported from Ukraine appeared in the database.

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The number of Ukrainian children openly sought for foster care by Russian authorities may be almost 2,500. The system does not facilitate searching for Ukrainian relatives of these children, nor does Russia provide the children with an opportunity to remain in Ukraine.

"Brushes, paints, an album — everything you need. I like it very much," says the boy as he examines the school kit donated by the volunteers. He has a cap on his head with "Together with Russia" written on it. He is 9-year-old Alexander Chizhkov, referred to in the TV report as a "forced migrant." Russian authorities removed him along with other orphaned children from Donetsk.

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