Today’s post comes to you from Yue (Cathy) Wang

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China’s Missing Genre: The Struggle for YA Literature

In today’s Chinese children’s book market, the YA category is relatively underdeveloped.

Back in the 1980s, Chen Danyan 陈丹燕 wrote the novella Death of a Schoolgirl 女中学生之死, based on a real event that happened in Shanghai in the 1980s—the suicide of a 15-year-old middle school girl. Chen incorporated the dead girl’s diary into this beautiful yet heartbreaking novella. In 1996, Yu Xiu 郁秀, then sixteen years old, published the novel The Season of Flowers and Rain 花季雨季, which offered a genuine portrayal of high school life, including exam pressure and adolescent romance. The Paper Puppy 纸人 (2000), written by Yin Jianling (殷健灵), is called by some critics China’s first young adult novel for its bold depiction of girls’ sexuality.

• Left: Chen Danyan’s The Death of a Schoolgirl, which has a Japanese translation.
• Right: Yu Xiu’s The Season of Flowers and Rain (1996)

• Left: Chinese version of Yin Jianling’s The Paper Puppy (2000)
• Right: The English translation of Yin Jianling’s The Paper Puppy (2016) — (Translator?)

Yet, after more than two decades of vigorous growth in Chinese children’s literature, aside from categories such as picture books, fairy tales, and middle-grade fiction, which have seen exponential growth, the original YA fiction published has not progressed much beyond the 1980s and 1990s; indeed, it may have stagnated or even regressed.

The censorship system bears much of the blame for the absence of YA in China. Under China’s unique cultural policies, any reading material ostensibly written for minors is inevitably subject to a more stringent censorship regime than general literature. Themes common in Western YA fiction—such as first love and first sexual experiences, school bullying, domestic violence, and suicide—struggle to pass censorship in China.

Even if a work manages to slip through the net and be published, there is no guarantee it will not face criticism from relatively conservative parents or even be reported to the authorities. Despite this, a number of commendable YA novels have emerged in recent years.

Yin Jianling’s Orange Fish (橘子鱼, 2007) depicts a teenage mother. Wang Yuehan‘s 汪玥含 The Rose in Bloom (乍放的玫瑰, 2012) addresses depression and suicide among adolescent girls, and Huang Chunhua’s 黄春华 She Once Was a True Love of Mine (她从前是我深爱的人, 2014) explores the blurred boundaries between female friendship and romance. Wang Luqi’s 王璐琪book Fourteen Is Beautiful (十四岁很美, 2021) is the newest one in line, and centers on a young girl’s painful experience of sexual assault.

These novels represent valuable endeavors, yet they seem to have received little attention. Most of these books are published by state-owned publishing houses, typically provincial children’s publishing houses, which may not be particularly skilled in marketing and promotion.

• Left: Yin Jianling’s Orange Fish (2007)
• Right: Wang Yuehan’s The Rose in Bloom (2012)

• Left: Huang Chunhua’s She Once Was a True Love of Mine (2014)
• Right: Wang Luqi’s Fourteen is Beautiful (2021)

Compared with these works written by adult authors specifically for a young adult audience, another group of works is more popular among young adult readers. These novels are written by adolescents and new adults themselves. Writers born between 1980 and 1989 are the first generation to grow up under the one-child policy and during the period of economic reform and opening up. Their writings are refreshing compared to the Chinese literary tradition, freely expressing their inner feelings and paying no attention to social issues or moral philosophy. Their writings deal with themes such as adolescent friendship, love, sexuality, discontent towards school and parents, and feelings of loneliness and isolation, and thus elicit emotional resonance with readers of a similar age.

In these novels, dating, romantic relationships, and sex are indispensable aspects of their protagonists’ growing-up process. They are called qingchun wenxue 青春文学 (youth literature), and the writers wrote about adolescent experiences from within that experience, often while still in their teens or early twenties. Chun Shu’s 春树 Beijing Doll (北京娃娃, 2001) and Zhang Yueran’s 张悦然 Cherry’s Distance (樱桃之远, 2004) are representative examples of the post-1980s writing group.

• Left: Chun Shu’s Beijing Doll (2002)
• Right: English translation of Beijing Doll (2004), translated by Howard Goldblatt

See also Du, Yan. “When Paper Puppy Meets Beijing Doll: Reading Adolescent Female Sexuality in Two Chinese Youth Novels.” The International Journal of Young Adult Literature 3.1 (2022).

• Zhang Yueran’s Cherry’s Distance (2004)

Many post-1980s writers are now in their middle age and their writing has moved beyond coming-of-age stories. What remains popular among the younger generation, Generation Z, is internet literature. Chinese internet literature refers to serialized fiction published on dedicated online platforms, by amateur or professional authors, typically in genre forms such as fantasy, adventure and romance, and consumed by a mass digital readership. They are not YA literature per se, but some of them feature young adult protagonists and depict school life, attracting a significant readership among teenagers and young adults.

Young adult readers’ embrace of internet literature suggests a new definition of YA literature: rather than emphasizing adult authors’ intentions, it foregrounds readers’ own choices. It helps to underscore reader agency as a defining feature of YA literature. Moreover, internet literature, compared to print publishing, is less restricted by censorship, allowing novels with queer themes to be written and accessed by young queer readers, although such content has increasingly come under regulatory pressure in recent years.

Wu Zhe’s 巫哲 Run Wild (撒野, 2016) follows two teenage boys from broken families who find solace and love in each other in a desolate northern town. ‎ It has been translated into English by the publisher Seven Seas Entertainment.

For example, see:

• https://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=2956313 Run Wild (撒野）by Wu She
• https://www.jjwxc.net/onebook.php?novelid=3173202 Mou Mou (某某）by Mu Suli (it is a  novel about two teenagers, who become stepbrothers after their parents start dating. They progress from being hostile strangers and deskmates to supportive soulmates, facing pressures of family, school, and forced separation before reuniting in adulthood.) 

• Left: Wu Zhe’s Run Wild, originally serialised on Jinjiang Literature City (https://www.jjwxc.net )
• Right: English translation of Run Wild — and see series listed on Goodreads. Translators Amixy and Nande M.

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Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect those of GLLI.

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