The sky is boundless, and the thoughts are endless.
A small series of research on "Internet Literature and Online Student Culture"
The Early Ecology of Online Culture and Online Literature
Qiao Huanjiang
What should be the starting point of online literature? Was it 1998's "First Intimate Encounter" by Tsai Zicai, or Rosen's "The Story of Style", which began to be serialized in 1997? Recently, the online literature research community's inquiry into this issue seems to be based on some historical details, in fact, this so-called "source" can only be regarded as the "mirror origin" of the mainstream form of online literature - imagining the exact starting point of a text or literary technology cannot but be said to be subservient and defending the current fait accompli form of online literature. As Gramsci put it: "Literature cannot produce literature", it cannot be "parthenogenesis", it needs the "positive factor" of history and revolution. For the occurrence of Chinese online literature, this "positive factor" can only be a historical change since the 1990s, and even the network interconnection technology closely related to online literature must be interacted with this specific historical situation in order to grasp its true face and exact role in the practice of online literature. In other words, instead of obsessing over finding a single starting point for a certain form of online literature, it is better to return to the historical and cultural context in which online literature can be bred, and try to grasp the diversified sources of online literature in the network culture that began to appear in the mid-to-late 1990s.
Early cyberspace and the prevalence of online literature
Cover of the 1983 edition of The Third Wave
In 1983, the futurist Alvin Toffler's Third Wave, published by the Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triad Bookstore, predicted that information technology would soon drive social change, and although it could only arouse conjecture in the field of people's ideas, in fact, the Chinese government soon realized the strategic significance of the information revolution. In the late 1980s, the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences had already realized the ability to send e-mails to Europe via satellite, and subsequently, local networks began to be developed in the field of scientific research and education, the most representative of which were the Network of Institutes of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHEP) and the Zhongguancun Regional Education and Research Demonstration Network (NCFC). In the early 1990s, the United States led the world in formulating the "information superhighway" strategy, and by April 1994, China's NCFC had achieved a full-featured connection to the Internet through a 64K dedicated line. But in the year that followed, it was still "a non-open academic network stage, mainly in the fields of scientific research and education." In May 1995, the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications announced the opening of access services to the public, and since then it has entered a stage of complete open marketization. This became the most important change in China's Internet in 1995, and since then, internet access and internet use have become a new fashion for institutions and individuals." At the end of that year, the number of registered Internet users in Chinese mainland was close to 4,000, and in the following years, the Internet industry developed rapidly under the impetus of a series of national policies, and by 2000, the number of Internet users in the mainland had reached 16.9 million. Indeed, the Web has become a new "scale", structurally involved in the reshaping of news communication, business, finance and other fields. Only by fully realizing this macro historical context can we realize why the significance of Chinese online literature has far exceeded the traditional literary field, can we understand why Chinese online literature will become a unique landscape in the production of literature in various countries in the world, and can we understand the development of network literature promoted by global elements such as media technology innovation and capital. The creative significance, value and problems of the Chinese experience of online literature.
In the surging wave of the Internet, China's online literature has also quickly taken on a variety of forms of exploration, showing a mixed and old and infinite vitality. Of course, we should note the unobtrusive relevance of Chinese mainland early online literature to online literature in North America and Taiwan. The first Chinese publication to go online in China was the electronic edition of Shenzhou Scholar, which was officially published in January 1995, which seemed logical, because the main readership at that time was still a group of overseas students. In addition, after the Internet began to be used for the first time, a small number of domestic leading online literature writers often published articles in overseas online journals such as "New Language Silk" and ACT, and some even served as editors for them, and banly (later famous IT critics) in the early days of Guangdong was very typical. Although a civilian, but the stupid fox as early as 1994 the Internet just connected to the country began to surf the Internet, in 1995 began to write online essays and for the "New Language Silk" and "Bookhouse" as an editor, in 1997 founded the electronic magazine "Dreamless Island Weekly", as a network writing personal site in the country is the first trend, NetEase opened a personal homepage service, the weekly newspaper was renamed "Torrent", the author basically writes and uploads original articles every weekend, sometimes there are poetry essays and other literary works mixed in. Some characteristics of North American internet literature also naturally affect the understanding of cyberspace and network literature by early Chinese internet writers, such as the clumsy fox combing the characteristics and values of network literature in detail in his famous work on network literature "Weaving the Net", basically the recognition of the values embodied in North American Chinese network literature, such as "the unique values of network literature creation: not for fame, not for profit, just so that they can express their ideas and emotions to more people", and so on" Online literature is also a kind of desire for an ideal network for individual life that travels between networks, and this pursuit is not a technical future vision, but more of a sensual and more humanitarian spiritual need." Another example is his four-point summary of the characteristics of online literature: "freedom and flexibility" (including "freedom of technique" and "freedom of content"), "vivid humor", "short and concise", and "marginalization of talking about the world", these views are generally still expressed in the concept of values as the recognition of social values such as freedom and equality, but in terms of specific writing attitudes and production methods, they often pose a challenge to traditional literature.
From the mid-1990s to the beginning of the 21st century, although Chinese online literature is in a stage of growth and continuous technological update due to the Internet, it has also appeared in various BBSs, virtual communities, personal web pages, blogs, a variety of literary writing exploration practices, and even special literary websites such as "Under the Banyan Tree", and some online writers (such as the "Troika" of online literature and Anne Baby, etc.) have also become famous on the Internet because of their high popularity, and the Internet has crossed the distance and barrier. It has also brought Taiwanese online literature into the vision of Chinese mainland netizens, and the works of online writers such as Cai Zhiheng and Jiu Dao have quickly attracted a large number of readers, and in turn have affected the development direction of Chinese online novels. Among them, Cai Zhiheng's online novel "The First Intimate Contact" was reprinted by major forums in China, causing many netizens to follow, which was "the first time that online literature caused a sensation in the mainland, and many people only knew about online literature because of this work." ...... The publication of the book became a landmark event, which meant that BBS officially 'sensationalized China' as the first mature Internet application in the early days; 1998 was also known as the "first year of BBS" in the true sense of the Internet industry. (Ouyang Youquan and Yuan Xingjie, eds., Chronicles of Chinese Internet Literature) In addition, some newly emerging portals such as Sina and NetEase have also begun to participate in the production of online literature through channel settings, providing platform space and even awards, and many traditional writers have also begun to try to enter the cyberspace. From the gradual emergence of the scale effect of the Internet around 1997 to the beginning of 2003 Chinese network comprehensive charging system, the development of Chinese online literature can be described as a crowd of people and a variety of forms, but it is also in this state of public noise, some of which meet with some elements that may have an important impact on the production of online literature after this, and by chance, they gradually rise to the main form.
Overall, the production of online literature in this period is basically in the exploration stage of transformation from spontaneous to conscious, from free to commercial testing. On the one hand, spontaneous attempts based on personal interests, unclear target groups of writing, and diversified explorations of text forms appear almost simultaneously; on the other hand, the initial commercialization attempts of some websites, as well as the platform design of commercial websites, have also produced certain potential restrictions and influences on the production of online literature, as far as the language form of online literature is concerned, some forums will often form a language paradigm recognized by forum netizens after a period of development, and then potentially regulate the discourse mode and even value orientation of the author of the post. Gradually form the prototype of some type patterns. In the initial stage, whether it is BBS or virtual community section, although there is a moderator, but most of them are active and convincing netizens in the forum, their identity is not the professional gatekeeper of traditional literary journal editors, as long as the forum posts do not touch extremely sensitive topics, do not violate the national Internet regulations, they can be posted in the forum, so the literary works in it are mainly driven by the author's personal interests, most of them will not be carefully conceived, and there is no clear classification of the target readers. This naturally leads to uneven quality of work in forums and communities, and the overall level is not too high. The development and opening of NetEase's personal homepage has created a large number of amateur literary creators' personal space, and many people carefully manage their own web pages in their leisure time, upload or directly create their own works in the input interface provided by the web pages. Strictly speaking, these words cannot be called works in general. One is because the network can take an anonymous way, many netizens turn their space into a private space to record life fragments, emotional outpouring and even emotional venting, such text lacks the necessary layout of the article, and does not consider the effect of readers reading, most of which can be classified as self-whispering; second, due to the limitations of storage technology at that time, the website cannot provide free large-capacity space for each netizen, the writing board has certain restrictions on the bytes of each article, and during the period from writing to uploading, the preservation and correction of documents are more cumbersome Therefore, many works are basically written in one go, without too many modifications, and their roughness is inevitable. It is worth noting that because the basic layout of the personal home page is mainly designed by the website background, although the website will also provide different page layouts for users to choose, and also provide some materials for netizens to decorate their own selected layouts, but the overall number of layouts is limited, and the functional settings are similar. Although the website will also encourage netizens to design some layouts to upload to the website, but the design of layouts needs to master some of the corresponding programming technology language, therefore, most netizens are still only in the website collection of layouts to choose, which makes netizens in the relatively free writing space at the same time, but also to a certain extent for the website design platform restrictions and regulations.
For the convenience of description, we can divide into three major sections according to the different platforms on which online literary practice relies at this stage, namely forum community (BBS), literary website and personal blog. In addition to the portal site consciously invites some influential writers to write blogs under the portal, thus producing a certain degree of public influence, the vast majority of other individuals write and are read by individuals or a small number of friends, and their status is also complex and difficult to characterize. We follow the established trajectory of the development of online literature and focus on describing the situation of BBS and literary websites in this period.
Cat Flutter and Tianya: The Emotional Structure of Online Culture and Genre Fiction
First, let's look at some of the trends that have occurred on the BBS. BBS is the main space for early netizens to gather, because the forum form provides an unprecedented free and free communication space for authors and readers, and gradually forms some netizens' collective default language methods and value interests in a long-term exchange collision. It is in this fertile soil of online culture, which is similar to the continuation of folk witty culture, that a new form of interactive writing has begun to emerge, and it is in this interactive writing and reading that some prototypes of online genre novels have gradually been generated. The genre novel that became popular later naturally has its more intimate source, but the specific emotional structure that it can grow and echo, and even the basic character setting and plot logic of the novel itself, are the results of the early online culture. The early communities with high influence among netizens were typically represented by "Cat Flutter Smorgasbord" and "Tianya Virtual Community", and we focused on some important trends in these two large forums.
The cat poker website released an announcement on April 15, 2021, and officially closed the posting function from April 20.
Created in October 1997, Cat Poker was originally just a small community of unknown TV and computer game enthusiasts, and later launched cat poker smorgasbord became a "themeless, no object boundaries" BBS, quickly gathered a large number of netizens, by September 2003 registered users have approached eight million, has now exceeded 130 million. Maopu calls itself the "birthplace of Internet pop culture", although it is self-exaggerated, but it is by no means unfounded. In fact, many of the Internet buzzwords that people used in the future were indeed born in the cat poker. The introductory phrase "Cat Poker has three treasures, BT, YY, no worries" represents the main spiritual trend of this early urban grassroots community, and the netizens of Cat Poker call themselves Mopper, and the forum has obviously gradually and spontaneously evolved into a subcultural space for them to get rid of the pressure of reality. "There's a place where such a group of people gather. They are active and insightful; they can analyze the seemingly inconspicuous details of our lives to the point of applause; they are BT, but not perverted, but jumpy thinking; they call themselves Moppers. BT ("Perverted" mop.com Hanyu Pinyin initials) and YY (the chinese Pinyin initials of "obscenity") can be described as the discourse rules of cat fluttering, but these two Internet buzzwords are not exactly consistent with their Chinese vocabulary: "This BT is not low-level fun, but points out unexpected rather than repetitive creativity, jumping thinking, kind and intelligent ridicule to create personalized posts, which are popular on cat poking. Created a lot of network trend statements. And YY does not only refer to sexual fantasies, although its production is related to the sexual fantasies of netizens, but soon exceeds the narrow scope of sex, but "refers to all fantasies beyond reality, which can be regarded as a kind of 'daydream' in cyberspace." ...... The basic function of YY is to satisfy all the desires of the reader in the illusory space, whether elegant or vulgar, to obtain imaginative satisfaction in YY". (Blue Blue," "The Evolutionary History of Cat Poker")
The early Moppers were mostly urban grassroots IT men concentrated in Shanghai, Beijing and other places, in the era of rapid development of the computer Internet industry, most of them worked long hours, intensity, work space and daily life closed monotonous, boring and tedious, the virtual world of cat flutter has become a space for them to release themselves and regulate their emotions. The slogan of Moppers is "BT is reasonable, YY is not guilty", because here, jumping out of thinking and ridiculing language can break the stereotypes of everyday life, and legendary experiences and mysterious stories can arouse everyone's interest. Once some of the usual emotional fantasies are triggered by a Mopper topic, there will immediately be many Moppers involved, have to follow the "building", or urge the "landlord" to update the progress of the event, or give advice to the "landlord", if the event develops according to everyone's imagination and finally appears the desired ending, it will often cause the carnival of the Mopper and become more Classic Essence Hot Posts recommended by More Moppers to each other. Often, netizens throw out an introduction to events they have experienced in their own (or imaginary) daily life, such as encountering the girl they like, strange encounters, mysterious characters, strange experiences, etc., and then continue to post in the curious questioning and common expectations of netizens, and finally form a relatively complete story, and because they witness or even participate in the development process of the event, Moppers often have a strong sense of substitution.
Of these stories that appear in cat poker, there are three types that can attract the attention of a large number of netizens, of which the most influential is the urban emotion category. IT men's working environment women are less, coupled with overtime work so that they have little opportunity to contact the opposite sex, the desire and fantasy of the opposite sex is naturally more intense, therefore, the subway or elevator encounter, the company's new female clerks and even female bosses will become the object of daydreaming, how to develop a relationship with the occasional object, often in an almost network live broadcast way every day by the "landlord" posted the latest progress, a lot of Mopper posts encouragement, give advice or brain supplement deduction of a more detailed plot may, Together, they drive the plot forward. Because there are often many posts, Maopu also set up a "only look at the landlord" to read the post function, which is convenient for netizens who pay attention to the event to keep up with the rhythm, and makes the event finally read as a complete story. The other two categories that have a greater impact are mysterious or legendary, one is a ghost story, and the other is a soprano legend. These two types of stories break through the small living space of The Moppers, the fresh and exciting plot satisfies their desire and curiosity to explore the world and society, and the narrator often tells the story in the tone of personal experience or witness, so that netizens have a strong sense of substitution, and one or two fragments of strong continuity that can only be provided every day will cause them to have a strong desire to read, so they are often crowded. To this day, Cat Poker still retains a "ghost talk" section. It should be said that this is already the prototype of the later production model of online genre novels, whether it is the content orientation and discourse style of the story itself, or the interaction with readers in the process of story production and interpretation and its accumulation of fan popularity, and even the Mopper launched by Maopu can use props such as "lifebuoys" and "eye-catching lights" to improve the attention of posts, etc. These experiences have been used by later commercialized genre novels. However, as a forum, cat poker has always maintained the principle of free sharing of the netizen community, although the props mentioned earlier need to be purchased with cat poker coins (also known as cat skin, MP), but cat poker coins do not need netizens to buy, but a community reward mechanism, "accumulating MP is an important means for cat poker to motivate community members to participate." Generally speaking, to get MP, you need to participate in a lot of community activities and posts, but another faster way to get MP is to be a 'bounty hunter', that is, to get MP rewards by answering questions about other people's bounties. When a community member needs to solve a problem, he posts on the cat and promises a certain number of MPs as a reward. Interested members can answer questions based on their knowledge and information, and the questioner will reward the member who gave the satisfactory answer accordingly. (Peng Lan's "Cat Poker Community Discussion") Cat Poker Coin is obtained by participating in community construction, and can be freely transferred between Moppers in a "different" way, which ensures free sharing of information in the community, mutual assistance and cooperation among netizens, thus ensuring the main position of netizens in the production of the forum to the greatest extent.
If maopu mainly represents the spontaneous network literature production of grassroots netizens dominated by IT men, the face of the Tianya virtual community (referred to as the Tianya community) is relatively more representative of the main trend of the folk mainstream of knowledge production in the 1990s. Founded in March 1999, Tianya Community quickly became China's "most influential forum". Different from the post-70s and post-80s youths who mainly gathered at that time, the users of the Tianya community had a greater age span, so the degree of socialization of the topic was higher, coupled with the content cooperation with the "Tianya" magazine that was also ideological, humanistic and socially caring in Hainan at the beginning of its creation, and some scholars and writers also joined under pseudonyms (such as the moderator of Tianya Zongheng is Li Tuo, who is pseudonymous Lao Leng, and jiang Zidan and other famous writers also posted on the forum as netizens. A group of intellectuals who regard themselves as non-governmental or non-governmental intellectuals have also taken the Tianya community as the main position of their own discourse practice), so that the Tianya community has formed the characteristics of openness, inclusiveness and humanistic feelings, and the settings of some sections such as "Tianya Miscellaneous Talk", "Guantian Tea House", "Dancing Literature and Ink", "Idle Writing", "Cooking Wine and Discussing History" and so on clearly reflect the non-utilitarian humanistic value orientation. For the organization and management of the forum, Hu Bin, editor-in-chief of Tianya Community, once had an image statement: "For example, we are like a property company, netizens are owners, we just do cleaning and management environment for them, so that everyone is willing to speak and communicate there." "From the traditional gatekeeper to the property service of the online community, the intention of the Tianya community to fully mobilize and exert the creativity of the main body of netizens is very clear, which makes the Tianya community still maintain considerable influence, and many social events that have a major impact are first issued by the Netizens of the Tianya community." In such an atmosphere, some famous online writers such as Murong Xuecun, That Year Mingyue, Ning Caishen, Ten Years of Chopping Firewood, Bu Fei Yan, etc., have also successively moved from the Tianya community to the public vision. Murong Xuecun's "Chengdu, Please Forget Me Tonight" was first published in "Dancing Literature and Ink", when Mingyue's "Those Things of the Ming Dynasty" was once serialized in "Cooking Wine on history", while another popular section of the Tianya community, "Lotus Peng Ghost Talk", became a well-known suspense literature mecca in China, and the "Ghost Blowing Lights" sung by the world was a classic of online literature from here. Compared with the BT and YY culture spontaneously formed by maopu grassroots netizens, the literary discourse practice of the Tianya community has a more humanistic atmosphere, and its concern for social complexity based on social justice is also more obvious. To some extent, many literary practices in the Tianya community imply the possibility of meeting the humanistic literary tradition with folk demands and their popular tastes.
It can be said that it is the free opening of the forum, the sharing of resources, and the dilution of the role of the gatekeeper and the completion of the survival of the fittest by the netizen community and many other strategies, which make the online literary practice in this space produce the initial state of genre literature based on the creativity of netizens and the wisdom and interest of netizens. In addition to the aforementioned cat poker and Tianya communities, Xilu BBS is also a very important space for the development of online literature. After 2000, a group of important literary BBS sections were gathered in the early days of the personal forum space provided in Xilu at a low price, and a group of online fantasy literature (culture) enthusiasts became an important foundation for the large-scale development of online fantasy literature. In the early days, the idealism supported by network technology and the culture of netizen groups were very lively, but this good trend of spontaneous growth of online literature has not been continued for a long time, and after accumulating huge popularity, capital has also keenly glimpsed huge business opportunities from it. Maopu was soon acquired by Thousand Oaks Group in 2004, and then began large-scale commercialization; the pace of commercialization of the Tianya community was slow (it began to cooperate with Google in April 2007), but it also faced the coveting of other commercial websites, some influential internet literary masterpieces were repeatedly poached, "Ghost Blowing Lights" was quickly bought by the starting point Chinese Network, and Mingyue also signed a contract with Sina that year and changed to sina blog serialization. As the commercialization of a number of literary websites accelerated, the lively grand scene of the forum was quickly overshadowed.
From "Literature on the Web" to Web Book Stations
The literary websites created at this stage were also diverse. From the perspective of content, traditional literature and network originality have their own positions, personal interests, and communities are wonderful; from the perspective of operation mode, there are free sharing, copyright transfer, and netizen payment, which can be described as different forms. We selected several typical representatives of different types of literary websites to analyze them separately.
Screenshot of the "Under the Banyan Tree" website
China's first original literary website was known as Under the Banyan Tree, which originated on December 25, 1997, by william Zhu, a Chinese-American, on the PC home website. Before founding Banyan Tree, William Zhu had just sold the first foreign-funded advertising company in China, "Lianmei Advertising", which he founded, to the international advertising giant Omnicom Group for $12.45 million. The favorable economic conditions made his banyan tree maintain a non-profit nature for a period of time, and personal hobbies and spiritual sustenance were the main motivations for the creation of web pages and websites, so the banyan under the banyan website was only taken care of by William Zhu at the beginning. If one does not have a strong literary interest, or even a literary ideal, it is difficult to imagine one insisting on such a non-utilitarian work that requires a high degree of material and energy commitment. In July 1997, Banyan Applied for registration of his own top-level domain name www.rongshu.com, and began to hire some of the network writers with writing strength found by William Zhu (such as Li Xunhuan, Ning Caishen, Annie Baby, etc.) to establish an editorial team. Although the banyan tree website was still not commercialized for a period of time in the early days of its establishment, the funding of Lianmei Advertising also laid the groundwork for the fate of the banyan tree that was later known as the "Chinese Literature Portal". At this initial stage, we see that under the banyan tree, there is no such thing as the noise of sentient beings and the carnival of the group, and the editorial review system it implements is obviously a reference and continuation of the traditional paper literature production mechanism, which also has obvious traces of the ideological content and aesthetic taste of the column setting and published works under the banyan tree. Although William Zhu wanted to establish a more democratic literary kingdom and wanted to allow more ordinary people to express their feelings about life through the banyan tree, he was very conscious of being in the literary tradition. For the concept of online literature, William Zhu once said: "I think its name should be changed to 'literature on the Internet' more appropriately." The so-called network literature is to give literature a broader world, give everyone more equal opportunities, let literature have more fertile soil, and let it grow freely in the lives of the masses. Perhaps it is from this realization that Banyan Tree, even as a website that is already commercial by birth, does not regard the creation and reading process of online literature itself as a means of profit. The website provides a free publishing platform for authors, and online readers can read it completely free of charge and can leave comments, which seems to be a free and democratic web space for literary exchange.
Relatively speaking, Banyan Tree strives to obtain a certain proportion of the income by making online literary works enter the traditional publishing and distribution channels of paper literature, that is, through copyright transfer, which shows its recognition or compromise with the traditional literary production mechanism. However, under the banyan tree is a cyberspace after all, although to a certain extent, the role of the literary gatekeeper is still set, but for the literature lovers among netizens, this threshold is after all much lower, and the editors themselves are the writers who have grown up on the Internet, so in the process of selecting editors, they will not fully comply with the standards of traditional paper literary magazines. Relatively speaking, the popular aspects of literature, the reflection of individual daily life and even online life, the language ingenuity of cyberspace, and the care of readers' emotions are the unique characteristics of online literature under the banyan tree compared with pure literature. Of course, between the "network" of online literature and the "literary" of pure literature, or between the civilian nature of online literature and the eliteness of pure literature, there is no seamless integration, in the selection process of several online original literature competitions held under the banyan tree since 1999, the opinions between the elite writers and network writers in the judges are different, although in the end it is the literary elite that grasps the decision, but the contradiction between the two can still be seen. It can be said that even in the banyan tree, which intends to continue with the literary tradition of literary websites, the challenge of online civilian literature to elite literature is actual, but on the whole, it does not completely commercialize online literature itself, but still hopes to gain the recognition of mainstream literature by entering the traditional literary production mechanism, and expand its power in traditional media in order to share in the traditional media industry (traditional paper media, physical book publishing and even radio and film). Its choice also makes it difficult for its operation to be successful when there are some difficulties in its operation, and the buyer chosen is precisely the international publishing group Bertelsmann, and the online writers who have come out of here, such as Li Xunhuan and Annie Baby, have gained fame and fortune by publishing physical books. Later, Annie Baby tried to wash away her identity as an internet writer, repeatedly claiming that she was a writer, and canceled the heavy identity of the Internet; Li Xunhuan changed back to his original name Lu Jinbo, quickly became a cultural manager, and became a famous best-selling book publisher, his signed Han Han, Baby Annie, Rao Xueman, An Yiru, Shi Kang and other writers, through the publication and distribution of physical books, earned a lot of money, and through the successful positioning of young readers, created an enduring phenomenon of youth literature.
In the initial stage of the development of the Mainland Internet, netease and other portals and some BBS once provided users with free space sites or forum sections, and around some book stations that specialized in collecting and publishing certain types of literary works, many netizens with similar reading preferences formed some typed creative reading communities. Known as "China's first permanent free original literature portal" of the "Phantom Sword Book Alliance" is composed of shu love Xiaozhu, Stone Book City, Small Book Pavilion, Condensed Wind World first formed an alliance in 2000, and then merged in 2001, the merged Phantom Sword Book Alliance to fantasy, martial arts novels as the main type of the website, the initial free strategy, so that it gathered a large number of readers, some known as "big god" level writers such as Tang Jia Sanshao, Xiao Ding, etc. have been serialized in the Phantom Sword Book League. Xilu.com's BBS is also an early online literature platform, from which literary forums such as "Self-Amusement", "Red Dust Pavilion" and "Obstinate" joined the "Dragon's Sky" founded in August 2000, and established the "Dragon's Sky" original alliance website, and "once based on 'Xilu', and in November 2001, Wu Wenhui, Bao Jianfeng (Lin Tingfeng) and other fantasy literature lovers who founded the Occult Fiction Association, established an independent website in May 2002, and renamed the Original Novel Association - Starting Point Chinese Network, Referred to as 'Starting Point Chinese Network'. (Ma Ji, Perspectives and Notes on Online Literature)
The occurrence of fantasy works such as fantasy and fantasy literature in Chinese online literature is a very noteworthy issue. Many researchers have mentioned that since 2002, with the release of the movie "The Lord of the Rings" series and the release of J. K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series of novels triggered a fantasy literature boom among Chinese teenagers, and some researchers have noticed that before the introduction of the popular European and American board game "Dungeons and Dragons" into China, it is a role-playing strategy game with a "Western-style overhead world" setting, "spread through the earliest batch of Netizens in China, directly affecting the production of Chinese online fantasy literature." (Shao Yanjun edited "Broken Wall Book") Stimulated by Western fantasy novels and games, and also due to the popularity of Hong Kong writer Huang Yi's fantasy martial arts novels (Wu Wenhui, the founder of the starting Chinese network, regarded Huang Yi as the "originator of online novels"), Oriental-style fantasy overhead history novels began to appear. Behind the connection of these facts, there is actually a deeper cultural logic. The direct motivation for the rise of fantasy genre novels such as fantasy, fantasy, and historical overhead is the influence and stimulation of popular culture such as European and American fantasy genre novels, Chinese Hong Kong and Taiwan fantasy martial arts novels, electronic and online games, etc., on the other hand, it reminds us to pay attention to the intergenerational changes in the author groups and reader groups of such novels. From the clue of intergenerational transformation, we can probably find out how the power and cultural logic of a particular historical period defines the genre direction of online literature, and in what way genre literature is embedded in history. Popular culture and video game culture from Europe, the United States, Japan and China, Hong Kong and Taiwan are undoubtedly the popular cultural products of the fairly mature cultural industries in these regions, and their entry into the Chinese mainland is the result of the logic of globalized consumerist culture; and for the only children of China's post-80s and post-90s who are in the growth stage at that time, the cultivation of ethical concepts is often limited to one family, highlighting personalized education strategies and making them less likely to accept the influence of collectivism. Thus there is actually a fault line in the worldview. In the post-revolutionary era, the traditional experience of the revolution is abstract and strange, and the increasingly utilitarian world is reluctant to identify with it, and the fantasy or fantasy novels and game worlds of alternate history have naturally become a convenient outlet for them to imagine, write or substitute to experience a different world. As a result, it is not difficult to understand that fantasy novels have sprung up in China in the new century and gained a huge number of young fans.
Of course, fantasy literature has become the absolute leading genre after the complete typization of online literature, and it is also deeply related to the earlier commercial operation strategy of the starting point Chinese network. In the early days, online book stations mainly uploaded popular novels with themes such as martial arts, fantasy, and romance from Hong Kong and Taiwan for netizens to share and read, and occasionally there were original literature sections, and the number was not much. With the surge of Internet users, the number of online literary authors and readers has also grown rapidly, the growing demand for reading has made the problem of insufficient supply appear, and the desire to write stimulated by the low threshold has also made the number of original novels on the Internet more and more, a small number of good volunteer editors have not been enough to cope with the situation, and the cost investment required for website service operation has become a serious practical problem. It should be said that this is an objective condition for promoting the emergence of a number of main genre literary websites, and it is also the driving force that prompts literary websites to start commercial exploration soon after their establishment. For example, the "Jinjiang Literature City", which is known for its romance and corrupt women's culture, has evolved from a literary section in the Jinjiang Information Harbor, which is supported by the Jinjiang Telecommunications Bureau, into an independent type of literary website. "When a limited number of Taiwanese romance novels gradually failed to meet the reading needs of readers, some original works began to grow in forums. In 2003, the traffic attracted by original works became more and more large, and the managers decided to set up the 'Jinjiang Original Network' corresponding to the 'Jinjiang Literature City'. In fact, once the original website is established, the writing enthusiasm of netizens will be released more greatly, and readers will also gather, which puts forward higher requirements for website editing, management, traffic services and other aspects, and these of course require certain financial support. Many literary websites that are completely free in the early stage are facing this problem, insisting on free websites, some relying on advertising revenue to try to maintain the operation of the website, some relying on netizens to make donations or fundraising, some relying on copyright intermediaries to earn a certain share of royalties; websites that began to explore the commercial model, some relying on offline publishing of physical books to try to get a piece of the traditional publishing market, and some began to operate original content on the website itself to test the paid reading model. However, the commercialization attempts of literary websites that began at the beginning of the century did not change the ecological landscape of the diversification of early online literature as a whole, and for some literary website operators with literary ideals, whether they were profitable was not the primary goal of their website management, and maintaining the online creation and reading space they created was their real idea. For example, Sun Peng, the founder of The Red Sleeve Tianxiang Network, created this website with friends out of literary dreams that later became known as women's romance novels. Sun Peng felt that doing literary websites was not a matter of making money, and this idea did not begin to change until 2003, when Red Sleeve Tianxiang officially established the company. That year, Sun Pengcai raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the first time to meet rent, servers, manpower and other expenses. After a year, it slowly grew to four or five employees. But Red Sleeve Tian Xiang was still developing slowly, and his thoughts at the time were still: 'We don't need to develop, and we can't starve to death.' (Zhang Shougang, "The Road to Capital Seeking") This attitude of Red Sleeve Tianxiang also made it very picky about intentional capital acquisitions during the period when literary websites were commercialized on a large scale, and it was not until July 2008 that it accepted Shanda's investment.
Red Sleeve Tian Xiang was acquired by Reading Group
In general, from 1997 to around 2003, China's online literature presented a vibrant ecological landscape of diversified practices, with individual writing in blogs or personal homepages, forum stories based on the spontaneous interactivity of online virtual spaces, traditional literary websites based on traditional literary ideals that are compatible with the tastes and hobbies of ordinary people, and specialized type literary websites based on community hobbies. Although after the bursting of the Internet bubble in 2000, many websites had to start trying to commercialize, they are still in the exploratory stage and have not fundamentally changed the possibility of diversified development of online literature. It was only after Shanda Network began to compile well-known literary websites such as Chinese.com in 2004 and established Shanda Literature Company to monopolize online literary production that genre novels quickly became the main form of online literature under the impetus of capital, however, it was not only websites that were incorporated, but also the user groups formed by the early netizen culture and their virtual community communication habits, emotional structures and language methods, as a huge invisible cultural wealth, were also included in the capital-led network literature production model. But, as Bakhtin put it: Every thought does not die absolutely. The literary possibilities represented by the diversified exploration of early online literature and the cultural appeals they convey will always usher in their own Easter in the appropriate historical situation.
[This paper is a phased result of the National Social Science Foundation project "Research on the Discourse System of Online Literary Criticism" (19XZW002).] ］
Qiao Huanjiang, a scholar, currently lives in Haikou. His major works include "The Power of Everyday Life: Reflections on Literature and Culture in the Post-New Era" and "The Aesthetic Of Salvation".