Female Youth Literature
By admin on 2015-01-07

Chinese female literature once predominantly focused on the struggles of women in gaining equality and fairness in a male-dominated society. Today, faced with a more equitable situation, Chinese female literature is taking on new directions in an effort to appeal to modern readers.

In recent years, a bourgeoning number of publications have emerged for women readers, encompassing a massive teenage market and including magazines that present an independent, modern image. Books have also embraced the demand, enjoying prosperity in the female youth literature arena.

Ming Xiaoxi's Cinderella, Zhang Yueran's Newriting, Rao Xueman's M-Girl and Seventeen are all publications targeted at girls aged from 14- 22 and are hugely popular.

Rao's M-Girl is a "mook" series, books with the look, design and layout of magazines. In M-Girl, the editor experiments with entertainment factors such as reality shows and short videos and produces every issue of the mook with models on the cover, all selected from its vast readership. The magazine also provides an interactive platform via QQ online chat, through which readers can directly communicate with editors and offer feedback and suggestions.

Zhang Yueran's series, with every issue centering on a distinctive topic, presents the feelings of loneliness and loss as well as the pains of growing up, reflecting the inner feelings of young girls' everyday lives. The direction has won a huge number of followers.

Most of the magazines for girls sees content categorized mainly as youth love stories, mysteries and fantasies in a "leaf-through" format. The new trend has also produced an influx in related works, although not many are focused on literary depth.

"Generally speaking, female youth literature is more a concept than real literature. Compared to traditional female literature, which is rich in plot and literary significance, female youth literature has a long way to go to be labeled as real literature," Zhang Yiwu, professor of literature at Peking University, told the Global Times.

"Female literature has improved greatly in the past years especially in the 1990s, represented by Tie Ning and Wang Anyi and other leading women writers and still exerts a profound influence," Zhang added, "but the times have changed and many readers, especially teenage girls, are fond of reading material with a strong flavor of modern times, just like fast food."

Zhang said that young female literature has come into being to meet the growing market with many publishers and websites more than ready to cash in for a slice of the pie, which has in turn boosted the market.

"We have a daily click ratio of more than 50 million for Hongxiu, with 90 percent of them from women readers aged from 18 to 35," Bi Jianwei, chief editor of hongxiu. com, a website targeting teenage female readers, told the Global Times.

Set up in 1999, Hongxiu. com boasts a collection of nearly 2 million literary works ranging from romantic novels, essays, poetry and diaries and its popularity is rising in click ratios every year according to Bi.

As the first and largest publishing house to focus on women readership, Enjoying Reading Era has produced a series of novels of different genres targeting teenage girls and enjoys a turnover of 100 million yuan ($14.65 million) each year, according to Hou Kai, director of Enjoy Reading Era.

"We have as many as 200 young women writers working for us and producing hundreds of novels each year with many becoming bestsellers," he added. "Nearly every book published by our company was written, edited and read by young women, with strong female characters and we have targeted our books at teenage girls, which is a big and dynamic market of great potential."

Hou said that nowadays there is a growing number of young adults, especially girls, whose tastes, lifestyles and environments have greatly influenced literary creations. He speculated that there is a potential publishing market worth 5 billion yuan ($732 million) in the sector at present.

"With strong circulation and successful market strategy, many female youth writers have transformed into entertainment celebrities and become role models for avid fans," Zhang commented.

"Reflected in literature, female writers are not keen on the literary significance of their creations, but put emphasis on the market and personal fame."

"They have found success in the market but still there is a long way to go for female youth literature to be categorized as real literature," he added.