China’s Teenage Writing Boom

China's Teenage Writing Boom

By TANG YUANKAI

As the debate and attention surrounding China's twenty-something writers has barely faded, the limelight of the nation's publishing world is now shining on their even younger peers. The People's Literature, the PRC's first literature magazine and known as the "cradle of Chinese writers," recently launched a writing competition for the "post-1990," the generation born in the 1990s. Though the results will not be known until next April, the event has already attracted a good deal of public attention.

Young writer and car racer Han Han was among the 2010 Time 100.

Teenage Writers No Rarity

Currently, an increasing number of adolescent writers are emerging in China. Books written by middle and even primary school students are constantly published, with some even becoming bestsellers. "More than half of my classmates can write novels and are doing it," said Tian Xiaorui, an 11-year-old primary school student in Beijing who herself had a book published this year.

Although child writers have existed in China since ancient times, until now they have failed to make an impact. "One of the reasons that explains why young writers have not flourished is the fact that few adults tend to listen to children," remarked Yu Lei, a supervisor of Young Writers Branch of the Chinese Writers Association and chief of the National Children's Literature Institute of Kunming College. But in recent years this has been changing, and the works of "child writers" have taken up about 10 percent of the whole literature market.

Professor Wu Meizhen, director of the Children's Literature Center of Anhui University who also runs a column in a children's magazine, has received a mass of contributions from children. In 2009, she began to work on a series of collected works by primary school students. "At first, the publishing house had some doubts about the popularity of child-written books," Wu said. One year later, 100,000 copies of the first book have been printed, and sales have been brisk.

Voices of a Generation

Jiang Fangzhou, a member of the judging panel of The People's Literature's "post-1990" competition, was herself once a prominent child writer. Born in 1989, Jiang published her first collection of essays at nine, started her first novel at 11, and by 12 she had became a columnist for several newspapers. When she was 15 she won first prize of the Chinese Adolescent Writers Cup, and the following year she was elected the first president of China's Adolescent Writers Association.