It is common-knowledge that the phenomenon of genre-related confusion and the usage of genre labels, which is anything, but uniform across the cyberspace, is hardly limited just literary websites outside of China. The former in question is dwelt also within the online literary fan circles. For instance, one of the translators for the website Wuxiaworld, who works under the pseudonym Deathblade, elaborates on the usage of the terminology on his YouTube channel in a video called What are Chinese fantasy novels (wuxia, xianxia, xuanhuan)? [1]. Into the bargain, the transmigration/rebirth topos spreads across most of the genre spectrum of Chinese Internet literature, and I have personally come across various male-oriented fantasy and danmei novels featuring the theme. Even Shao concedes the transmigration element being spread across various genres and becoming more of a ‘label’ rather than “summarization of the novel setting” [2, p.265], with special mention of historical and urban fiction. The above discussion shows the ‘tag-like’ usage of the term within the cyberspace. The ‘rebirth’ or ‘transmigration’ marks only one of the whole aggregation of labels, which make up the categorization of each individual novel (as whole). Therefore, using the term as individual label, which contributes to the whole collection of labels that subsequently create specific category for each novel, seems much more sensible approach than strictly putting the novels into one or another metaphorical ‘box’, even more so when taking the terms’ prominent overlap into consideration [3].
Methodology
In order to make our study convincible a visual method of research was used; at the same time, comparative-historical methods, synchronic and diachronic analysis were resorted to as well.
Main results and discussion
The first genre we will dwell on is qihuan 奇幻, most commonly translated to English as eastern fantasy. The main notion of qihuan comes from Eastern fantasy literature. In her thesis, Chao highlights the translations of famous Eastern fantasy books as works that had the most profound influence on Chinese qihuan. However, Shao stresses the importance of the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) that is popular in the United States and in Europe as the primary source of inspiration for this genre. In this game, the players sit around the table and each player is assigned a different character in a fictional world, e.g. skilled fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard etc. According to the instructions of the ‘dungeon master’ (the host and storyteller of the game), the players can ally with each other, and ‘go on quests’ within the fantasy world. The D&D novels, paintings and video games, which were later developed due to the original game’s popularity, occupied the mainstream status of Euro-American fantasy literature from the 1980’s to the beginning of the 21st century, and subsequently also had great influence on early Chinese fantasy literature, after its translation in Taiwan during 1990’s, and the official introduction of the game to Mainland China in 1998 [4, p.247].
The qihuan fiction thus can be described as a “globalised cultural product disseminated through multimedia and literary texts” [5, p.145], by consulting various well-known sources and story materials, such as ‘wizard school’, ‘ring of magic’ or ‘strange continent’, and creating reading experience similar to game-playing. At this time, the writer could choose two creative paths: The first one fine-tunes the original Eastern fantasy setting with some degree of localization added, while maintaining the characteristics of the original fantasy genre. The novels, which adhere the most strictly to the original setting, belong to the zhentong qihuan 正统奇幻 (“orthodox western fantasy”) subgenre. In this case, the transmigration element is typically used in order to justify the Chinese point of view − such protagonist then comes from contemporary China and transmigrates into the Western Middle Ages. Shao lists the works Shushide Xingkong (术士的星空, Warlock’s Starry Sky) from Yin Hui Bing Shuang 银灰冰霜, and Mozhuang (魔装, Cloak of Magic) from San Sheng Zhan Jiang 三生蘸酱 as representative of this genre [4, p.51]. The xuanhuan novels (xuanhuan xiaoshuo 玄幻小说) are presently one of the most popular genre of Internet fiction, and the one that is the most frequently produced. According to data provided by Liu and Wan in the paper What Are You Reading: A Big Data Analysis of Online Literary Content, the xuanhuan novel production in 2019 was almost the double of the second largest category, in total making up over 30% of the 15 fiction genres published on Qidian. The term is said to be first used by the Hong Kong writer Huang Yi 黄易 in the late 1980’s to describe his own fantasy fiction based on mysticism [4, 5]. However, xuanhuan in the contemporary discourse of Chinese Internet literature became widely spread term that gained a different meaning compared to Huang Yi’s original use. The translations of the term to English include ‘eastern fantasy’, ‘oriental fantasy’, and ‘mysterious or alternative fantasy’ [6, p.26]. The general descriptions of the genre range from fictional stories that combine science fiction, time travel, historical military, and martial arts elements to a broad genre of fictional stories that remix Chinese folklore/mythology with foreign elements & settings. Shao states that the basic sources of xuanhuan genre come from Chinese myths and legends, god and demon novels (shenmo xiaoshuo 神魔小说), sword immortal novels (jianxian xianoshuo 剑仙小说), and other Chinese traditional texts [7, p.94].
Xuanhuan novels once again feature the ‘overhead world’ unrestricted by the rules of nature and society of the real world. Due to the element of abstraction, the fiction setting can employ various elements of traditional narratives, such as already mentioned tradition of gods and demons or sword immortals. However, it is not in any way restricted only for the use of such traditional elements and can also involve the world built purely according the author's imagination. This gives way to accommodation of variety of YY features and is one of the reasons for the genre’s popularity [7, p.94]. Xiuxian fiction (xiuxian xiaoshuo 修仙小说) is another massively popular Internet genre. According to Liu and Wan, in 2019 the xiuxian (xianxia) production took up over 10% of all of the produced genres, thus making xiuxian novels one of the top produced novels. The name consists of characters xiu 修 (to study, cultivate) and xian 仙 (celestial being; immortal), therefore xiuxian is mostly translated as “immortal cultivation”. The other commonly used names for the genre include xianxia (仙侠, immortal hero), xiuzhen (修真, cultivation) and xianhuo (仙 伙, immortal partnership), which all mostly refer to the same type of novels, and are freely interchanged with each other within the cyberspace [4].
According to Shao, xianxia novel is a product of transition between wuxia novel and xiuxian, therefore bears characteristics of both. In the classification of most of the major literary websites, the term xianxia remained in use, although xianxia does not exist anymore as a separate category. Therefore, all novels labelled as xianxia are in fact the xiuxian novels based on ancient Chinese society (Shao 2018, 253-254). Based on her research, she also divides the xiuxian genre into four subtypes according to their world setting: ‘fantasy xiuxian’ (huanxiang xiuxian 幻想修仙), ‘classic xianxia’ (gudian xianxia 古典仙侠), ‘modern xiuxian’ (xiandai xiuxian 现代修仙), and ‘ancient feudal gods’ (honghuang fengshen 洪荒封神) [7, p.71].
Adducing the results of the conducted analysis beset with the theme-explored one can conclude that the notions of xuanhuan, qihuan and xiuxian based on secondary literature. However, during our own research and novel analysis, we had noticed the fact that the rea-life usage of these terms does not necessarily reflect the descriptions and approaches taken by the researchers, which is especially evident in the case of qihuan.
.png&w=640&q=75)
