FILE PHOTO: A selection of Jin Yong’s translated works presented on the WuxiaSociety platform

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Fantasy fiction, a literary genre featuring magic, mythical creatures, and supernatural phenomena, often unfolds in worlds unbound by real-world physics. Readers are captivated by its expansive world-building and rich imagination. In Chinese literature, this genre encompasses xuanhuan (mystical fantasy), xianxia (immortal heroes), and wuxia (martial arts chivalry). These subgenres boast a long history of reaching international audiences, with online platforms recently elevating their status as a leading force in Chinese literary exports. 

Xianxia 

China’s earliest mythological collection, In Search of the Supernatural (Soushen Ji), compiled by Jin Dynasty historian Gan Bao, is rich with tales of deities, supernatural beings, and folklore. Its boundless imagination has captivated scholars and translators for centuries.

In 1867, British sinologist Alexander Wylie called Soushen Ji a “remarkable book” in his Notes on Chinese Literature. Early European translations by French sinologists like Léon Wieger, Edouard Chavannes, and Henri Doré were often abridged, while the first complete European translation appeared in Russian in 1994 by Lev Nikolaevich Menshikov. Kenneth J. DeWoskin and J.I. Crump published the English version in 1996, now housed in 238 libraries across 15 countries. This translation sparked significant academic interest and advanced Western sinological research on Chinese zhiguai (tales of the strange) literature. 

Since the mid-20th century, scholars such as American sinologist Robert Ford Campany and French sinologist Rémi Mathieu have studied Soushen Ji from diverse perspectives, including cross-cultural comparisons between Chinese and Western supernatural fiction. 

The story of Tang Monk’s journey west, from the famed Journey to the West, circulated across Korea and Southeast Asia even before the novel’s completion in the Ming Dynasty. Following its publication, this instant classic was translated into more than 10 languages worldwide.

As early as 1758, Journey to the West was introduced to Japan in printed form, where Japanese sinologists have since made significant contributions to its study. In France, Théodore Pavie produced a partial translation of Journey to the West in 1839, published in Journal Asiatique and later in his Collection of Chinese Short Stories. Timothy Richard, an American missionary known as Wu Banqiao in Chinese, produced a partial English translation of the novel in 1913. Over the next century, nearly 20 scholars contributed to the novel’s translations and global dissemination. 

Similarly, Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio was introduced to Japan in 1768 and first translated into a Western language in 1835, with 19 English versions published thereafter, including the most popular versions by Herbert Giles and John Minford. 

In recent years, a new generation of xianxia novels has emerged, primarily online, with A Record of a Mortal’s Journey to Immortality by Wang Yu being a prominent example. Serialized on Qidian, a Chinese online literature website, this novel popularized the “immortal” subgenre of literature. Its English version was published on Wuxiaworld, a Chinese-to-English novel translation platform, in 2017 and has since been well received. Other titles like I Shall Seal the Heavens, Xian Ni, Nine Star Hegemon Body Art, and Eternal Reverence, have also received enthusiastic responses on foreign platforms. 

Xuanhuan 

Xuanhuan novels are primarily published online. One of the earliest influential works is Coiling Dragon, which blends both Chinese and Western elements to chronicle the protagonist’s rise from obscurity to supreme ruler. First published on Qidian in 2008, its English translation became a cornerstone for Wuxiaworld and gained enormous popularity. Many new translators and writers—including Danish author Tina Lynge (Blue Phoenix and Destiny’s Reversal)—began their careers after reading Coiling Dragon in English. 

Soul Land (Douluo Dalu) tells the story of Tang San, a disciple of the Tang Sect reincarnated into the world of Douluo Dalu. Throughout his journey, he evolves from human to god and avenges his mother’s death. In 2015, the American website “Blue Silver Translations” provided an English translation of the work, which attracted a considerable fanbase. An adaptation of Soul Land has since aired on platforms in South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, the UK, and the US. 

Battle Through the Heavens, the mega-hit written by Tian Can Tu Dou, follows the journey of Xiao Yan, a talented young man who overcomes setbacks to achieve greatness. The English version was serialized on Wuxiaworld in 2015 and has been adapted into anime, movies, TV shows, and games, spreading across Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asia. Its comic version featured at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Festival, illustrating its broad influence. 

Mao Ni’s Way of Choices has been translated into multiple languages, attracting international readers. The adapted TV series was selected for the “Belt and Road” exhibition drama and has been translated into 13 languages for overseas broadcast. Hengshua Tianya’s Library of Heaven’s Path combines traditional culture with Confucian and Daoist thoughts in a humorous style, and has been translated into English, French, Spanish, and other languages, with over 180 million reads abroad. Its success has inspired many international readers to try web novel writing. 

Wuxia 

Traditional wuxia novels were first introduced to Southeast Asian countries. As early as the mid-19th century, Chinese wuxia fiction had already spread to Indonesia, though its early readership mainly consisted of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Indonesians. In Vietnam, the French colonizers’ forced promotion of the Latin-based “national language” in the mid-19th century severed the traditional conduit for direct Sino-Vietnamese cultural exchange through Chinese characters, marking the beginning of Chinese literature translations into Vietnamese. Between 1905 and 1910, several Chinese wuxia novels were translated, such as Heroes Disturb Sanmen Street, The Wind Sword Chronicles, and The Three Combined Swords of the Later Han. 

By the early 1930s, Thailand’s National Pillar Daily began serializing Chinese wuxia novels, which were well-received. The first “new school” wuxia novel translated into Thai was Jin Yong’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes, published in 1958 as Jade Dragon. It became a nationwide sensation, causing a “paper shortage” due to its popularity. This was followed by translations of other works such as The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber and Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, which swept Thailand’s literary scene. 

Unlike their popularity in Southeast Asia, traditional wuxia novels were slow to gain traction in the English-speaking world, facing significant challenges due to cultural differences, Western readers’ preconceptions about Chinese literature, and translation issues. 

In France, wuxia novel translations did not appear until 2004, when a French publisher released The Legend of the Condor Heroes, translated by Wang Jianyu, a Chinese-born French translator. However, its market response was lukewarm. A turning point occurred in 2018 when Swedish translator Anna Holmwood’s English rendition of The Legend of the Condor Heroes was published. The translation was well received by the market, necessitating seven reprints its first month and attracting interest from multiple international publishers seeking translation rights. 

In recent years, high-quality online platforms have also provided convenient channels for the global dissemination of traditional wuxia novels. Among the popular ones is WuxiaSociety, established by a global wuxia community of enthusiasts and scholars who share Chinese martial arts fiction with English readers. It features profiles of renowned wuxia novelists such as Jin Yong, Gu Long, and Liang Yusheng, along with English translations of works like The Legend of the Condor Heroes, The Return of the Condor Heroes, The Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, White Horse Neighing in the Wind, Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils, and The Yue Maiden Sword. 

Key trends 

The global spread of Chinese fantasy novels reveals three distinct trends.

First, digital platforms and translation websites have become the primary channels for dissemination. Today, more than a hundred websites worldwide are dedicated to translating Chinese web novels. In addition to those aforementioned, notable platforms include Gravity Tales, Volare Novels, WebNovel (Qidian International), Novel Updates, and 17K. These platforms—relying mainly on advertisements, tipping, and crowdfunding for revenue—have effectively become “highways” for exporting Chinese literature and culture abroad. 

Second, AI-powered translation and creation are on the rise. In response to increasing demand for online literature, China Literature Limited (Yuewen) has intensified its deployment of AIGC technology, continuously upgrading its human-AI collaborative translation model. This has led to a dramatic leap in translation efficiency, increasing the number of translated chapters from a few dozen per day to over a thousand. By creating specialized vocabulary databases and implementing human-AI collaboration, costs have decreased by more than 90%. AI-translated works like Mythical Era: I Evolved into a Star-level Beast were top sellers on WebNovel, which plans to expand its multilingual offerings to include German, French, Spanish, Indonesian, Portuguese, and more. 

Third, derivative products of web novels contribute to cultural dissemination. A positive interaction has formed between web novels and adaptations into short dramas, audio products, and games. On one hand, web novels have given rise to these derivative products; on the other hand, these derivative products further promote the web novels themselves, drawing more attention to them. 

Since the launch of Yuewen’s YouTube channel in 2022, animated adaptations of IPs like Battle Through the Heavens, Martial Universe, and Stellar Transformation have amassed millions of subscribers, with total views exceeding 270 million annually. In 2023, the game Black Myth: Wukong was showcased at the Gamescom in Cologne, Germany, with curious players waiting hours for a turn. Meanwhile, the IP-based game Battle Through the Heaven: Fury of Yunlan was launched in Malaysia and Indonesia. Taken together, the synergistic force of web novels, games, and film adaptations not only extends reach of Chinese genre literature, but also cements its profound impact on the world stage. 

Lin Feng is an associate professor from the School of Foreign Languages at Fuzhou University of International Studies and Trade. 

Edited by WANG YOURAN