Not long ago, a group of teenagers joined many prestigious writers appearing at the national book fair to personally promote their works. Their achievements seem encouraging. At least they’re not losing in sales volume to their senior counterparts.
In recent years, many of the works of teen writers have become bestsellers and are currently occupying the most eye-catching positions in bookstores across China. On this basis, the public has also become very familiar with some of them, such as Han Han’s Triple Door; Yu Xiu’s The Wonderful, the Tearful; Guan Yanzhuo’s Last Days in Senior Middle School; Yang Zhe’s Flying; Gu Zi’s I, Boy, and My Best Friend; Qiqige’s Up and Down; Zhang Mengmeng’s I’m Shining, Too; as well as the Teenagers’ Portraits Series published by Huacheng Press.
New books are being published one after another. Early last February, 17-year-old Cui Lijing from the countryside of Zhejiang Province and Han Han had their latest books published. Cui’s was a work of fiction of 270,000 characters entitled The Fallen. Han Han’s book was called One Degree Celsius Below Zero. Recently, the China Youth Press, the China Teenagers Press and the Chinese Teenagers’ New Century Reading Club jointly launched the WOWO Series, which included 16-year-old Jin Jin’s Rebuild the Gate Toward Hell and 15-year-old Wei Ni’s My Rebirth Is for You.
The reasons why these teen writers have written creative literary works vary.
Yang Zhe, 18, is in third grade of the senior part of Beijing Normal University’s No.2 Affiliated Middle School. His wish is to first raise his name in literary circles through writing and then become a famous movie director. For this purpose, he completed his 250,000-character-long work of fiction entitled Flying. His second book, An Angel Without Wings, which has been serialized online by Chinaren.com, will be published soon. Up to now, Yang has published a large number of articles and has set up his own home page.
The quiet Jin Jin is Yang’s classmate. The youngest poet recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, she published a poetry anthology when she was six. When she was 10, Jin, together with another little girl, began to create a book of their own with Jin making up the story and her partner writing it down. Feeling the work was too burdensome to continue, Jin’s partner later gave up and sold her copyright share to Jin for 12 yuan. Recently, Jin’s Rebuild the Gate Toward Hell, a 200,000-character-long surreal novel, went on the market.
Wei Ni is the penname of Tu Hanbi, a third grade student at Beijing No.2 Middle School. A year ago, Tu happened to read the Teenagers’ Portraits Series, a group of fictional stories written by middle school students. Suddenly, she was struck by the idea of trying to write herself. It took the girl just half a month to complete her 130,000-character-long work of fiction entitled My Rebirth Is for You.
The emergence of teen writers has aroused various responses, encouraging, worrisome and critical. People criticizing the loudest say the phenomenon is a result of commercial promotion, which is completely harmful to children’s growth. Worse still, some people say unreasonable promotion of teen writers is likely to ruin their talent.
The work of teen writers is favored most by their peers.
Yan Weining, a middle school student, said she appreciates creative literary works by her peers very much. Without the tactfulness and affectedness commonly found in adult writers’ works, they are smoother and more natural, despite their immaturity and relatively low literary values. Adult writers have always focused on middle school students’ fretfulness in puberty or puppy love, Yan said, adding that such works have underestimated the colorfulness of contemporary middle school students’ life.
Chief Executive An Poshun of the Chinese Teenagers’ New Century Reading Club revealed that prior to the WOWO Series, the club had unsuccessfully attempted to solicit surreal fiction from adult writers. While adult writers have ceaseless enthusiasm to write about real lives, An said they are weak in imagining and singing the praises of the beauty of the human world and nature.
As a result, the WOWO Series has centered on works by teenagers. To the editors’ surprise, more than 30 novels and 269 examples of prose and liberary fragments, which embodied unprecedented enthusiasm and admirably rich imagination, were sent to them within a month.
The intellectual level of today’s children is far higher than that of previous generations, An said, adding that teen writers’ creative ability does not lag behind adults at all. Great efforts should be made to help teenagers with literary talent, he stressed.
An expert on teenagers’creative literary writing, Yang Peng attributed the promotion of teen writers to the improved awareness of the press working in line with international conventions, which not only benefits talented teen writers, but also fosters reserves for China’s literary circles. Nevertheless, Yang called for objective, instead of unreasonable, promotion, in order to prevent misleading children with no talent.
Both Jin Jin and Yang Zhe are now studying in China’s only class that caters to students with outstanding literary talent. The class was established on a pilot basis with the approval of the Ministry of Education. Three students in this class have had their novels or literary works of other types published. As for the school as a whole, such students number five. Wu Linshu, director of the Dean’s Office of Beijing Normal University’s No.2 Affiliated Middle School, said the leadership of the school takes a positive attitude toward students’ creative literary work that doesn’t disrupt the normal teaching order. But he criticized the media’s overheated coverage of this issue, saying both ridicule and lavish praise are not beneficial to youngsters.
According to a report in Beijing Youth Daily, teenagers’ creative literary works mainly fall into the following four categories:
Family members’influence. For example, famous writers Xiao Fuxing and Bi Shumin have both instructed their children to complete literary works on middle school students’ life.
Record of personal experiences. The representative is Yu Xiu’s popular fiction The Wonderful, the Tearful.
Private writing out of personal aesthetic standards.
Commercial activities of publishers.
(Beijing Review November 14, 2001)
