Cultural envoy
Lai dreamed of improving Sino-u.s. relations by becoming a diplomat. However, now he has chosen another path - promoting Chinese culture abroad - to achieve the same goal.
In Lai’s opinion, China’s international communication previously overemphasized serious culture, which partly explains why it was not very effective. Popular culture is the key to spreading Chinese culture abroad, according to Lai.
“Has European and U.S. culture been spread to China through Shakespeare’s works? No. It’s via Hollywood movies and sitcoms such as Game of Thrones, Prison Break and Friends,” he said.
But the entrepreneur does more than just translate novels. Lai’s website has a special section explaining Chinese concepts such as Tao, also romanized as Dao, yin and yang and the Five Elements. And he’s opening up new markets overseas, where online literature is at a nascent stage of development.
In China, the number of online literature readers had grown to 333 million by December 2016, accounting for 45.6 percent of China’s Internet users, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
Lai noted that in countries with mature publishing systems, popular novels are often brought to the market by publishing houses, and writers who publish online are of mediocre level. In China, online novels thrive because traditional publishing houses have failed to grasp the opportunities brought by popular novels, he said. This situation can be seen as analogous to developing countries leapfrogging in technology by skipping landlines and moving directly to the era of mobile phones.
Lai believes his website will develop among foreign readers the habit of following the publication of novels chapter by chapter.
However, compared with the vast amount of online literature created in China every year, the amount that has spread abroad is very limited.
Shao said online literature, which has reached a global audience, has very few Chinese elements because works with a strong Chinese character are not only difficult to translate, but also hardly arouse interest among foreign readers.
Shao suggests developing TV dramas, animations and games related to online novels in order to accelerate their globalization.
“Chinese web novels have the potential to join the ranks of Hollywood movies, Japanese anime and South Korean TV dramas as a globally popular element of culture which represents China’s soft power,” said Shao.