Is this the end of Chinese fantasy fiction or a reluctant new beginning?
In the wake of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Harry Potter series, China saw the ascension of new deities: the “Seven Gods.” These gods—lacking in most divine aspects—were bespectacled young men in their 20s who created the bedrock for an entire genre of Chinese literature.
The idea first took root in 2002, when a user with the I.D. “Dajiao” suggested incorporating “Eastern” features in a Western-style fantasy realm. The result was Novoland, or “Jiuzhou” (九州, nine regions): a unique, crowdsourced universe that would provide a generation of writers with a shared setting for fantastic tales that would shape Chinese fantasy into a full-blow literary genre. It would later be revealed that the man behind that “Dajiao” web handle was none other than Pan Haitian—today one of China’s most beloved fantasy and sci-fi authors.
The seven main writers and active forum members became the “Seven Gods” forming a committee to oversee the creation of this new world. “There are countless heroes, dynasties, and millions of stories. It needed to be a product of cooperation,” Pan tells TWOC.
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