It has been a breakout year for C-dramas on the global stage, with Pursuit of Jade making waves earlier this year, followed by the recent hit The Early Spring—both adapted from online novels serialized on Jinjiang, one of China’s largest female-oriented web fiction platforms. Their success has once again brought attention to the web novels behind some of China’s biggest screen hits.
While male-oriented fiction often centers on the pursuit of success, female-oriented fiction tends to place greater emphasis on emotional connections, a character’s inner struggle, and the experience of loving and being loved. Romance is a major focus, but the genre’s distinct perspective extends beyond love stories, shaping how authors approach everything from warfare to court politics.
The genre’s popularity has also given rise to online platforms dedicated to female-oriented fiction, with Hongxiu Tianxiang, founded in 1999, among the earliest. Since then, sites like Jinjiang, Changpei, Qidian Female, and Xiaoxiang Academy have nurtured countless writers, many of whom have become household names, especially as their works have been adapted into hit TV dramas and films, including Nirvana in Fire and Empresses in the Palace. Here are four more prominent writers in the genre worth checking out:
Tong Hua 桐华
A leading voice in Chinese romance fiction, Ren Haiyan, better known by her pen name Tong Hua, is one of the most recognizable writers from China’s early web literature boom in the 2000s. Her bittersweet romances and strong female characters have since brought one story after another from the internet to the screen.
A Peking University graduate who later worked in finance, Ren began writing online in 2005. Her debut, Startling by Each Step, follows a modern woman who travels back to the 1700s and becomes caught in the succession war among the emperor’s sons. Its mix of romance, palace intrigue, and emotional struggles has made the novel a landmark of the Qing-palace time-travel genre. The 2011 TV adaptation also became a major hit in China, and the story was later adapted in South Korea and Thailand.
Rather than the familiar fantasy in which everyone falls for the heroine, Ren’s novels revolve around the inner lives, choices, and the constraints of female characters. Relationships often change as her heroine grows, making romance only part of their journey to understand themselves. In Lost You Forever (2013), she explores romance alongside family feuds and questions of identity, while her sci-fi novel The Memory Lost in Space (2017) takes on the possibility of coexistence between humans and other species.
Although Ren published very few novels in recent years, many of her earlier works have been adapted for the screen, including Lost You Forever (2023). Her stories have also found an audience overseas thanks to fan translations.
Now also working as a screenwriter, including on the recent hit Against the Current, Ren continues to explore love not merely as a destination, but as part of the choices, losses, and self-understandings that shape a woman’s life.
Fei Wo Si Cun 匪我思存
While many romance novels offer an escape from reality with happy endings, Fei Wo Si Cun, on the other hand, makes heartbreak the norm in her fiction, where lovers are often separated by wars, political ambition, and family feuds. Known for her tragic romances and bittersweet endings, Fei has drawn generations of readers to stories built on longing, separation, and the things her characters leave unsaid.
Born Ai Jingjing, Fei took her pen name from the Book of Songs (《诗经》), “Though there are many, you are the one on my mind (虽则如云，匪我思存).” The line captures the kind of love often found in her novels: deeply felt but often impossible to sustain; it rarely overcomes family loyalties, political interests, or the weight of the past.
In Chronicle of a Life (2006), the heroine survives her family’s destruction and falls in love with the young Kangxi Emperor, only to find herself torn between love and a desire for revenge. Goodbye, My Princess (2010) follows a princess from a remote kingdom who marries the crown prince of the central plains for peace between their kingdoms. As their relationship deepens, she suddenly recovers memories of their past and realizes that he was responsible for the tragedy of her family.
Fei has published more than 20 novels, with about half adapted for television, including Goodbye, My Princess, Too Late to Say I Love You (2006), and Tears in Heaven (2008). Over the past two decades, her stories have helped shape the tragic-romance tradition that remains popular in Chinese television and online fiction. Her work has also reached readers beyond China through translations and screen adaptations.
Gu Man 顾漫
In 2021, the hit TV show Weiwei’s Beautiful Smile (2016) was taken down from all platforms after lead actress Zheng Shuang was embroiled in surrogacy and tax-evasion scandals. But in late September, the show made a surprising yet controversial comeback with a 4K remaster that used AI to awkwardly replace Zheng’s face with that of another actress. Many fans later took to social media to complain that the new version ruined the iconic couple Bei Weiwei and Xiao Nai—characters from Gu Man’s 2009 book of the same name.
This incident, though, showcased Gu’s success as a web novelist and scriptwriter, who reportedly has significant input on the scripts and casting for adaptations of her lighthearted modern romance. Her five masterpieces, including My Sunshine (2003 – 2006), Weiwei (2008 – 2009), and Shine on Me (2006 – 2013), have all become bestsellers with hit TV adaptations.
Typically featuring sweet love stories about good-looking, faithful couples, her novels have satisfied young people’s aspirations to find the perfect life partner. In My Sunshine, the male lead, He Yichen, a handsome lawyer, waited seven years for his girlfriend, Zhao Mosheng, after she went overseas without a word, following a series of misunderstandings and family misfortunes. Many female viewers see He as a once-in-a-lifetime ideal partner, especially for his declaration: “Once you’ve met the right person, anyone else would be a compromise. And I’m not willing to settle.”
Gu’s stories over the years also reflect societal changes and shifts in how young people view love and relationships. The successful male leads used to be lawyers and later evolved to game developers and even aerospace engineers. The female leads also grow increasingly independent and career-oriented, rather than being taken care of, reflecting the industry’s growing popularity of “big heroines.”
Xinyi Wu 辛夷坞
In 2006, Jiang Chunling, then a 25-year-old office worker at a state-owned power company in Guangxi, began writing on Jinjiang under the pen name Xinyi Wu after a web novel she had been following stopped updating. As her works began to gain traction online, she resigned to write full-time in 2008 and has since published over 10 novels, mostly modern romance that follows characters’ growth from campus to workplace.
Her debut work, Never Gone, for instance, follows the decade-long entanglement between Su Yunjin, a sensitive, reserved small-town girl, and Cheng Zheng, a carefree lad from a rich family in the capital city, from high school onward. After Cheng’s persistent courtship, they start dating, but as their personalities and family backgrounds clash, misunderstandings and conflicts pull them apart; years later, they meet again, both braver, more mature, and better able to love each other.
Her stories never shy away from the hardships of life and relationships, especially as her protagonists’ innocent school romances collide with reality as they grow older. Yet they always find a way to mature and eventually build fulfilling lives. Readers have dubbed Jiang’s style nuanshang (暖伤), literally “warm sadness,” to describe this blend of tenderness and melancholy. In a 2016 interview with news outlet The Paper, the author partially acknowledged this interpretation, explaining, “A sad story is more poignant and memorable, but I’ve always believed that a good emotional story shouldn’t leave readers feeling utterly cold and hopeless. It should move them while offering comfort to the heart.”
Jiang has also found success as a screenwriter, adapting many of her own novels for TV and film. Within two months of the release of the 2013 hit film To Our Youth That Is Fading Away, adapted from her wildly popular 2007 piece of the same name, the book sold nearly 400,000 copies, accounting for more than one quarter of its total sales in the past five years.
Related Articles
