Born in 1979, Xiren says that he has switched jobs so many times that civil servant and male escort are the only two professions he hasn’t tried. Xiren’s urge to write derives from “life’s pain,” and he writes for self-consolation. On Douban Read, China’s leading digital publishing platform, he has published one novel in installments and seven other works of fiction, in genres ranging from fables to suspense to fantasy to recent history.