Chen Xiaoming, professor of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University

After over 100 years of learning from the West, China shares an increasing number of cultural similarities with Western countries. But when it comes to fields like literature, which is deeply rooted in culture, it's hard to be completely the same. As China has gotten increasingly involved in globalization in the 21st century, China's urban lifestyle has become quite similar to that of Western developed countries. But its development in literature paints a completely different picture. Chinese writers, especially those with a mature writing technique, have made great progress in recent years in the narrative of the countryside. This tendency veered in the opposite direction of the reality of internationalization, but led to a flourish of Chinese novels where personal style and fiction art are fully developed. Under the influence of internationalization, Chinese contemporary literature is showing a unique "unsophisticated" characteristic. But it's this characteristic that has made Chinese literature really develop its own shape and style.

Since the New Literature Movement in the 1920s, realism has become dominant in Chinese literature. Although the influence of Western literature played an important role at the beginning of the movement, characteristics of realism became crucial later.

In late 1980s, contemporary literature began to shift from reacting to social issues to literature itself - narration, language, artistic feeling and mind and spirit. From the late 1980s to today, Chinese contemporary literature was embraced modernism and post-modernism, and also romanticism. Young writers born in the 1980s mostly grew in the gap between post-modernism and romanticism, and many middle-aged novelists also made a change. Romance has become a crucial factor in the narratives of many middle-aged writers.

Mo Yan is a good example. His Modern Trilogy illustrates the fate and struggle of Chinese people through the arduous history of China. In his novels, romantic feelings are not only the motivation behind his smart and sharp language, but also the foundation of his imagination of historic setting. Even when writing about history, he cannot stop his passion from showing. In his latest novel Frog, he writes about the sorrowful fate of Chinese, but he deliberately creates a comedic effect. He cannot endure a narrative limited by the logic of reality. He always tends to get rid of the restrictions of reality; he wants to write dramatically, and to dramatize tragic incidents. He cannot stop this tendency, behind which lies the spirit of romanticism.

Like Mo, many important writers have unleashed their romantic spirits to create a group of the most important Chinese works at the beginning of the 21st century. It's definitely an important period for literature.

We look forward to a future that is incubated in Chinese literature - we hope that literature will form under a historical background, but it will also keep its exchange with Western literature, accept its challenges and incorporate elements of a different nature. In literature, historic narration and developed realism will begin to incorporate more elements of romanticism, which will become the solid mental base for culture and literary. A literature experience integrating realism, romanticism and post-modernism will pave a broad way for contemporary literature in China.