We have mentioned that the purpose of this research is to explore the specific genre of contemporary Chinese novels labeled as workplace fiction. In mainland China, this category can now be found in all major book stores, physical and online, as well as on most reading websites.
This allows us to think that this label has come to be acknowledged as a meaningful reference by the audience, to the same extent as other qualifiers like fantasy, romance or thriller, which are more familiar for Western readers and researchers. The presence of the category on online reading websites seems to indicate that workplace novels belong to the realm of entertainment literature.
Indeed, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, the vast majority of online writing is generally considered as being created and consumed for entertainment purposes only.
As we will be discussing workplace novels as a category, we would like to bring to the reader's attention that the boundaries of the genre are blurred. This can probably be explained, to some extent at least, by the "unofficial" nature of popular culture categories in contemporary China.
Indeed, with the exception of "historical" genres martial arts novels, or ghost stories, for example -many literary genres seem to be appearing online. They often illustrate the emergence and development of new tendencies in pre-existing categories. In the specific case of workplace fiction, Chinese literature specialists Zhang Yonglu and Xu Daojun assert that some websites commonly used for online reading - for example Tianya Club (Tianya shequ天涯社区), or Douban Reading (Douban yuedu ⾖豆瓣阅读) - started to propose special tabs for this category after the tremendous success of the 2006 novel Quanzi quantao 《 圈 ⼦子 圈 套 》, Circle and Trap,85 which was first published and read on the Internet.86
The spontaneity of literary categories' appearance does not seem to be specific to the Chinese context, as it has also been observed by Tzvetan Todorov when he discussed the subdivisions of detective fiction.87 After pointing out the blurriness of the boundaries between two acknowledged detective fiction subcategories - the whodunit and the thriller - Todorov explains that this subdivision, though useful, does not necessarily describe inherent differences in the novels themselves - as they often contain the same narrative elements - but in the different degrees of importance given to each of these elements:
I have presented the opposition between the whodunit and the thriller as an opposition between two stories and a single one; but this is a logical, not a historical classification. The
85. WANG Qiang王强(2006).Circle and Trap, Beijing: Tsinghua University Press. We chose to adopt the English title proposed by Grace Hui-chuan Wu in her above mentioned article.
86. ZHANG Yonglu张永禄& XU Daojun许道军. "Zhichang xiaoshuo: xin de wenxue jueqi" “职场⼩小说: 新的⽂文学崛起” [Workplace Novels: The Rise of a New Literature], Dangdai wentan, 2011, 2011/06, p.45.
87. TODOROV Tzvetan (1978). Poétique de la prose, Paris: Editions du Seuil.
thriller did not need to perform this specific transformation in order to appear on the scene.
Unfortunately for logic, genres are not constituted in conformity with structural descriptions;
a new genre is created around an element which was not obligatory in the old one: the two encode different elements.88
This observation applies to contemporary Chinese workplace novels as well because, according to Zhang and Xu's article, thezhichangcategory has formed around a nucleus of works which started to be considered as divergent from preexisting genres, and as representative of an emerging new genre.
Before beginning with our presentation of the zhichang category, through the presentation of an inventory of the works classified in it and of the most famous novels it encompasses, it seems necessary to emphasize some problematic questions related to the study of literary genres, especially when their existence and evolution is contemporary to the research. Here, the observations of Philippe Lejeune on autobiography seem relevant:
Prendre pour objet d'étude un genre vivant et contemporain, c'est se placer dans une situation ambiguë, qui est à la fois une ressource et une limite. Le choix de l'objet n'est pas innocent:
dans la mesure où les genres sont des institutions sociales, isoler un genre pour le constituer en objet de savoir, cela peut être une manière de collaborer à l'institution autant que de faire oeuvre scientifique.89
And further:
L'étude universitaire des genres, si scientifique qu'elle se veuille, participe elle aussi, à sa manière, à l'institution: elle contribue souvent à construire ou à consolider ce qu'elle prétend analyser ou décrire. Elle rationalise et systématise, pour fonder en droit et en dignité le genre étudié.90
In accordance to Lejeune's distinction between description - an attempt to explain how the object of study is - and definition - which states how it should be, and which is thus normative - we will try to describe the workplace novels category without restricting the genre by attempting to strictly define it.91As we will see, and as has been observed by Lejeune, theorizing a literary genre is not easily compatible with empiric observations, which often reveal the variety and heterogeneity of the works encompassed in a same category.92Despite this obstacle, we will attempt to determine which are the invariable elements of workplace fiction, and to use them as a basis for our analysis.
88. TODOROV 1978, 14. For the English quote: http://faculty.washington.edu/akn/typology.pdf (last consulted on September 18th, 2017).
89. LEJEUNE Philippe (1996). Le pacte autobiographique, Paris: Editions du Seuil, p.311.
90. LEJEUNE 1996, 311.
91. LEJEUNE 1996, 322.
92. LEJEUNE 1996, 330.
2.1 Definition by Content
2.1.1 The Category through Inventory Observation
At the beginning of this research, after having encountered thezhichang label on many occasions, the first question that had to be addressed was the evaluation of the genre's importance, in terms of quantity of works produced, and of visibility in the cultural field and in society as a whole. We consider that, if the works encompassed in the category are numerous, if some of them have enjoyed a significant commercial success - measured by the number of sales and by the existence of adaptations for other media - and if the zhichang label can be found in most places dedicated to literary consumption, it can be assumed that the category exerts an effect on collective representations of literature, and on the topics it treats. One of the first endeavors of the present research was thus to attempt to establish an inventory of the production of workplace novels, in order to apprehend its quantitative importance. As an inventory of works published on online reading websites would represent thousands of texts, we have decided to limit our research range to novels which have been printed and materially published.
As workplace novels have been - and still are - published by a wide variety of publishing houses, and as we did not find any trace of attempt to establish a comprehensive record of the production of the category, we decided to use and compare the lists proposed by the two online bookstores most commonly used in China, Dang Dang (Dangdang wang 当当⽹网), and Amazon China.93 The fact that both websites include azhichangtab among the limited number of categories that they propose for fiction - fifteen for Dang Dang, eleven for Amazon - is noteworthy in itself, as an indicator of the category's recognition as a relevant classifier for contemporary novels. The number of works classified under thezhichanglabel is important on both websites, with 1307 entries listed on Dang Dang, and 604 on Amazon.94 However, it should be noted that many works seemed to have been misplaced in the workplace fiction category - some did not deal with the professional world and some were not fictions - and that the lists contained various editions of the same novels. Moreover, each volume of a saga was considered as one entry. In the present research, we have decided to consider the different editions of the same novel as one, but we have recorded the existence of re-editions when the information was available. We have also decided to treat the different volumes of a saga as one novel, while mentioning the number of volumes encompassed in one narrative.
Through this process, we have identified 523 novels and six collections of short stories on the Dang Dang website, and 283 novels and fourteen collections of short stories on Amazon.95 The novels
93. The inventory has been completed in June 2017 and the results thus reflect the state of the websites at that moment.
94. The websites have been last checked on September 12th, 2017.
95. The most important numbers mentioned in this part are summarized in different tabs in appendix B.
found on the two websites differ greatly: only 122 works appeared on both platforms. This particularity allows us to think that online bookstores do not aim at exhaustivity when establishing literary categories. On these websites, the existence of the category seems to be motivated by a necessity to guide users towards narratives most likely to fit their tastes, and to do so as efficiently as possible considering the volume of novels available for purchase. Online bookstores do not seem to contribute to the elaboration of literary categories as coherent and circumscribed ensembles. We did not find any trace of attempts to establish an exhaustive list of workplace fictions on other platforms either. This absence could be interpreted as a consequence of their quantitative importance, but also as a symptom of the intellectual circles' attitude towards these novels. Indeed, we can imagine that, if they were seen as holding an inherent quality, they would be considered as worth recording and preserving.
The inventory listed a total of 849 authors for 826 works, which can be explained by the fact that some works are attributed to more than one author. The descriptions of the books to be read online do not always provide information about the authors, and, when available, this information is often laconic. We have observed that, in most cases, information about the authors' identities was provided when it was related to their proficiency and experience of the workplace. The most detailed accounts concerned the author's achievements in the professional realm, conveying the idea that the books, written by experienced businesspeople, were realistic and potentially useful for the readers. Information about the professional background of the author was available in 745 cases. In 590 cases, the author was described as having some recognized experience or knowledge in the field he or she was describing in the book, or in a closely related fields. The 155 authors who were not said to be experienced in the workplace they were describing were usually government officials, teachers or people working in media.
In some cases, the descriptions of the writers' backgrounds also focused on literary achievements, mentioning, for example, the literary awards they received, or praising the quality and success of their earlier works. However, this type of description was not as frequent as the one emphasizing the authors' professional experiences. Apparently, workplace fictions are generally not the work of full-time writers, but of businesspeople who write in their spare time. These professionals have rarely published books on other topics and are seldom praised for the literary quality of their works.
Among the 849 authors listed in our database, only seventy-five appear more than once, and only twenty more than twice, indicating that most writers did not produce more than one novel or saga.
We cannot rule out that some of them might have written novels which do not belong to the zhichang category, even if this seems rare. It has apparently been the case for three authors, who appear only once in our inventory but who are said to have obtained literary awards for other works.
The information available online allows us to think that the majority of workplace novels' writers produced only one novel or saga.
Regarding the authors' age, information was only available in 321 cases. The following observations might thus not be representative of the genre as a whole. Our inventory lists authors born between the late fourth century (Vegetius) and the 1990s. The most represented age cohort seems to be the post-1970 generation, with ninety-eight writers, followed by the post-1980 generation, with eighty-two authors. Most of the inventory's writers were thus in their forties and thirties around 2010, when the majority of workplace novels was published, which seems to coincide with the age when people are most involved in their careers. The post-1960 cohort and the post-1950 cohort are also importantly represented, with sixty-one and forty-six authors respectively.
As for the authors' gender, information was available in 810 cases, which were divided into 528 male authors and 282 female authors. In most cases, it seems that male authors choose male main characters, the opposite being true for female authors as well, illustrating the importance of the gender line in the definition of the themes and target readers of different works. Information about characters' gender was available in 730 cases. In the remaining cases, either the gender of the character was impossible to identify, which was rare, or the summaries described the heroes and heroines of the novels as an undefined group, which made the gender of the different main characters seem irrelevant, the important aspect being the age cohort or the social background of the protagonists. In 428 cases the main characters of the novels were male, in 252 cases the main characters were female, and in twenty-three cases the novel was centered on both a male and a female main character. We can thus notice that, both in terms of authors and characters, men are in the majority in the workplace fiction category.
Our inventory also indicates that the production of the genre can be clearly delimited in time.
Workplace novels seem to have been rare until the end of 2007, as less than ten novels were published every year until 2004, then eleven in 2005, fourteen in 2006, and sixteen in 2007.96 Apparently, the category began to grow significantly in 2008, with forty-eight volumes published, reached a peak between 2009 and 2010, with 137 and 140 novels published respectively, and started to decrease in 2011 (119 novels, 89 in 2012, 75 in 2013, 60 in 2014, 53 in 2015, and 50 in 2016).
This observation allows us to think that workplace fiction was most fashionable around 2010, and that the craze has already passed. It should be noted that the dates listed in our database might not always represent the first appearance of a specific narrative, but the date of publication of the editions available on the two websites used to collect the data. However, as we will see when discussing the current state of research on workplace novels, the peak situated between 2009 and 2010 seems coherent with the interest raised by the category in the press and in academic articles.
We can see that the volume of the production of workplace novels changed drastically with time.
96. Here we describe the production as represented by our inventory. We do not pretend our observations to be perfectly representative of the totality of the category, but we consider that this method of production analysis is sufficient to obtain the general idea relevant to this research.
The category also seems to have undergone important changes in terms of content. First of all, we have observed that the earliest narratives were describing only a limited set of professional sectors -mainly government and finance. They also conformed to restricted patterns of narratives - the exposure of the dark secrets of the emergent capitalist society, or the revelation of the career tricks of self-made men. Female authors, and thus female characters, appear later in the genesis of the category. As time went by, the workplaces represented grew more diverse, which seems to be correlated with the increasing involvement of women in the category. The focus of most narratives also seems to have shifted to younger characters, as they came to mostly describe the young white collars' transition between university and the professional world. The increasing attention given to younger characters, and thus to younger readers, is probably linked to the fact that teenagers and young adults have come to represent the main consumers of entertainment literature.97 The evolution of the category also seems to reflect deep changes occurring in the structure of the Chinese job market, for example its increasing competitiveness, or the growing difficulty for college graduates to find suitable employments, which can explain the shift of focus to young readers, in need of support and guidance in the professional realm.
Let us now turn to the publishing houses involved in the production of workplace novels. In our inventory, information about the publishing houses issuing the books was available in 820 out of 826 cases. These 820 volumes have been edited by 206 different publishing entities. We have observed that 748 novels have been published by publishing houses (chubanshe出版社,shushe 书 社orshuju书局), meaning by state-owned structures which are solely allowed to issue ISBNs. The majority of the remaining works have been published by "companies" or "corporations" (gongsi 公 司 or jituan 集 团), which are privately or semi-privately owned and funded. These structures usually need to be linked to publishing houses by contracts to be allowed to distribute the books they print. They are often more commercially oriented than publishing houses, and they generally enjoy a better knowledge of the market and of the works' selling potential, making them profitable partners for the more "traditional" publishing houses. We have also listed seventy novels published by editors attached to universities (daxue⼤大学), and other types of research centers, as indicated by their names, containing terms like yanjiu 研究, research, xueyuan 学院, institute, or kexue 科学, science. The entities which seem to be most involved in workplace fiction publishing in our inventory were the Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House (Jiangsu wenyi chubanshe江苏⽂文 艺 出 版 社), with thirty-four novels released, the Chongqing Publishing House (Chongqing chubanshe 重庆出版社), which published twenty-five novels, as well as the Writers Publishing House, and the New World Publishing House (Xin shijie chubanshe新世界出版社), which released
97. During our 2015 field research, we had the opportunity to interview editors from the Changjiang Wenyi Press (Changjiang wenyi chubanshe 长江⽂文艺出版社), who asserted that mastering the young readership was equivalent to mastering the market as a whole.
twenty-three novels each.
Among the 826 works listed in our inventory, fifty-seven were attributed to non-Chinese authors.98 These works can be used as a sample to apprehend the heteroclite nature of the category, as they include, for example, Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and Vegetius' The Military Institutions of the
Among the 826 works listed in our inventory, fifty-seven were attributed to non-Chinese authors.98 These works can be used as a sample to apprehend the heteroclite nature of the category, as they include, for example, Lauren Weisberger's The Devil Wears Prada, F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and Vegetius' The Military Institutions of the