Cultural evolution

Megan Walsh maps the diversity and division among writers in modern China.

- JEREMY REES

Sketching China's literature boom: Megan Walsh.

THE SUBPLOT: WHAT CHINA IS READING AND WHY IT MATTERS, by Megan Walsh (Columbia Global Reports, US$16)

China has the largest online publishing platform in the world and among the most striking genres of fiction. There is a flourishing area of works by migrant workers toiling in China's rapidly growing cities and lamenting their distance from "left-behind children" in rural villages. It is, says author Megan Walsh, the most comprehensive migrant-worker poetry movement in the world.

Then there is the sub-genre of online homoerotic fiction written for the internet by mainly female writers, calling themselves "rotten girls". Walsh, a journalist and critic, argues it is a way for Chinese women writers to absent themselves from the story and yet tackle stories of societal expectations, taboos and attraction.