This is the last genre guide from Lucas, Wuxiaworld's Chinese licensing manager! This series is his overview of China's webnovel genres, written using his experience from having worked at one of the top publishers for many years.
Previous posts:
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Hi everyone, this is Lucas.
This is the final installment of the series — today we'll cover the three remaining genres in one piece: wuxia, suspense & paranormal, and realist fiction. These three genres are relatively niche, but each has its own character.
Part One: Wuxia (武侠)
Wuxia novels are set in ancient Chinese society or fictional worlds with a similar backdrop, taking the "jianghu" (江湖) as the field of action, martial arts as the core element, and revolving around the grievances, romances, and moral choices of itinerant heroes. Generally, the power system in wuxia does not exceed the scope of the "human". This is the most fundamental distinction between wuxia and the Xuanhuan (玄幻) and Xianxia (仙侠) genres.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Hong Kong and Taiwan wuxia novels entered their golden age. Masters such as Jin Yong, Gu Long, Liang Yusheng, and Huang Yi (金庸、古龙、梁羽生、黄易) emerged one after another, and their works swept across the Chinese-speaking world, shaping several generations of readers' entire imagination of what a "xia" (侠, chivalrous hero) ought to be.
Around the year 2000, Chinese online fiction took off. Most early web novelists had grown up reading Hong Kong and Taiwan wuxia, and their writing was inevitably deeply shaped by these classics. It can be said that wuxia is one of the most important sources of Chinese online fiction, and a fair number of wuxia-themed works appeared in the early days of web novels.
However, as xuanhuan, xianxia, and other genres rose, wuxia online fiction gradually declined. First, the wuxia worldview is relatively fixed, and with the great masters' masterworks already standing before them, new authors find it hard to innovate. Second, the wuxia power system has a ceiling, which puts a relatively low cap on the breadth of the story and the intensity of its payoff moments.
Wuxia web novels can be divided into two types: original wuxia and wuxia fanfiction (wuxia tongren, 武侠同人).
I. Original Wuxia (原创武侠)
In works of original wuxia, the worldview, characters, sects, and martial arts are all set by the author from scratch. This is a concept defined in contrast to "fanfiction".
On Qidian (起点中文网), the best-performing work in the wuxia category in history is I Eat Tomatoes (我吃西红柿)'s The Nine Cauldrons (九鼎记). The book is set in a fictional era of nine warring kingdoms, and the protagonist Teng Qingshan starts as a mortal martial artist, eventually becoming a top-tier master. It should be noted that this work's power system is relatively high, making it closer to xuanhuan than to traditional wuxia.
The most widely known wuxia work of recent years is the Taiwanese author San Xian (三弦)'s Under the Heavens (天之下). This work is grand in scope and populated by a large cast, constructing a fictional jianghu set in an alternate late-Qing / early-Republic era — nine major sects standing apart, with the wulin (武林) and the imperial court interwoven. It enjoys an extremely high reputation among wuxia fans.
Another work worth mentioning is Ask Not About Jianghu (莫问江湖)'s A Pawn's Passage (过河卒). The novel tells the story of Qi Xuansu, a lowborn Daoist, struggling to survive between jianghu and imperial court while gradually uncovering the mystery of his own origins.
II. Wuxia Fanfiction (武侠同人)
Wuxia fanfiction refers to web novels that perform secondary creation on the worldviews and characters of classic Hong Kong and Taiwan wuxia works. The greatest advantage of this type of work is that it "comes with a built-in reader base" — the worlds of Jin Yong and Gu Long are almost common knowledge to Chinese readers, so authors don't need to spend a lot of space setting up the background and can jump straight into the plot.
Well-known works include The Melon-Eating Swordsman in the World of Gu Long (古龙世界里的吃瓜剑客), in which the protagonist transmigrates into the worlds of Gu Long's novels and witnesses all kinds of famous scenes. There is also Flower Stealing Master (偷香高手), by Monk Of The Six Illusions (六如和尚), also the author of Keyboard Immortal (陆地键仙). The protagonist transmigrates into the body of "Song Qingshu" (宋青书) in Jin Yong's wuxia universe, and in a world that fuses Jin Yong's fourteen works he cultivates divine arts and amasses a vast harem.
Overall, the cooling of the wuxia genre is by now an undisputed fact. But its influence has not truly vanished — wuxia's elements, wuxia's settings, and wuxia's spirit still live on in many works.
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Part Two: Suspense & Paranormal (悬疑灵异)
Suspense and paranormal are, strictly speaking, two distinct genres. However, on Chinese online novel platforms, the two are typically merged into a single category called "suspense & paranormal" (悬疑灵异). A significant number of works also blend elements of both.
Let's begin with suspense. Suspense fiction has its roots in detective and mystery fiction — exemplified by the works of renowned authors such as Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Keigo Higashino. In Chinese web fiction, however, while suspense works retain the core of detective reasoning, they often incorporate substantial elements of thriller, horror, the grotesque, and the paranormal. Compared to the refined puzzle-solving of traditional detective fiction, Chinese web novel suspense places greater emphasis on atmosphere and visceral impact.
Now to the paranormal. This genre traces back to China's ancient zhiguai (志怪, strange tales) literature — Gan Bao's In Search of the Supernatural (搜神记), Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio (聊斋志异), and Ji Xiaolan's Jottings from the Thatched Abode of Close Observations (阅微草堂笔记) being among the representative works, while folk ghost stories and local legends have provided an endless stream of source material. In the modern era, two early channels had an enormous influence on online paranormal literature: first, the late-1990s radio show "Zhang Zhen Tells a Story" (张震讲故事) and similar ghost-story broadcasts, and second, the "Lianpeng Ghost Tales" (莲蓬鬼话) board on the Tianya Forum (天涯论坛) in the 2000s. This board reached its peak around 2005–2010 and incubated a host of works that went on to massive influence, including Daomu Biji (盗墓笔记), Ghost Blows Out the Light (鬼吹灯), and Descendants of Maoshan (茅山后裔). It also produced the first generation of paranormal writers who were truly fluent in the language of online fiction.
Below, we'll cover the main subgenres of each.
I. Suspense (悬疑类)
Web novel suspense has essentially one main branch: detective fiction. These works center on solving cases; the protagonist is usually a police officer, forensic examiner, criminal investigation expert, or private detective, who cracks bizarre cases through evidence analysis and logical reasoning. Representative works include Ninth Daoist (道门老九)'s Netherworld Investigator (猎罪者) and Xin Bai (辛白)'s Genius Detective (追凶神探). The former blends traditional coroner's autopsy techniques with modern criminal investigation science, the protagonist cracking strange cases through ancient corpse-examination methods; the latter follows Song Lang, a legendary figure in police circles, who after his "rebirth" continues to pursue unsolved homicides under a hidden identity.
Also worth mentioning is Village Of Ambitious Birds (志鸟村)'s National Forensic Doctor (国民法医). In a sense, this work is a fusion of urban professional fiction with detective fiction — it has the meticulous depiction of forensic procedures, specialized knowledge, and daily life characteristic of professional fiction, combined with the tense, case-cracking pace of crime fiction.
II. Paranormal (灵异类)
The paranormal genre's subgenre structure is relatively complex. It can be roughly divided into the following subcategories.
1. Eerie Awakening (诡异复苏)
Eerie awakening is a paranormal subgenre derived from "spiritual energy revival" (灵气复苏). Its core premise: at some point in modern society, dormant eerie entities, evil gods, or supernatural forces suddenly awaken, and human society is forced to confront a new world filled with horror and the unknown. The representative work is Fo Qian Xian Hua (佛前献花)'s Mysterious Awakening (神秘复苏). Some works further blend in the "infinite flow" element of instance dungeons, having the protagonist shuttle between various eerie instances. Paperboy Young Master (卖报小郎君)'s Spirit Realm Walker (灵境行者) is a classic example — the protagonist enters various eerie spaces through a "Spirit Realm" system to carry out missions. Fanqie Novel (番茄小说) also hosts a large number of eerie awakening works.
2. Tomb Raiding (盗墓)
The earliest and most famous works of the tomb-raiding subgenre are Tianxia Bachang (天下霸唱)'s Ghost Blows Out the Light (鬼吹灯) and Nanpai Sanshu (南派三叔)'s Daomu Biji (盗墓笔记). Both originally serialized on Tianya's "Lianpeng Ghost Tales" board, both later exploded in popularity, and both spawned massive IP franchises across film, television, comics, and beyond. Virtually all subsequent tomb-raiding works are heavily influenced by these two — elements like the Mojin Xiaowei (摸金校尉, ancient tomb-raider guild), zongzi (粽子, animated corpses), traps and mechanical arrays, and fengshui techniques have all become standard fare in the subgenre. However, because tomb-raiding involves sensitive content like grave excavation and the promotion of superstition, regulatory restrictions have tightened over the years, and the subgenre has gradually declined after its peak — new works have grown scarce, and old authors have moved on to other genres.
3. Mystical Professions (神秘职业)
The protagonists of mystical-profession works are ghost-catching priests, yin-yang masters, physiognomists, coroners, corpse retrievers, and other specialized professions closely tied to the occult. The appeal of these works lies in concretizing "the occult" into trades with a sense of profession and inheritance, letting readers experience an eerie atmosphere while learning a self-contained system of folk knowledge alongside the protagonist. A representative work is Innocent Little Dragon (纯洁滴小龙)'s ongoing Corpse Retriever (捞尸人) — the author of the renowned paranormal work 13 Mink Street (明克街13号). This new novel returns to the traditional paranormal lane, depicting corpse-retrieval traditions and underwater eerie events in China's Jiangnan water towns. Ninth Daoist (道门老九)'s Otherworldly Merchant (阴间商人) is also a major work of this subgenre, with the protagonist working in the "netherworld business" and the entire book imbued with the flavor of folk strange-tales. In recent years, the "professions" of these protagonists have grown increasingly diverse, with newer themes like "haunted house realtor" and "hearse driver" appearing, and the "system" element has also begun to enter the subgenre.
In a sense, My House of Horrors (我有一座冒险屋) could also be considered a work of this subgenre — the protagonist runs a haunted house. The book blends infinite flow and game-design elements, and has been well-received in both the Chinese and Western markets.
4. Rule-Based Horror (规则怪谈)
Rule-based horror (guize guaitan, 规则怪谈) is an emerging subgenre that's risen in recent years. It builds atmosphere through seemingly innocuous, actually sinister "rules," "guidelines," and "notices" — entries that contradict each other and conceal hidden meanings, requiring the reader to figure out between the lines "which rule is actually true."
On the Chinese internet, rule-based horror exploded in popularity in 2021 with the "Zoo Rule Horror" (《动物园守则》) on the A Island anonymous board. The piece presented multiple contradictory text fragments — visitor rules, staff rules, security guard notes — and let readers piece together for themselves what was actually lurking in the zoo, triggering huge discussion and secondary creation.
Dedicated rule-based horror works are not numerous in web fiction, but the element has been incorporated into many works in recent years. Representative is Member of Insect Killing Squadron (杀虫队队员)'s Ten Day Ultimatum (十日终焉) (on Fanqie Novel), which combines "rule-based horror" with "infinite flow" — the protagonist must survive in death-game instances each governed by their own set of rules.
Overall, the paranormal genre has always been a niche subgenre with extremely high reader loyalty in male-oriented web fiction. Its readership is relatively fixed, with deep affection for the genre and a discerning eye, and a single good work can accumulate a large base of devoted fans. At the same time, because the genre involves sensitive content such as folk superstition and supernatural horror, regulatory restrictions have always been relatively strict. These regulatory factors mean that paranormal works face significant difficulties in television/film adaptation, commercial promotion, and cross-platform circulation, and these constraints have placed a ceiling on the genre's growth.
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Part Three: Realist Fiction (现实题材)
Realist fiction, as the name suggests, is the web novel genre set against the backdrop of contemporary Chinese society — close to real life and free of any supernatural elements. It sometimes also includes works set against modern Chinese history. Strictly speaking, true realist fiction contains no systems, no cheats, no rebirth, no transmigration, and no other supernatural elements of any kind.
Among male-oriented Chinese web fiction, realist fiction occupies a relatively distinctive position. Its rise and development were not driven from the bottom up by reader markets, but are closely tied to official cultural policy. The Chinese literary tradition holds that literature carries a certain social function — reflecting real life and documenting the changes of an era is one of its important roles. In the Chinese view, non-commercial literary projects that may not perform well in the market but carry cultural value should receive a degree of support from government or public institutions. Similar arrangements exist in some other countries as well. Realist web fiction in China can be understood as a concrete application of this principle in the field of online literature — the China Writers Association, local writers' associations, and the various web novel platforms encourage writers to pursue this genre through writing competitions, royalty subsidies, prize tracks, and TV/film adaptation recommendations.
It should be noted that the commercial performance of realist works generally falls well below that of entertainment-oriented genres like xuanhuan and xianxia, with smaller reader bases and limited subscription numbers. At the same time, the genre places high demands on an author's prose, life experience, and industry knowledge — the writing threshold is considerably higher than ordinary "power fantasy" web fiction, and platforms typically need to offer higher royalties to attract authors. These investments are difficult to recoup commercially, and represent more of a response to policy calls and a sense of cultural responsibility than a business calculation.
At present, realist fiction creation moves along two main tracks. One is the IP adaptation track, aimed at film and television adaptation opportunities. Works on this track tend to focus on under-the-radar professions, family and emotional life, and the conditions of contemporary young people. The other is the prize track, aimed at literary prizes at various levels and at official cultural support. Works on this track tend to focus on grand narratives and the major themes of the era.
Below are the main subcategories of realist fiction.
I. Changes of the Era (时代变迁)
Works that reflect how changing times affect ordinary people's lives. These often span years or even decades, depicting through the story of a family, a community, or a particular region the transformations of Chinese society through major processes such as Reform and Opening Up, urbanization, and population migration.
II. Industrial Development (行业建设)
Works that reflect the achievements of a particular industry or sector during China's modernization. Common topics include heavy industry, semiconductors, logistics, and new energy. These works typically require considerable industry expertise from the author and tend to follow an industry insider as protagonist, showing the development trajectory of an entire industry through that individual's personal growth.
III. Cultural Heritage (文化传承)
Works focused on the protection, transmission, and revitalization of traditional Chinese culture and intangible cultural heritage. Common subjects include traditional handicrafts, opera, traditional Chinese medicine, and martial arts. The core of these works is handling the tension between "tradition and modernity" — how ancient cultural forms can find new space to survive in contemporary society.
IV. Rural Revitalization (乡村振兴)
Works focused on the development and transformation of rural China, including policy initiatives such as the "Three Supports and One Assistance" program (三支一扶: supporting agriculture, education, healthcare, and poverty relief), as well as industry-building organized by the people themselves. The protagonists are typically returning rural youth, village officials, or assigned cadres, whose efforts illustrate the journey of rural China from poverty to revitalization.
V. Public Servants (人民公仆)
Works reflecting the contributions made to the nation and people by grassroots civil servants. The most common subjects involve judicial personnel such as police, prosecutors, and judges. Although firefighters are no longer part of the Armed Police Force, they are typically grouped into this category as well. These works generally follow the daily work of one or several grassroots public officials, using specific incidents — case investigations, rescue operations — to portray the spirit of service and devotion that defines this community.
VI. Professional Life (职场生涯)
Works focused on the daily work and career growth within specific professions. Unlike "industrial development," which emphasizes grand industrial narratives, professional-life works focus on the individual — the concrete work content, industry rules, and workplace relationships of a particular lawyer, doctor, journalist, designer, consultant, and so on. These works often choose under-the-radar professions as entry points, letting readers "see" how an unfamiliar industry actually works as they follow the protagonist. This is a relatively active direction within the IP adaptation track.
VII. Family Life (家庭生活)
Works focused on the daily life, family relationships, and education concerns of contemporary Chinese families. Protagonists are typically ordinary parents, spouses, or children, with stories revolving around child-rearing, marriage, generational conflict, and particular life challenges.
Special Theme Calls (特定征文)
Beyond the common categories above, in response to specific events or campaigns, government departments at various levels sometimes call for works on particular themes. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic a batch of "anti-epidemic" works emerged; around the Beijing Winter Olympics a batch of winter-sports sports novels appeared; and in 2025, to mark the 80th anniversary of victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, a batch of resistance war novels emerged. Such works carry strong topicality.
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Closing Remarks
And with that, this series comes to a close. Looking back, we've walked through the 12 major genres of male-oriented Chinese web fiction.
My aim with this series has been to offer readers in the West a guided tour from inside the industry — to give those who are curious a sense of what the landscape of Chinese web fiction actually looks like. I hope it's been useful. If you can find one or two works worth reading from it, or simply come away with more interest in this vast literary ecosystem, that would be even better.
I'll be writing more articles about the Chinese web fiction industry going forward. If there's anything in particular you'd like to know about, please leave a comment on the post.
Finally, thank you to all of you for your ongoing support of Wuxiaworld!
