IN the latest novel by Kittisak Kongka, a 33-year-old Thai online writer, one of the major settings is a Chinese restaurant. “Chinese food is popular in Thailand, so I think a Chinese restaurant (as the background) could add appeal for my story,” Kongka said. Kongka’s novel won a gold award in the WebNovel Spirity Awards (WSA) 2022, a global online novel writing competition organized by WebNovel, a reading portal owned by China Literature Limited (CLL). First held in 2018 targeting English-language writers, the annual competition was opened to writers of Indonesian and Thai languages for the first time in 2022. More than 90,000 novels were submitted worldwide last year, and three participants from Thailand, India and Pakistan won the gold awards. At the award ceremony hosted in Hong Kong on Friday, more than 20 online writers from various countries and regions such as Germany, Canada, Indonesia and Thailand, as well as guests with professional backgrounds in culture and art, discussed the future of online literature. Online literature has offered a burgeoning approach for cultural exchanges and served as an effective way for China to tell its stories of the past and the present to the world. In 2021, more than 10,000 Chinese online literary works entered overseas markets, earning revenues of more than 3 billion yuan (about US$434 million), according to a blue book on Chinese online literature published by the China Writers Association. A report released by CLL at the ceremony showed that by the end of 2022, around 2,900 Chinese online literary works had been translated and published on webnovel.com, attracting around 170 million readers from more than 200 countries and regions worldwide, of whom 75% were GenZers. “I got to know China by watching TV series such as ‘Bao Qingtian’ (‘Justice Bao’) when I was a kid,” said Pippo, a senior manager at OokbeeU, a Thai reading portal partnering with Webnovel, at the ceremony. Online literature has provided a new lens for people in Thailand to view China, especially for younger generations, as it was estimated that nearly 10% of the Thai population had the habit of reading novels on Ookbee, Pippo said. According to the report by CLL, among the online discussions by overseas readers on Webnovel last year, China-related words were found to be mentioned more than 150,000 times. Things like food, martial arts, tea art, giant panda, and cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macao and Hangzhou were among the most frequently mentioned. In September last year, 16 Chinese online novels entered a collection in the British Library, covering themes of science fiction, history, reality and fantasy, the report also said. The top five countries with the largest number of writers on webnovel.com were the United States, India, Philippines, Indonesia and Britain.(Xinhua) | 