YAN Yan Gu Shi (Salt and Words Story), a new app for storytellers to release short tales which can be mostly finished in 10 to 20 minutes, has been released by China’s largest question-and-answer platform Zhihu. Zhang Rongle, vice president of Zhihu, said the app ushers in a new competitive track to contend for the short-story market. He said Zhihu, which is known for knowledge sharing in the question-and-answer format, has provided a brainstorming platform for storytellers. For instance, writer Ma Boyong’s popular suspense novel “The Longest Day in Chang’an” was originally inspired by his reply to a question on Zhihu that asked, “What if a story like ‘Assassin’s Creed’ takes place in China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907)?” Speaking that the platform has a huge amount of such content, varying in themes from netizens’ personal experiences to their imaginations about fantastic elements like time travel, Zhang said this interesting and innovative content has laid the foundation for short story creation. By the fourth quarter of last year, Zhihu had a total of 13 million subscribers. Most of its young users, mostly from first and second-tier cities, prefer to read short stories before falling asleep or during their lunch break, according to Zhang. (China Daily) | 