MCLC: zhichang xiaoshuo

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: zhichang xiaoshuo
***********************************************************

Source: The New Yorker (2/6/12):
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/02/06/120206fa_fact_chang

LETTER FROM CHINA
WORKING TITLES
What do the most industrious people on earth read for fun?
BY LESLIE T. CHANG

Most of the officials in Qinglin spend their days playing mah-jongg and
getting drunk, but Hou Weidong is determined to make something of himself.
He sweeps the work team¹s office every day. He organizes villagers to
build a new road. Although he is drunk a fair amount‹that¹s a given for
anyone in government service‹he usually makes it home before he passes out.

The mountains around the fictional town of Qinglin, in southwestern China,
consist of especially hard rock. And so in the first novel of a
multivolume series about the life of Hou Weidong the protagonist invests
in a stone quarry, even though officials are banned from commercial
ventures. His timing is perfect: the county names 1994 the Year of
Transport Construction, and demand for stone soars. But getting paid is
another matter; anybody doing business has to bribe the government finance
department in order to get the money he is owed. Hou Weidong learns how to
do this, just as he learns how to win contracts that have not yet been
announced and how to pay off the police. His bank account grows to three
hundred and thirty-seven times his yearly civil servant¹s salary. He buys
a pager and then a Motorola mobile phone; his house is the first in town
to have air-conditioning.

Eventually, Hou Weidong is detained and questioned in a corruption
investigation. But he does not inform on his official patrons. After his
release, friends get him elected deputy township chief. He makes plans to
marry his college sweetheart, whose parents have long opposed the match.
They change their minds after visiting his new
fourteen-hundred-square-foot apartment with two bathrooms‹a climactic
scene that ends the first volume of ³The Diary of Government Official Hou
Weidong²:


Xiaojia said, ³Husband, the two of us finally have a house.²

Hou Weidong said, ³This is our little nest. We will spend 100,000 yuan to
renovate it properly.²

Xiaojia said, ³We should buy a full set of home appliances, a VCD player,
a 29-inch television set, an automatic washing machine, an
air-conditioner, and a complete set of wooden floors.² And so the door to
happiness opened.


What do the Chinese, some of the hardest-working people on the planet,
read in their spare time? Novels about work. The seventh volume of ³The
Diary of Government Official Hou Weidong² was published last July, with an
initial print run of two hundred thousand copies. An official-looking red
stamp on their covers proclaims that the books are a ³Must-Read for
Government Employees,² but managers and entrepreneurs read them, too.
Zhichang xiaoshuo, or workplace novels, have topped best-seller lists in
recent years. ³Du Lala¹s Promotion Diary,² by a corporate executive
writing under the pen name Li Ke, is the story of a young woman who rises
from secretary to human-resources manager at a Fortune 500 company. It has
inspired three sequels, a hit movie, and a thirty-two-part television
series. The books have sold five million copies. In ³The Get-Rich Diary of
China¹s Poorest Guy,² an unemployed man becomes a millionaire in three
years by selling electric cable; the book¹s editor attributes its success
to a clever title, a flashy cover, and the fact that ³getting rich is the
dream of all Chinese people.²

Certain professions have their own subgenres. The ³commercial warfare
novel² pits sales teams against each other in mortal combat over a large
order. The ³financial novel² wrings drama from stock prices. The ³novel of
officialdom,² which dates to imperial times, trades in the secrets and
scandals of the bureaucracy.

Like their protagonists, these books strive to be efficient and useful.
They include rules for getting ahead in the workplace:


Socialize with rich people. They know more than the poor.

Avoid unpromising work assignments by feigning illness. Women should fake
pregnancy when necessary.

If your boss makes a pass at you, smile and flirt back.

Hire subordinates who are barely adequate or they¹ll make you look bad.

When bribing an official, have your business partner deliver the money so
your hands stay clean.


³Du Lala¹s Promotion Diary² contains a long disquisition on how to
calculate the budget for an office renovation. Elsewhere, the author
interrupts the narrative to explain what a non-compete agreement is. ³The
Get-Rich Diary² puts entrepreneurial tips in boldface: ³It takes many
incidents to establish a reputation and only one to ruin it,² and ³Selling
the same item in a different location may increase your profits.²

In America, writers might feel pressured to add romance and sex to a
novel; in China they¹re told to take it out. ³Traps and Links,² a thriller
about sales teams competing to win a $1.7-million computer-equipment
contract, was edited to tone down a love interest. ³When we first saw this
book, we told the author, ŒWe don¹t want to publish a romance novel. Can
you make it more of a financial novel?,¹ ² Zhang Lihong, the chief editor
of Tsinghua University Press, which published the book, told me. ³We knew
that¹s what would make it sell better.² The book has sold almost four
hundred thousand copies and inspired two sequels.

Most workplace novelists do not have a literary background: one was a
pioneer in the securities industry, and another sold computers for Dell.
They typically begin writing anonymously on the Internet and are signed by
publishers after they gain an online following. ³The Diary of Government
Official Hou Weidong² is published under a pseudonym, and the book jacket
identifies the author only as ³a certain deputy bureau director in a
certain city in a certain province.² But in late 2010 newspaper reporters
outed a mid-level functionary named Zhang Bing. He worked in Yongchuan
District, one of the countless regions administered by the sprawling city
of Chongqing. The author of the Hou Weidong series, which has sold three
million copies, was the deputy director of the Bureau of Environmental
Sanitation.