(By Marysia Juszczakiewicz, of Peony):
The goal when looking for material in China is the same as in the West: to find stories of universal appeal. But there are issues of translation to contend with as well. Chinese is a powerfully visual written language, and the conventions of narrative structure and characterisation differ greatly from the West, so finding stories that bridge that cultural gap take a little more digging. ... Currently, the success of a Chinese novel is determined by the number of translation rights sold, rather than the number of copies sold in English.