Hot Chinese Novels: Film First, Translate Later

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Several best-selling Chinese novels—still largely unknown to readers in the West—have recently attracted big-time investment from China-based film makers. But will the movies pique foreign interest in the books themselves?

Much depends on how well the movies are shot, dubbed/subtitled and marketed outside China, of course.

Go Lala Go, which just debuted in China, shows marketing standards are on the rise. The well-executed movie promo is all in English, and features plenty of photogenic shots of the cast as well as a backgrounder on high-profile female director Xu Jinglei.

The movie is based on the long-time nationwide Number 1 best seller, Story of Lala’s Promotion (杜拉拉升职记). Author Li Ke is a former IBM China staffer, and the novel (actually a series, all best sellers) follows the career of Du Lala who works for a large foreign enterprise. She's not well educated but rises to the position of HR manager through hard work.

To ensure that the wardrobe of fashionista Du Lala would be up to international standards, the stylist for Sex and the City and Devil Wears Prada, Patricia Field, served as consultant.

A budget of RMB100m (US$1.5m) has reportedly been set aside by award-winning director Wang Quan'an, to shoot White Deer Plain (白鹿原). Production of the set is underway in Xi’an, capital of Shaanxi.

Author Chen Zhongshi, one of the most famous contemporary writers out of Shaanxi Province along with Jia Pingwa, won the 1996 Mao Dun Literary Prize for White Deer Plain. The story recounts the hardships and spiritual lives of several generations of Shaanxi peasants, mirroring the radical changes that took place in the Chinese countryside during the 20th century. To research the book, Chen visited over one hundred villages and mined the local chronicles for background.

Meanwhile, actor Huang Xiaoming who starred in The Message (风声) has purchased the movie rights to Guo Jingming’s best-seller, Fantasy City (幻城), AKA Ice Fantasy. Guo, now China’s highest-grossing author at just 27 years of age, penned the novel when still in high school.

What’s the book about? “What happens when mermaids and Ice Princes marry, when fantasy meets wuxia, reality and illusions collide, and to save the person you love, you must destroy everything that he holds dear?” Or so tells us cfensi, one of a handful of English sites offering news about forms of entertainment that are popular among Chinese in their teens and early twenties.

Right Bank of the Argun (额尔古纳河右岸) by Chi Zijian will soon be a film directed by Yang Minghua, a member of the Daur ethnic group, starring the popular and pretty Evenki singer, Alima (阿丽玛).

The novel is a first-person narrative told from the point of view of an aging Evenki woman in the last years of the 20th century. She chooses to stay behind when her tribe abandons the forested mountains of Northeast China for “civilized” life among town dwellers, where their beloved reindeer will be cooped up like cattle.

Unlike the novels listed above, Right Bank of the Argun has been purchased by a major UK publisher. But given that the movie is now at editing stage, the film may well debut before the English book hits the bookshelves.