Qidian (simplified Chinese: 起点中文网; traditional Chinese: 起點中文網; pinyin: Qǐdiǎn zhōngwén wǎng; lit. 'Starting Point Chinese Online') is a Chinese online literature website in mainland China. Founded in 2002 by a Chinese fantasy (xuanhuan) community, the site was acquired by Shanda in 2004, but is now part of China Reading Group.
History
Chinese Magic Fantasy Union, founded in November 2001, is a community of Chinese fantasy enthusiasts. In May 2002, the Chinese Magic Fantasy Union founded Qidian, with the initial goal of promoting online literature and building a community of fantasy enthusiasts. In October 2003, Qidian began a pay-to-read system.
In October 2004, Qidian was acquired by Shanda. In May 2005, the women's channel (nüpin) was launched as a section on the homepage of Qidian.com, and in 2009, the women's channel got its own domain name and was renamed Qidian Female Net.
In July 2008, Shanda established Cloudary Corporation, and Qidian became part of the Cloudary Corporation.
Since 2010, Qidian has allowed registered users to send reward money directly to authors through Qidian's system. By September 2010, Qidian had 10 million registered users.
At the end of 2014, Shanda announced the sale of the Cloudary Corporation. All of Shanda's online fiction sites are now owned by China Reading Group.
A 2019 study found that Chinese fantasy and wuxia-themed novels accounted for 42.39% of all online novels in Qidian.
Features
The main navigation bar at the top of the page provides access to the fiction area of the site categorized by genre: fantasy novels, wuxia novels, urban novels, historical novels, game novels, and more.
There are both long-term full-time writers and part-time amateur writers on Qidian. Most writers do not post all of their novels to Qidian at once, but will update their novels daily. Many writers will abandon their novels before the narrative is concluded, for reasons that include creative exhaustion, lack of energy, unpopularity of the story, and over-criticism.
Membership
It is not required to register with Qidian to read novels, however, registration is mandatory to enjoy some of the benefits Qidian offers, such as communicating with authors. As of 2016, Starting Point offers four types of membership:
- Basic membership, which is free to sign up for, 5RMB for 100000 characters, one-off payment.
- Advanced membership, which costs 199RMB per year, 5RMB for 100000 characters, but allows one to accumulate credits and read with them.
- Junior VIP, 1200RMB per year, 4RMB per 100000 characters.
- Senior VIP, 3600RMB per year, 3RMB per 100000 characters.
References
- ^ Liu, Miqi (6 May 2024). "Gendered keywords as entry points: the construction and evolution of nüpin and nüxing-xiang in Chinese Internet literature". Feminist Media Studies: 1–18. doi:10.1080/14680777.2024.2345204. ISSN 1468-0777. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
- ^ Huang, Xinkai (1 December 2011). "To Become Immortal: Chinese Fantasy Literature Online" (PDF). Intercultural Communication Studies. XX (2). Retrieved 10 November 2024.
- "网络文学走进迪斯尼时代？" [Internet Literature Goes Disney?]. The Time Weekly (in Simplified Chinese). 29 April 2010. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
- Guo, Jinghua (31 December 2014). "Electronic Literature in China". CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. 16 (5). doi:10.7771/1481-4374.2631. ISSN 1481-4374.
- ^ Aquilino, Serafina (2016). Walking into the literary field? : The interaction between China’s official and online literary scene (PhD thesis). SOAS University of London. doi:10.25501/SOAS.00024944.
- Liu, Xiping; Wan, Changxuan (2019). "What Are You Reading: A Big Data Analysis of Online Literary Content". Data Mining and Big Data. Springer: 23–33. doi:10.1007/978-981-32-9563-6_3. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
- Zhang, Yingjin (2023). A World History of Chinese Literature. Routledge. p. 379. ISBN 978-0-367-76488-3. Retrieved 10 November 2024.
