In recent years, the domestic market has seen comic books that popularize knowledge — especially about traditional Chinese culture — or that provide emotional support have become popular, largely due to competition that's increasingly fierce in today's fast-paced society. However, comics, which are particularly demanding for both authors and editors in general, still need further development, insiders say.

According to the latest report on the domestic book market in 2023 by the publishing industry consulting company Beijing Openbook, comics have become an important medium for presenting different themes.

On both the general list of bestsellers and the list of best-selling new books in 2023, comic books that cover subjects such as science, psychology, history, life and traditional culture, targeting both adults and children, performed well.

For example, the top best-selling children's book in 2023 is Manhua Xiaoxuesheng Xinli (Psychological Comics for Primary School Students), according to Beijing Openbook.

In 2022, Xiaoxuesheng Chaoxi'aide Manhua Kexue (Comic Books About Science Loved by Primary School Students) sold more than 1 million copies.

Actually, comics present many topics in a more vivid and interesting way, and aim to teach children a range of things, such as self-defense, developing strength, making friends and studying efficiently; the life of Confucius and the development of his thoughts; Chinese classics like Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dream of the Red Chamber; great inventions, politics, philosophy, arts and military strategy in ancient China.

This trend was started by a book initially published in 2017, Banxiaoshi Manhua Zhongguoshi (A Comic Book About Chinese History That Can be Finished in Half an Hour).

Its author Chen Lei, whose pen named is Erhunzi, says he did not become interested in history until he was 20, after playing a computer game about World War II while studying mechanical science at university.

"At that time I knew nothing about the people, places and historical background in the game, so I started reading books about WWII and found that I had to first read about WWI to understand WWII," he said at a book event last year.

He said that gradually, his previously sparse historical knowledge developed into clear narrative lines, and he found that the essence of history is stories.

While working as an automotive designer in Shanghai, Chen began creating comic strips full of jokes and vivid metaphors based on historical facts.

For example, when talking about the seven powers during the Warring States Period (475-221 BC), he compared them to seven students in a class. One student named Qin was so outstanding that he looked down upon all the others, so the other six united to fight him. The strategy was known historically as hezong, but Qin managed to sow discord among the allies and break up the union.

In 2014, Chen started posting his comics on his WeChat account, and by 2018 he had 5 million followers.

"We (the publishing team) spent 80 percent of our time processing historical knowledge so as to represent it in a straightforward and clear way that long-form text can't achieve, so that readers can quickly understand people's relationships and other information," he said.

Choosing only core events from critical historical periods, Chen tried to create an interesting narrative form for readers to easily understand and remember events in Chinese history.

After finishing his part, Chen would invite experts to review his work to make sure there were no mistakes pertaining to historical facts.

In April 2017, when the book was published by Dookbook, it set a record of selling out within seven hours on online shopping platforms.

To date, the Half-An-Hour Comics series includes 47 books. The latest is about Chinese geography, says Shen Jun, who is in charge of the series at Dookbook.

Selling more than 20 million copies to date, the series mainly consists of four themes — history, literature, Chinese ancient civilization and science.

"Actually, at first, Erhunzi created the comic strips for adult readers, but later we found his work is most popular among primary school students because kids need to study Chinese history, but what teachers teach at school is not so easy or interesting enough for them to understand," Shen says.

"In comparison, readers need only a little time to read our comics but can gain a lot of knowledge, which is how we positioned the books in planning.

"Just like the educational idea of 'learning through play', through the metaphors, jokes and images in the comic books, readers can easily master otherwise boring knowledge."

Another type of domestic comic book that has become popular in the Chinese market in recent years addresses young people's need for emotional support.

In a time when people prefer photos and videos to text when they take a break from the heavy pressures of life, light comic books naturally win out in popularity.

They are not complicated, long stories but rather warm, funny, short stories about fragments of daily life, Shen says.

One representative work is Daikede Muli Shi Darende Xinzang (Oysters With Shells Are Grownups' Hearts) by Wang Manni.

First published in September 2022, the comic book, which uses candy colors to depict 17 short stories about love and dreams, healing, destiny, hope and courage, has sold more than 600,000 copies in a year, according to Jimu News.

Ruan Junting, associate professor at the China Academy of Art, said in a previous interview that a comic book, like a cocktail, mixes the bitterness of the adult world with candy-colored innocence to offer strength to readers to continue their lives with smiles.

"Now, too many readers need healing stories, and that's why it is successful," says Liu Ping, deputy editor-in-chief of the publishing company, CN Time Books.

The third trend is tied to traditional Chinese culture.

In recent years, as traditional Chinese culture has become popular among young people, a lot of comic books have successfully attracted more readers to this wave.

On the top 10 list of best-selling comic books of all time, released by Xiron, a Beijing-based publishing company, seven are domestic. Among the top 10 best-selling comic titles for 2022 and 2023, respectively, seven and five are domestic comic books, and their competitors on the lists are well-known books from Japan, including Cells at Work and My Neighbour Totoro.

Hua Juan, supervisor of comic books at Xiron, says that the domestic comic books on the lists are popular not only for their stories but also for their themes of traditional Chinese culture.

For example, the best-selling comic book, Those Happenings of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), is adapted from an extremely successful book of the same title that discusses events in this historical period in an entertaining way.

Two other best-sellers on the list, Fei Ren Zai (Non-Human), and, You Shou Yan (Fabulous Beasts), are about the daily lives of the immortals and mythical creatures from ancient times living in modern times.

"They are very imaginative and interesting, and because they are rooted in traditional Chinese culture, Chinese readers can easily resonate with them. Only domestic comics can provide such a reading experience," Hua says.

The Bu Baichi series by Xiron also focuses on traditional Chinese culture and has also been popular among readers.

"They present complicated information in an approachable manner and are popular among young people, especially students, who are most interested in learning, but also care about personalized reading," says Zhang Zheng, a manager in charge of the Bu Baichi series at Xiron.

In 2021, Xiron started a campaign to attract young Chinese to traditional culture through books.

"Now, the popularity of domestic comics has demonstrated this trend," Hua says.

However, she says that even though comic books can easily attract attention and go viral online, they don't actually perform so well in terms of sales.

"Some top comic books can sell more than 1 million copies each, but most comic book editors still do the job out of love, since the books they work on are more complex and costly than common books but sell at lower prices," she says.

She points to the comic books from Xiron as examples. Comics account for less than 10 percent of the total number of book titles, and account for less than 5 percent of sales.

According to Beijing Openbook, between January and November 2023, sales of comic books for adults accounted for 0.53 percent of the market, and kids comics for 0.34 percent.

However, she says there's still huge potential for both domestic market proportion and sales.

"Over the past decade, we can see that the development of comics in China can be attributed to the persistence and efforts of excellent authors, such as Xia Da and Xiao Xinyu. Both of their reader bases have been continuously expanding," she says.

"What we need to do is to better serve these creators, presenting and promoting their great content in a market-oriented way, and providing them with better space for creation."

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