SO what else is new? Young people don't read books, certainly not the classics, not even classic martial arts. It's gotta be real simple, weird and online, writes Yao Minji.

Roger Zhou was shocked to find only two classic martial arts novels in Shanghai Book City on Fuzhou Road, the biggest bookstore in Shanghai. In the martial arts section, however, Zhou did see a large number of fantasy martial arts novels with video game-type jackets, and pen names like Eagle in the Dust and Addicted to Your Pale Cheek.

People pick their favorite books at Shanghai Book City, the largest bookstore in Shanghai on Fuzhou Road. However, an increasing number of people, mostly students and young adults, choose to read online - and virtually not the classics. [Shanghai Daily]

Still, the section attracted many readers, mostly in their teens. Sci-fi fantasy martial arts are an emerging genre.

A shop assistant confirms that Zhou didn't miss any classics - there were only two new martial arts novels by Malaysian-born writer Wen Rui'an - and nothing by legendary Jin Yong (Louis Cha) or Gu Long (Hsuing Yao-hua), traditionally the best-known and best-selling writers.

Zhou's frustrating search for classic martial arts in print - and the emergence of online sci-fi fantasy martial arts - is a story in itself about the dying love of reading good books for pleasure. It's also about the onslaught of online novel publishing as millions of young people grind out primitive pulp fiction in hopes of making it big.

It's not true that young people don't read printed books - but they have to be utilitarian, improve their complexion or help them pass exams. Who wants to read old Lao She anyway? All you need to know for the exam is that he wrote Rickshaw Boy and Teahouse. As for the classics, just watch the movie or buy a cheat sheet.

Now, on with Zhou's search for martial arts that he loved in high school.

Zhou, a 30-year-old student, is studying in a US graduate school and returned to Shanghai for winter break. As he browsed through his high school pictures, he suddenly wanted to read martial arts again. After all, China is the land of classics.

"When I was in high school and college, martial arts novels were so popular that many students hid books so they could read them in class," Zhou recalls.

"Back then, every bookstore had shelves of martial arts novels. Jin Yong and Gu Long would each take a shelf and people were crowded about and reading in the store," he says.

Although mostly written in the 1960s-70s, those martial arts novels remained popular and contained fascinating details about history, custom and manners. At the time parents and teachers considered them pulp fiction and a bad influence because of they contained violence and because they were so addictive.

Each of Cha's novels has been adapted into movies and TV dramas. The dramas still come out, faced-paced and action-packed, but the books and words are missing.

Astonished and dissatisfied, Zhou visited three more large bookstores. The bookstore on Nanjing Road E. (now branch of Shanghai Book City) used to be the biggest in the city before the book city was built, and it occupied four floors of a building. Now, the building has been turned into a shopping mall and the bookstore has been relegated to only one outlet on the corner of the third floor.

Although it's a Chinese bookstore, the entrance is filled with popular English novels like Harry Potter or English-language books about Chinese culture and tradition. A shop assistant who declines to be identified says the books are displayed this way to attract passing expats because "it's more likely that foreigners will buy books."

As in most other bookstores, popular nonfiction about health and skin care, exam and finance books are most prominently displayed.

The shelves labeled "Youth/Campus Novels" and "Fantasy/Martial Arts" - many with lurid, tantalizing covers - represent the two biggest sections. The shop assistant admits they don't sell too well. Most people just read them in the store instead of taking them home because "after all, you can find most of those books online," he says. Many were online novels before they were printed.

Our martial arts seeker Zhou finally found the familiar books in a bookstore near Fudan University, quite away from Nanjing Road and Huaihai Road.

However, the books he seeks are locked in a large glass cabinet with a sign saying "Classic Martial Arts Novels," right next to another locked shelf of "Classic Contemporary Chinese Novels." That shelf contains the great names, such as Lu Xun, Lao She and Cao Yu.

Our reader goes looking for an assistant to unlock the cabinet. Bookstore manager Zhang, who declines to give his full name, says it's no trouble at all. "Very few people ask for those books and the shelf is more for display."

Zhang adds a more correct answer. "Well, they are such classics that everyone probably has one at home. We put them on the shelf as a tribute to the authors."

It's true.

Very few people buy the classics. It's not true, however, that everyone has a copy at home.

Last Tuesday was the 110th anniversary of the birth of Lao She, one of the great novelists and dramatists of the 20th century. His play "Teahouse" is always the sold-out show in the Beijing People's Theater.

Many bookstores opened a special shelf for Lao She for the anniversary, but they were rather like exhibitions. Very few people bought the books.

"He is just too far away from us and we only need him in exams for Chinese literature," says Dennis Chen, 20, a junior at Shanghai University.

"I can write his name and I know his most famous works are Rickshaw Boy and Teahouse, more than enough for the exam.

"How do you expect us, who grow up in one of China's richest city when the country's average economic growth rate stays at two digits for years, to understand how the poorest of the poor suffer in a bad era?"

Chen's argument is endorsed by many young people and apparently his parents. He says they agree he only needs to know the names and the basic information to pass the exams - and "maybe watch movie or drama for most of the works."

In other words, the classics are boring and complicated.