About the author
Dr. LIN Jiazhao is an associate professor at the College of International Studies, Shenzhen University. He formerly served as a Chinese language instructor at the Confucius Institute, University of Utah. His primary research focuses on the inter-medial and cross-cultural transmission of literature. He currently leads the National Social Science Fund Youth Project, “A Study on the Media Poetics of 19th-Century Journalist-Writers”, and has participated in several major national projects, including “The Role and Influence of Chinese Literature in the Course of World Civilization.” He has published over ten academic articles in CSSCI and A&HCI-indexed journals such as Journal of Modern Literature and Neohelicon, and is the author of the monograph Mark Twain Studies in the English-Speaking World.
Email: linjiazhao@szu.edu.cn
Digital technologies have enabled the rise of cross-cultural communities centered on Chinese web novels, yet they simultaneously breed significant conceptual distortions. Sensationalist media propaganda, ranging from “addiction” and “obsession” to outlandish claims that “Chinese web novels help Westerners quit drugs”, reveal a profound misreading of communal essence, as these narratives reduce community to mere algorithmic engagement and behavioral metrics. Centering on the global reception of The King’s Avatar within overseas fan communities, this paper argues that constructing a durable cross-cultural community requires more than textual decoding and necessitates shared embodied practices as the material bedrock of belonging.
In the global reception of The King’s Avatar, first, “game-operational embodiment” functions as the primary engine of cross-cultural resonance. Unlike other literary genres, the novel is anchored in the globally shared physical practice of e-sports. By meticulously detailing physiological and technical specifics, such as hand movements, muscle memory, and APM (Actions Per Minute), the text invites readers to map these descriptions onto their own lived gaming experiences. This manual mediation triggers multimodal sensory linkages and stimulates robust discussions among overseas readers regarding operational tactics, effectively forging an “operational alliance” grounded in shared physicality. However, while textual reading can evoke existing bodily memories, it fundamentally lacks tactile and spatial presence. Moreover, web novels rely on “shuanggan” (爽感, pleasure-gratification) mechanics to fuel the attention economy, resulting in transient emotional spikes and utilitarian relationships characteristic of a virtual gathering rather than an organic community. In contrast, the global dissemination of The King’s Avatar demonstrates a strategic deployment of “hybrid embodiment,” integrating textual imagination, audio-visual reproduction, and offline participation. For instance, the Singapore New Year countdown event and the appointment of the protagonist Ye Xiu as Switzerland Tourism’s Trailblazer transformed fictional rituals into moments of collective bodily co-presence.
Ultimately, strategy must evolve beyond symbolic export toward tangible participation. Extending IPs from virtual narratives to “hybrid embodiment” in physical spaces converts abstract cultural traits into enacted experience. This re-embodiment is essential to overcoming cultural discount as it facilitates a paradigm shift from content export to substantive civilizational dialogue, anchoring a subject-positioned voice for Chinese culture globally.
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