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Chinese people's obsession with self-help and the economy of selling success
In Legend of the Dragonslayer Sword a romance set in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) protagonist Zhang Wuji is an average young man without good looks, talent or great virtue. That is, until he accidentally gets hold of a secret book that teaches a rare, invincible form of kung fu.
After five years of surreptitious practice, he goes on to defeat countless foes, becomes a leader, wins the love of beautiful women and retires at the age of just 22.
The myth of a magical book that solves all of your problems persists today.
In Beijing Book Plaza, one of the biggest bookstores in China, the bestseller shelves are stocked almost entirely with self-help tomes to make you better, stronger, richer and happier. They focus on people how to convince people, manipulate them, deal with serpent-like colleagues and improve your own personal charm.
United States President Barack Obama's smile adorns Learn How to Give Enthusiastic Speeches; British actor Tim Roth pensively studies your face on Read Minds by Microexpressions; and Margaret Thatcher sternly looks down on you from Speeches Given in the World's Most Famous Universities that Will Affect Your Whole Life.
The Chinese name for "self-help book" literally translates as "chicken soup for the soul", adopted from the well-known series of the same name by Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson in the 1990s.
"I read a lot of self-help books when I graduated from university," says Peng Hui, a 32-year-old IT worker.
"I was young then and needed motivation. For a few days I really thought I became a better person. But it was just an illusion. The morals they preach to keep a positive attitude, socialize skillfully and build your network are infallible. It's just that I would always go back to my old self."
Just as "chicken soup" implies, self-help books for Chinese readers are largely imported.
The first to hit China, and arguably the most influential, was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. The book was first translated in 1938, but drew little attention at the time. Chinese people did not really discover their vast appetite for self-help books until a new version of the book appeared in 1986, under the title The Human Weakness. By the early 1990s the book was a huge success.
For the next three decades, Carnegie's charismatic smile has been ubiquitous in Chinese bookstores. He is frequently referred to as "the greatest spiritual mentor of the 20th century" in Chinese media, and his books, for better or worse, have even helped shape the image of the US in Chinese people's minds.
The Human Weakness did not just whet China's appetite for self-help books, it also became part of a very special tradition in the Chinese publishing industry: Plagiarism, what some might call misattribution for cultural expediency. Compared with its earlier version, the 1986 version was actually largely adapted and rewritten by the translator to cater to Chinese people's tastes and ways of thinking. Although there have been numerous versions of Chinese books claiming the authorship of Dale Carnegie, most of them, just like the 1986 version, were entirely made up by Chinese authors.
The same goes with the Chinese self-help book market. A self-help book written by a Western writer is more likely to be trusted. As the Chinese saying goes, "Scriptures recited by a foreign monk are more credible." (外来的和尚好念经。Wài lái de héshàng hǎo niànjīng。) Therefore, it is common for a book written by a Chinese author to try its best to look like it has been translated from the desk of an industrialist or spiritual mentor from abroad. This is an easy trick to pull and relies on buyers not really paying much attention.
A popular book called Willpower, for example, claims to be written by an US writer named something along the lines of Feldo (no surname). To make it look more authentically "Western", the inspiring stories in the book are all set in the US, with the language adopted to a style that sounds translated all the buzzwords are bilingual. So, the Chinese part looks English and the English words look Chinglish.
Possessiveness (actually attempting to mean "self-control"), a book written by Chinese author Gao Yuan, claims to be "the most popular self-management course of Harvard Business School's MBA program". Another book, Mind Control: How to Convince People with Good Logic, by Chinese author Gao De, hilariously boasts: "The think tank of the White House, FBI, and the world's top 10 listed companies are all studying this book in secret."
Chinese self-help books are seldom better and are often examples of the very worst kind of hackery. "If the byline is 'editor and writer', it means the author didn't really write the book themselves, but rather made use of various sources without crediting them, writing the book based solely on a lot of plagiarism," says Hu Xinting, an editor of women's self-help books at Hubei People's Press. "Because most decent writers are above writing such things, they are usually written by mediocre writers, and the pay is very low.
"Just a few years ago, these books were very prevalent and made a lot of money. However, now their heyday is already gone," Hu says.
"Also, in the past few years, numerous 'chicken soup' accounts have appeared on social media; the content is much better than the books, and they are free."
The reality is these "chicken soups" are not hearty stews able to solve genuine problems, but bland consommes that leave you hungrier than when you started. The young people who once embraced these questionable self-help values are starting to realize that optimism and comforting words are not worth the paper they are printed on.
"The target readers for self-help books are young people," Hu says. "We don't target readers over 35. People usually naturally grow out of them after they learn from some real-life experience."
But, perhaps there is help in the form of anti-self-help online. One popular account says, "Why do you feel you are common? Because you are common, really."
Perhaps, having entered the "age of individuality" only a few decades ago, Chinese self-help readers are finally realizing that the main person they are helping by buying self-help books is not so much themselves but the inspired publishers who keep churning them out and counting all the cash.
Courtesy of The World of Chinese, www.theworldofchinese.com
The World of Chinese
