Are CN novels any good?

Honestly I'm getting my first impression on CN storytelling based on my limited manhua experience which is honestly quite disappointing. Partially because I'm not very familiar with CN culture, but I also feel that some themes lack originality. Additionally the gaudy style that most of them go with just doesn't sit well with me. Shame because I can feel that some of my favorite webtoons/manwhas refer back to CN martial arts or medicine.

 

C-Novels r far better than their manhua adaptations. Ofc, there r too many trash-tier CNs, but even those r superior to their manhua counterparts.

 

They are surely better than their manhua counterparts. But there are also a lot of disappointing ones out there. I'll recommend you start with something like'I shall seal the heaven' . They usually have a slow start, but when they get their engines running.......

 

There are some thats good in the "not a thousand chapters before anything good happens" CN novels. Strange Life of a Cat.

I dont particularly like CN due to over excessive explanation because they need to fill some kind of quota of words per chapter and the stupid "Magic Beans" kind of thing that literally is just a bean that they over exaggerate.

Also its tiring to read a thousand chapters just to know the MC gets to be OP that cannot be beat.

 

Manhua is bullshit, the event and drawing changed too fast so that I nearly understand what is happening in one chapter

Read the novel. Even though some is trash tier, they are still mile better than their manhua counterpart

But sometimes, the plot got hindered with how many word count padded by the author, so proceed with risk~

 

You should read hero comics because manhua will ALWAY be childish interpretation of the original. I don't get how even some have different plot and powers.

 

I join the group who says that Manhua is trash. The thing is that even the best novels are adapted as on trash level. Another big problem with Manhua is that it usually downgrades the maturity level of the story. What I mean is that if the original novel is mature, philosophical, dark and well written, than manhua will adaptation of it will be childish, skip everything philosophical, display truly dark things as shounen or comedy and completely ditch any resemblance of being well written.

Of course, not all Chinese novels are good. Tons of them are pure trash of same power ups, MCs who collect harems like pokemons, forgotten content and cliche characters with the IQ of 0, however, at the same time they have quite a few gems among them like Er Gen's (Renegade Immortal, Pursuit of the Truth, ISSTH) or Mao Ni's (Joy of Life, Ze Tian Ji, Nightfall), Reverend Insanity, Lord of Mysteries, My House of Horror, Grasping Evil etc...

 

Depends on what your looking for and as for the matter of cultural differences, if you already have a basis like Japanese manga and don't happen to care if a boy sprung from a peach, well... there are plenty stories like such.
But Wuxia/Xiaxia stories, which are both mainstream CN genres are vastly popular, translating to something along the line as martial hero.
Manga for comparison provides far better variety simply because of the environmental circumstances and laws open to Japanese citizens compared to Chinese citizens, hence which second chance and badassery is so popular.
The limitation and oppression is not so apparent in novels because they are not as mandated as comics, for some unfathomable reason or another. It still is present but you can find gems that can't be found in such a free market like JPN.
It just seems like the scope of manhua is repetitive and limited, which is true when they want to do something popular and make money off it.
LONG STORY SHORT: CN is worth the shot. It's a bit confusing but if you understand a little bit of Taoism/Buddaism, something like the directions of energy, good guys/bad guys and the identity of supreme beings (this is for mainstream eastern fantasy) go on right ahead. If you like modern stories and want to give CN a shot, then it's just a matter of liking drama and understanding something like family loyalty and the incorrect idea that Chinese families is like the mafia with branching families and a patriarch, leader of the entire gang.
N. The "Long Story Short" was really all I wanted to included because the first following paragraphs makes no sense of context, it'd be ashame if I had to delete it all though. It's a realistic but not relevant discussion on my part.

 

CN manhua is crap. Novels are a case by case basis however and you might find something you like there.

 

I have tried reading manhua few times but it's totally different story experience and simplified many times. You just can't express as much with comics due to how much work goes into actual graphics and comics are also generally toned down. Vast majority of CN novels are trash, but at the same time you can find more good novels than with JP I think. Honestly, just start with Coiling Dragon. It's one of the best, if not the best Xianxia novel and you won't get confused by Chinese names on top of new concept.

 

Read novels then go read manhua for arts only. The storytelling in novels are usually far better than the plot in manhua.

 

CN novels vary wildly in quality from being genuinely good (e.g. Kingdom's Bloodline) to molten diarrhea in text form (e.g. Forty Millenniums of Cultivation.)

 

It's all about the same as far as web novels go, CN, KR, or JP are all 99% trash(Sturgeon's Law is a bit harsher when webnovels and fanfics are in question, so instead of the usual 90% of everything is trash, it's 99). You just gotta find the ones worth reading, or start with some generic trash and hopefully mature, or perhaps the best not read them at all.

 

/thread

 

The chinese manhua industry is pretty immature and very recent, so it's not a good depiction of the quality of the CN novels they were adapted from. Artists still have difficulty with:
- conceptualizing scenes (how novel's are translated into pictures)
- iconography (everything from characters designs to facial expressions)
- scripting ("Names", manuscripts, etc)
- even the basic flow of paneling (you've probably seen those weird zig-zag flow panels in manhua that don't make sense)

The Japanese manga industry is way more developed ... started late 18th century although it got popularized after WWII.
The point is that there's a lot of background work and teams involved (editors, writers, assistants) to create a successful manga. I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese mangaka (artists) don't even have that. They were probably just thrown a project and told to go "figure it out".
A really good (if boring) insight into the manga industry comes from "Bakuman". Worth a read if you're interested in how it all works.
There's also a good non-fiction book reviewing the Japanese cultural expansion (including manga) called "Japanamerica" (2006) if you want to follow it.
That's not to say that the Japanese manga industry is all that great either. The quality may be there but the working conditions are horrific, way below minimum wage despite insane hours. A McDonald's burger flipper in the US has better work/living standards than them.

As for CN storytelling themes/culture, they have their unique basis on wuxia and xianxia (an offshoot of wuxia), started in the early 1900s. Media (including print) was heavily controlled/censored by the Chinese govt. China didn't even have their own music industry till 1970s or 80s. So those few "acceptable" genres REALLY TOOK OFF, culminating in decades of repeated print, print-to-TV adaptations, etc. The same thing happened in the US, although there was more variety. Think detective stories, Westerns, and their subsequent replacements in superheroes (Marvel, DC Comics).

So these CN themes got culturally ingrained, and that forced CN novel representations to be pretty one-dimensional. A resulting effect is that intense nationalism, xenophobia/racism, misogyny, machismo, etc all crop up in CN novels, although it has gotten a lot better over the years. A quick look at the last decades shows CN novels slowly improving in breadth and depth. There's also less (slightly) misogyny. Likely a product of the 55%-45% male to female chinese ratio these days ... their own misogyny coming back to bite them.

Some of the CN novel translators on NU can probably give you a better history lesson, especially those who lived/born in China.

To answer the original thread header, are CN novels any good?
Yea, as with other countries' novels, there are always an exceptional few. Just know which ones to pick. NU's rating is a relatively decent starting guide.
Other unique CN points to understand (think these were covered several times in other threads):
- CN novels tend to be marathons. Because their pay structure is somewhat different, authors are contractually obligated to hit word count requirements and timely releases. So you get a lot of filler.
- CN novels tend to be wuxia/xianxia based (as described above). But the breadth of genres are widening. Just look at the recent award-winning sci-fi "The Three Body Problem".
It's just that the translated CN novels listed on NU tend to be wuxia/xianxia based since they were the most popular (and hence are more worthwhile translating).
- Older CN novels (probably anything <2015?) have a lot more nationalism/xenophobia/misogyny, but that situation is getting a little better over the years.
- CN novels do occasionally like to bring up Chinese dynastic history. It was a golden age and the stories/references/culture/literary prowess of that period were pretty epic. It's 3000+ years of civilization after all. Much like Western media likes to bring up Medieval and Renaissance period ... it was a golden age for them too. Or how Americans like to overly depict their contributions in WWII.

 

As an addition, CN novels tend to have a distinct translation style which is somehow pretentious and simplistic at the same time, and almost all terminology and proper nouns are calqued into English which sometimes sounds weird. Compare this to JP novels which have a tendency to keep as much of the novel in Japanese as possible including honorifics.

 

Good point about calque, but not sure if it's because the Chinese translators just aren't good enough, rather than them deliberately keeping CN terminology. A lot of Chinese idioms are hard to translate, don't have equivalent English idioms, or translators just don't know them.

Was observing some of the CN posts on "Translators' Corner" in NU. Take the often used CN phrase, "The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind". The closest English equivalent is probably, "Can't see the forest for the trees" (which implies you're so focused on the details in front of you that you're unaware of the overall situation). But which CN translator would know that?

For JP novels, I'm wondering if the translators just gave up, or if jap words are so much more pervasive that they've made it into the English lexicon.
https://qz.com/1180971/the-top-10-new-foreign-words-added-to-the-merriam-webster-dictionary/
I mean, if Merriam now includes bibimbap (korean), sriracha (thai) and santoku (jap) ....

 

Ugh even now I'm still cursing the manhua version of CD, Renegade Immortal and the great ruler

The cringe is real

 

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A lot of weebs are convinced that Japanese is a sacred tongue which contains depth and nuance English simply can't match. They don't care if it makes it borderline unreadable as long as it's "authentic."

 

Its shitty trust me