Question Why Chinese authors are addicted to face slapping?

Face slapping an art perfected and abused by Chinese authors for humour, suspense and carrying the story.
Although it is not limited to Chinese authors and appears in various other language authors too, but it feels so overused and repetitive that anytime I read a new story if it has face-slapping in it my expectation is it is Chinese.

So my question is why are they so addicted to repetitively abuse this and destroy any good-feeling and immersion.

 

Because it's funny in the chinese culture?

 

Because they are arrogant and full of themselves and believe they're better then everyone else and have no idea how to be humble selfless or forgiving

 

It's a feel good event too. The only problem is that the authors take it so far that any schmuck walking along minding his own business half a town over gets accused of something at random and then gets slapped too.

 

I wonder about that either. It's fun to read but when it's overused I found it bored too. Like in one novel, the ML wasn't a jerk like most C-MLs but I dropped the book because it became boring

The MC's father was a jerk yeah I know that but time and again the MC wasted her time arguing the same point with him and her stepmother and half-sister. For the first and second time, they were okay but it continued. If of was me I'd just straight ignore them or call the police for disturbing me

 

Satisfaction? Imagine the gratification, the sense of accomplishment in proving wrong those who had taunted, mocked you, looked down on you. How many times can you do it IRL? But in CNs, you can enjoy vicariously. Except it's often overdone and overused there.

 

People can’t get enough of it. Look at Library of Heaven’s path. It’s over utilized to make up for the lack of depth, writing quality and average plot in the story. But who cares? Everyone is just there for the face slapping. We know it’s coming to the point where we could replace the author at some points but that’s what we’re here for anyway

 

Word count my dear Watson.

 

Because they are extremely untalented authors who has minimum wages, have to constantly care about their living expenses but possess zero creativity unlike other famous authors so they can resort only to cheap, uncreative but exploitable tricks to make money for themselves?

 

I guess it's a form of self satisfaction and portraying themselves.

 

They revel on the stuff that cannot happen in their own society, like how religious stuck ups are obsessed with sex

 

Because it's easy to write, you just have to lazyly make an obnoxious evil villain, give an excuse of a moral high ground to your MC (who care if he did worse than the bad guy before, double standards FTW) and then write fillers chapters one after the other of "rightous" punishement upon anyone involved (viva collateral damage) while the peanut gallery drown in praises of your "handsomely smart" MC (more easy text yeah ! more chapters = more monies !) ...

 

There are... a lot of responses already regarding the question.
So I would instead just mention... Every culture has its own tropes.

 

it's one of cn webnovels' feature, just like how jp has dense protagonist or isekais and kr has 24/7 actions nonstop there is barely any rest/slice of life in between

 

Faceslapping came to be as a way to the modern slave chinese to express their helpness, anger and other negative emotions, most of the time, on corrupt people and enemies within the novel since they cannot express their disgust, anger, and how unhappy they are and living as cattle in china where they are feed poison mixed within their stable food due to profit.
Just a about a week or 2 ago it was discovered that the biggest 2 milk industries mix dangerous and poisonus substances in the milk to increase profit by increasing the milk volume. Such as adding melamine, which causes over 3000 (its way more) kids and babies to suffer the consecuences...

 

I would agree to #13 - Every culture has its own tropes
Like Japan which is plunged into modern slavery, Korea where people are addicted to things and do it nonstop(gaming), China has its own cultural dark side. Since the society is controlled by one power, with others not having a share of the pie, it is easy for there to be no diversity, talent is cared for, but you need to have relations to let that talent bloom, and believe me, they are much more important than talent, and this is where the obnoxious young masters come in.
Now, imagine, the first author who thought of using face slapping as a comedy act. He was trying for a govt job but couldn't get it coz of some rich young master. He can't openly criticize the young master, coz the guy has connections. And he can't criticize too much behind his back, coz the guy has social and dark connections. Then, he takes the reality of society(Their society) and utilizes it to launch an attack of words (written) on the country, but how could he have known, the country he was trying to serve while idolizing and deifying it has another culture of stealing, and, wallah, the face-slapping trope was born, and the first author who started face-slapping got face-slapped, with the other authors being the MCs and saying to the original, 'you thought you were so smart? Heh, with a flick of my finger, this Lao zi devasteated you.'

 

I was going to ask a similar question about racism and xenophobia that prevalent in a lot of Chinese novels I've read, to the point that I stopped reading all 'cultivation' or any actions oriented Chinese novels.
I've read so many novels where the MC would r*pe or attack cannon fodder and the only justification is that they are character Japanese so they must be evil, and I don't even want to get into how these authors describe people of colour.

 

The ones that addicted are the readers. They're the ones who responsible for these kind of novel to be popular enough that translators can't help but pick them up.

I'm pretty sure CN webnovels also has a pretty good amount of non-faceslapping novels. They're just not mainstream enough to get noticed.

 

It's not really Chinese authors, only Chinese light novel authors who use this trope. Although there are some amazing light novels, most of them are written for the sake of earning money. Naturally, the authors are using writing methods that are most likely to earn them money, such as increasing the word count, inserting fan-service and so on. Face-slapping is also one of these methods - it's an instant-satisfaction-machine. If combined with a cliff-hanger, it can make the readers wait impatiently for the next chapter, thus making them feel like they really enjoy the novel, when in fact it's just their unsatisfied curiosity making them want to read on. Because this method works quite well on Chinese audience, it's no wonder that most authors feel tempted to use it.

 

Because how could the rest of the world know MC's skills without showing it? Also CN's population are over a billion, most of them are stuck at the bottom for the rest of their lives so these self-gratifying face slap scenes are the only dose of happiness from their mundane lives.


You shouldn't always blame the author for these overused tropes, you should analyze first why do they use the same trope over and over again. They also consider what their target audience wanted.