ABSTRACT
This chapter studies the rise of a younger-generation creative class consisting of writers, filmmakers, and cultural entrepreneurs, represented by Guo Jingming (1983–) and Han Han (1982–), who were born after China’s economic reform and celebrated as successful practitioners of the “China Dream.” Both Guo and Han hail from small towns and belong to the Me Generation, the term has been used to name those who “were born in the 1980s and afterwards.” In addition to being frequently ranked at the top of the bestseller list, they also direct high-grossing summer blockbusters, run commercially successful literary journals and multi-media conglomerates. Both have boosted the spearheaded development of the new genre of youth literature and transformed the landscape of Chinese publication industry and media culture with their literary, filmmaking and entrepreneurial practices. With their reinvention of traditionally marginalized cultural forms, genres, and media, they push forward the new model of a transmedial and networked youth economy catering to an increasingly diversifying and fragmenting youth market.
