ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book investigates the video and the mini-film exclusively produced for and consumed on smaller screens in China, an increasingly prevalent form of filmmaking and consumption only made possible by and prospering on Internet. It examines the technologically, economically, and commercially stratified society reflected in egao and micro-narratives. The book also explores the imagination of gender in online popular fiction and dramas. It focuses on online/offline, cross-media constructed-ness of gendered imagination by reading web fiction and dramas. The book investigates problematics of self-representation of ethnic identity online. It also interrogates ethical problems of Chinese Internet culture through an examination of literary and cinematic representations of the so-called Human Flesh Search Engine phenomenon. The book examines specifically pieces from the Sina Microfiction Contests, Chen Peng's The Life of Eiliko Chen in Beijing, Wen Huajian's Love in the Age of Microblogging, chna's first microblog novel.
