Jessica Imbach is Junior Professor of Sinology/contemporary China at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg. She is the author of Not Afraid of Ghosts: Stories of the Spectral in Modern Chinese Fiction (University of Zurich, 2017) and co-editor of Sinophone Utopias: Exploring Futures Beyond the China Dream (Cambria Press, 2023). In 2023, she was awarded the FAN Award for early career researchers of the University of Zurich for her ongoing research project, Chinese Literature of the Future: Technology and Nation in Science Fiction and New Media.

“This is a highly commendable volume that advances nuanced scholarly discussions around digital media, popular cultures and cultural creativity in contemporary China. This collection’s compelling and cohesive intervention offers richly textured analyses of how Chinese-speaking communities negotiate identity, labour and creativity.”— Liang Ge, The China Quarterly , 1-3, 2025

• Acknowledgements, Note on Romanisation, List of Figures, Introduction: Locating digital China , 1 Re-inventing tianxia: Coming-of-age in xuanhuan fantasy fiction , 2 An online world of their own: Rethinking danmei fiction through a reading of A Tale of Jujube Valley, 3 Hong Kong's digital literary field: Serialization, adaptation, and readership, 4 Virtual conciliation: (Un-)Coding the split between tradition and modernity in Chinese artificial intelligence poetry, 5 Poetry as meme: The Xiangpi ..literature project, online replicators, and printed archives, 6 Cooking authenticity: Li Ziqi, affective labour, and China's influencer culture, 7 Affective labour on Kuaishou: Sister Zhao and her cyber karaoke bar, 8 Network fantasies: Liu Cixin's China 2185, digital Futurism, and history as computer code, 9 Cyborg resistance: Chen Qiufan's The Waste Tide, dirty computers and the afterlives of digital things, 10 Virtual art in times of crisis: curatorial practices during the Covid-19 pandemic in China and Malaysia, 11 Viral text: Translation, censorship, community, Bibliography, List of Contributors, Index