Abstract:Compared to other informal social network mechanisms, guanxi is more common in China and is the most typical. Even in daily life, it is indispensable. Hence, in Chinese fiction, the guanxi motif is prevalent and important. Interestingly, before the Ming dynasty, guanxi was not a literary motif in fiction. This article suggests that three factors contributed to the rise of the guanxi motif in fiction in the Ming dynasty. The first was the boom in fiction writing, especially in the genre of realism, that occurre… Show more
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