A young woman travels back in time to the 1980s where she has to battle her new fiancé’s difficult relatives, take care of his children, and manage the family home. This is the plot of “I Became a Stepmother in the 1980s,” one of the most popular ultrashort dramas in China this year. Produced on a shoestring budget, it earned more than 20 million yuan ($2.76 million) on the day of its release alone and has racked up over 1.1 billion views on Douyin, the version of TikTok accessible on the Chinese mainland.

The huge success of the show is closely linked with the rapid rise of short and ultrashort dramas over the past couple of years. However, it is also its genre, known as “farming literature,” that has helped attract so many viewers. This genre centers around a female protagonist’s efforts to get rich while battling various villains — mainly in the guise of demanding relatives — and has become widely popular with Chinese web novel readers and film and TV viewers, much like the “high-powered businessman” and “palace intrigue” genres that came before.

The term “farming literature” has its origins in simulation video games. Chinese players often used “farming” to refer to first, reclaiming and developing land, and second, when the territory is stable, to gradually expanding and dominating the world. The name comes from the fact that the main objective and enjoyment of these games comes from building up one’s territory, much like the way a farmer tends to their fields.

Farming literature therefore is a genre of web novel that incorporates the strategies of such video games. Early examples emerged around 2002 and were aimed at male readers, generally featuring a hero in an imaginary world who makes his community or nation strong through the development of agricultural, economic, military, and even political systems, and finally pits himself against other men.

The shift of farming literature from male- to female-dominant web novels started with stories about female time travelers. When time travel novels started getting popular in 2004, most featured modern women who traveled back to imperial palaces in ancient times. This kind of “Mary Sue”-centric plot, in which the heroine charms people with a bit of modern knowledge as well as an assertive and easy-going personality, proved hugely popular, eventually peaking in 2007.

However, the trope of a strong woman who’s found herself having to “do battle” in the imperial palace gradually lost its appeal among younger readers. Around 2008, instead of palaces, these time-traveling women began to appear in ordinary family homes. It was at this point that “farming” elements entered the picture.

At the same time, the “farming” concept began shifting from military and territorial power struggles to its original meaning of engaging in manual labor. The farm labor of women — and by extension, their commercial activities — as well as their efforts to get rich, became the main storyline of novels and a source of enjoyment for readers. For example, in typical farming literature works, such as “Petty Landlord Reborn,” the heroine almost always makes her first fortune through her knowledge of modern-day methods of farming, cooking, making alcohol, and planting cash crops, gradually creating a happy life for her impoverished family, and finally, achieving love, status, and wealth. Compared with the Mary Sue archetype in palace intrigue novels, the farming literature genre emphasizes the simple and ordinary life of the protagonist, farming and dealing with everyday matters, which has lent the stories greater emotional resonance.

Although these novels have no shortage of pure family affection, and usually treat protecting the family as the heroine’s main driving force, this is limited to her immediate family members. In contrast, the extended family and larger groups are often filled with hypocrisy, calculations, and malice. These relatives are all lazy, self-centered, and malicious; they look down on manual work despite being farmers, and often dream of getting something for nothing, all while lacking any talent. More importantly, they often behave despicably but then believe the other side deserved it or else hypocritically pretend it was for the greater good. The creation of this residential intrigue between an ordinary heroine and demanding relatives is a significant part of the appeal of this kind of novel.

The main characters in farming literature are no longer Mary Sues, but they have also cast off their past image as innocent, kind, and even weak. Their code of conduct is to not bully others or let themselves be bullied. Compared with their rivals, these protagonists are also scheming — however, they do so only to see through their rivals’ various disguises and build a space for positive qualities such as honesty, kindness, and diligence.

This also corresponds to the recent pushback against “white lotuses.” The term is used online to refer to a “perfect woman” — one who embodies truth, goodness, and beauty. This image of a woman who is delicate, kind, submissive, and faithful is the embodiment of an ideal woman from the male perspective, but with the rise of works created for women, there has been consistent resistance against the concept of a perfect woman. Both authors and readers have started to appreciate women with imperfections, while white lotuses have been relegated to supporting roles and have a more negative image — appearing kind, but in fact cruel and ruthless, and frequently the object of the heroine’s attacks. This is the social and cultural basis of why the new, hardier female image in farming literature has achieved such widespread popularity.

However, no matter if it is escaping or retreating, the resistance by women in the farming literature genre is still conservative, and also reflects a certain predicament facing women. For example, the idealization of imperfect women is a result of a moral crisis in which the old consensus no longer exists, while the new morality is difficult to construct. Therefore, women can only fight within a limited space — often their homes — to affirm themselves and obtain satisfaction while delaying questions of what they’ll do after becoming successful and achieving personal growth.

Translator: David Ball; portrait artist: Wang Zhenhao.

(Header image: A still from the 2023 online series “Romance on the Farm,” which is an adaption of the web novel “Reborn as a Small Landlord.” From Douban)