Enigmatic Cult Author
(Buy The Road of Others on Amazon U.S./ Buy The Road of Others On Amazon U.K.)
Anni Baobei is a cult Chinese writer whose fictions generally turns around characters detached from life in big industrialized cities. Her fiction is celebrated for its romantic, artistic and individualistic characteristics, which prompt love among her passionate fanbase.
As a young woman in the late 1990s, Anni Baobei (the pen name of writer Li Jie) was a pioneer of the internet and internet fiction in China, with her early online stories having a vast impact. Her first print book “Goodbye, An” (告别为安) was released in 2001, since when Anni has largely followed a traditional publishing path. A native of Ningbo, Anni now calls Beijing home, but travel is an important part of her life and her fiction.
Phenemenon
Anni Baobei ranks as one of the top-selling writers in China of the past ten years in any genre, with total annual sales of her titles in each year reaching more than one million copies. A pioneer of internet writing in China, she now has a unique place in Chinese literature.
Despite her literary fame and huge fan base, Anni remains a Salinger-type recluse, refusing to participate in any public events in greater China, and maintaining a strict distance from her readers.
Anni has previously received many offers from Anglophone publishers for the English rights of her work but she has always refused to sanction an English book. – until granting Make-Do the English rights to a selection of her early stories, which we have published as”The Road of Others”!
I began to realise that when a girl is looking at the sky, she’s not looking for anything.
She’s just lonely…
“The Road of Others”, a collection of three of Anni Baobei’s early stories, is Anni’s first English publication. Urgent, romantic and dark, the three stories, “Goodbye to Anne”, “Endless August” and “The Road of Others”, established Anni as one of the most adored and influential writers of her generation. The stories are closely connected in terms of their Shanghai setting, themes and character names. Taken together these writings constitute an enquiry into the spiritual journey of a generation.
The Road of Others is published under Make-Do’s ‘Modern Chinese Masters’ imprint, the aim of which is to surprise and challenge preconceptions about Chinese fiction. In addition to the stories, the book contains a foreword by Baobei and an essay introducing the author and her work. Buy It Here.
Other Writing
The stories of ‘The Road of Others” with their bleakly romantic tone and spontaneous style are representative of Anni’s early dark-edged explorations of illusion and fantasy. Her later more ruminative works include the groundbreaking “Lotus” (2006,) and “Spring Banquet” (2011.) In 2011, Anni was behind a short-lived arts magazine, “Da Fang” which was closed by the Chinese authorities after two issues. Anni’s micro-blog has two million followers, but for most she remains a mysterious figure.
Cyber dweller to bestseller– Global Times Interview from 2012
Anni Baobei, or Annie Baby, might have used the Internet as her springboard to success as a contemporary writer, however she’s now turning her back on the online world. The 37-year-old author, whose real name is Li Jie, has come a long way since her days as a bank employee in Shanghai. She began posting short stories online in 1996 when she was 24 under the pen name Anni Baobei, but never imagined her cyberspace stardom would turn her into a best-selling author and the fifth richest Chinese writer.
Nicknamed “Flower in the Dark” by her readers due to her novels’ morose themes of loneliness and isolation, Li’s novels today rank among the most widely read in China. The author helped spearhead the cult of cyber writing in the country that has aroused new interest in reading despite defying literary conventions. More than a decade after she first start hammering out her novels at the keyboard, Li has finally agreed to have her early stories translated into English.
Read More
Other worldly – China Daily Interview from 2012
Described as a writer ahead of her time, Anni Baobei reveals rare bits of her personal life and explains the spiritual themes in her prose to Chitralekha Basu and Sun Li.
Earlier this year we were at a posh Chinese diner, with the writer Li Er and a few literary friends. We got talking about Anni Baobei and her magazine Da-Fang (O-Pen). The manageress caught the name and came over to our table, asking if we could get Anni to join us. “I would give you a 50 percent discount, if she did,” she said. That is Anni’s clout.