1997: The Fantasy Flower Is Blooming

As a new literary form has emerged from 20 century, fantasy fiction has got more and more attention between the readers and the researchers. Compared to fantasy fiction in western countries and Japan, Chinese fantasy fiction starts later, moreover, its style of development,"theory first, writing later", is unique. In China, fantasy fiction springs up from children's literature at the earliest time. In Jiangxi Sanqing mountain, China, 1997, the 21 Century Publishing House convened a conference,"Across the century Chinese Juvenile Fiction Creation Seminar". It proposed conception about"Fantasy", and then the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision) has been founded by many writers of children's literature and the 21 Century Publishing House.Before the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision), Chinese writers of children's literature have tried to compose some fantasy fictions, and Chinese researchers of children's literature attempted to build theories on fantasy fiction. Both of them got some achievement. However, the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision) is the first series which was written spontaneously, organically, widely by Chinese writers of children's literature. This series is significance during the history of Chinese children's literature. It is not only a symbol of a new literature form in Chinese children's literature, but also the aesthetic evolution of Chinese children's literature. The Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision) was pinned hopes by the writers and the 21 Century Publishing House, they hoped that it would be an opportunity to raise the flag of fantasy fiction, and injected a groundbreaking force to Chinese children's literature. Unfortunately, this series flashed in the pan, and disappeared in the long river of history quietly. Behind its decadence, there are lots of problems which worth thinking about by writers and researchers of Chinese children's literature. The proposal of the paper is to analyze and discuss the characters and problems of the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision) via the founding and decadence of the series, furthermore, to discover the evolution of the exploring of literary form and the value of aesthetics. At the meantime, the paper also addresses to seek for the good experience, from the decadence, how Chinese fantasy fiction well develops.The main methods in this paper are classification, historical analysis and close reading. At the first, trace the history of Chinese fantasy fiction before the founding of the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision), then clearly establish the trial and theories of Chinese fantasy fiction. Secondly, generalize and summarize some similar Arts characters of the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision) via existence of fantasy, expression of fantasy and Art image of fantasy. Thirdly, establish significant value of literary form, theme and aesthetics of this series. While analyzing the reason for decadence, internal reason and external reasons are worthy to evaluate. The internal reason is defect of the works, which are dashing off composition according to the given topic, westernization tendency, structure missing and logical contradiction. On the other hand, external reasons include boring design of the books, lack of experience of culture industry, and lack of attention from the theory field of Chinese children's literature. Overview of current research on Chinese children's fantasy fiction, some specialists research it on the general introduction of children's literature, other specialists research on the best known fantasy fiction of western countries and Japanese, however, research, which focus on one special period or historical events during development of Chinese fantasy fiction, is rare. This paper bases on the Series of Great Fantasy Literature (Chinese Vision), according to these significant works, explores the history and characters of Chinese fantasy fiction, reflects defect and limits of it, re-examines the exploring and evaluation of this series in Chinese children's literature.Fantasy fiction as a novel literary form is ascendant, Chinese fantasy fiction has the potential development. But how to regulate the concept of fantasy fiction, how to treat the development characters of Chinese fantasy fiction, how to response westernization tendency of Chinese fantasy fiction and create works with Chinese characteristics, are still required attention and thinking from the writers and researchers. But we believe that the golden ages of Chinese fantasy fiction must be coming soon.