'Micro-novelist' Chen Peng blogs about life in Beijing
His medium is weibo, where, in 140 words or less, he inspires others facing similar challenges
In public, Chen Peng blends in as an everyday white-collar worker in Beijing. But in the online jungle that is the Chinese microblogging community, this 25-year-old from the northern province of Shanxi has made a name for himself as a "micro-novelist" - China's equivalent of "Twitter novelists". His short stories are now followed by more than 140,000 people on Tencent's popular site, where within the 140-character limit for microblog posts, Chen writes about the joys and pains of living in the nation's capital.
I graduated from a military college in 2010, majoring in law. I was an ordinary student at university, and an ordinary young person working in Beijing. Like many other graduates, I started my new life in the capital - from nothing, actually. I came up with the idea of documenting my life - about being a newcomer in real society, about job-hunting, about my path to success.
I was one of the first Tencent microbloggers. Regular blogging was still popular, but I am no good at writing pages of words. For me, the 140-word limit on microblogs is easier to fill.