In the category of local literature, at the end of the Cultural Revolution, poetry was dominant, and the best-selling books were Poems of Tiananmen Square and Poems of Revolution published by People's Literature Publishing House. Soon, poetry was marginalized, and the popularity of obscure poetry only played a shining role, and then novels became the king of literary books. The earliest best-selling novels are scar literature, educated youth novels and similar types, such as Zhang Jie's Children from the Forest, Zong Pu's Dream on the String, Chen's Small Town General, Cong's Red Magnolia under the Wall, Zheng Yi's Maple Tree and Mo Yingfeng's Waiting.

Zhou Keqin's Xu Mao and His Daughters, Gu Hua's furong town, Ye Xin's trilogy of Young People of Our Generation, Cold Wind, and Idle Time, etc. Root-seeking literature and modernism were popular in the middle and late 1980s, including Ma Yuan's The Temptation of Gangdise, Shi Tiesheng's Life as a String, Liu Suola's You Have No Choice, Wang Anyi's Xiao Bao Zhuang, Chencun's Boys and Girls, One * * * Seven, Mo Yan's Transparent Carrots and Han Shaogong's Dad.