Changes in spare-time reading for Chinese University students in 50 years: A survey named "The book that impressed you most during 1985 to 1989" indicated that Jin Yong's works ranked the second and works of Qiong Yao and San Mao the sixth. The mature operation mechanism of light literature in Hong Kong and Taiwan made such literature popular and thriving in the Chinese mainland. I've been wading through a Jin Yong novel for the past week. I'd say it's high intermediate level. Good stuff. The grad library here at UMich has a decent collection of pulp fiction of the kung fu genre, in both simplified and traditional. And of course, most of it can also be found on the net, which I prefer to download and print double-spaced for note-taking. --There is a discussion of Chinese demographic timebombs at Daniel Drezner's weblog, from which I learned a few things.