Digital Healing: from Individual Survival to Collective Care—Reimaging Workplace Health in Chinese Women’s Literature

This paper examines how contemporary Chinese women's Internet literature reflects evolving workplace values, shifting from narratives of competitive survival to modes of self-care and strategic disengagement. Focusing on the popular subgenres of palace fighting and workplace fiction within female-oriented online literature, the analysis begins by comparing The Legend of Zhen Huan and War and Beauty, two landmark texts that respectively promote system participation and institutional escape. A third perspective is introduced through Fake It Till You Make It, a contemporary workplace novel that explores “performative participation”—a practice of appearing professionally engaged while internally resisting toxic work cultures. This subtle form of disengagement offers a realistic and empowering alternative for women navigating the pressures of career and health in modern China. By tracing a narrative trajectory from individual survival to collective care, this paper argues that online female-oriented literature offers a critical site for reimagining workplace health and resistance. The findings contribute to communication and cultural studies by highlighting how literary texts encode and circulate shifting cultural attitudes toward labor, gender, and personal well-being.