Introduction: We Must Create?

Premised on the imperative of creativity, this introduction explicates discourses saturated with notions of individual talent marked by inspiration, newness, and innovation. It offers context to the book's aim to critically re-enter the idea of creativity, by aligning it to three concepts, considered by the authors to be emblematic for the Creative China of our time: boredom, shanzhai (a vernacular Chinese term connoting copying and appropriation), and digitisation. All three hover around ideas of innovation, newness, and their constitutive flip sides of copying and repetition. After a discussion of these concepts, foregrounding their concerns and the question of what creativity may enable as well as disable, the chapter introduces the organising logic of the book and the ensuing chapters.