Anecdotes, Gossip, and Occasion in Traditonal China

Anecdotes, Gossip, and Occasion are common literary forms in traditional China.
Why did such forms develop in traditional China? What is the function of the genre?

Research usually explore the genre in the following aspects:
1)explore the connection between the genre and orality
2)explore the representations of gossip in literary works, with an emphasis on networks and sociality of communicative exchange. Anecdotes and Gossip usually spread among friends and local community. It would be interesting to see how people re-percept the question differently. I think, it would be interesting to see how anecdotes was forgot and remembered over the time. This helps to figure out how social network was constructed.

3) explore the genre in relation with religious dream narrative.
4) explore how anecdotes travel across borders, both textual, generic, and national, and how menaing and audience is produced.
5) explore the theoretical concept of narrative in the construction of anecdotal meanings and ltierary occasion.

the manner in which anecdotes within literary history and