Promotional material for The King's Avatar Photo: Courtesy of Yuewen Group

The Swiss National Tourism Board joined hands with China's Yuewen Group on Wednesday to announce that the protagonist of The King's Avatar, Ye Xiu, will serve as the "Swiss Tourism Explorer" for 2025.  

The King's Avatar is an e-sports web novel by internet writer Hudie Lan. It was first published in installments on Qidian, a leading online literature platform in China, in 2011 and concluded in 2014. 

The announcement of Ye Xiu as the Swiss Tourism Explorer for 2025 is part of "The King's Avatar: 25 Years Meeting in Zurich Program" that was jointly launched by the Swiss National Tourism Board and the Yuewen Group. This collaboration commemorates the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Switzerland, according to the Yuewen Group. 

The program echoes the novel, in which Ye Xiu leads the national team to Zurich for a competition, the World Glory Championships, scheduled to be held in Zurich in 2025. On various social media platforms, fans of The King's Avatar have already begun planning to visit Zurich.

Besides Switzerland, The King's Avatar has garnered significant global influence. Seeking to cater to Generation Z's digital fluency, the novel was adapted into a film titled The King's Avatar: For the Glory, which debuted in July 2023 in Japan. In 2021, a manga adaptation with the same name premiered on the Japanese Piccoma platform. 

Prior to the film's adaptation, the IP accumulated more than 130 million readers since its debut on online platform WebNovel in 2017.

During the five-day May Day holidays in May, the highly popular Tokyo Comic Con expanded to cater to fans of comic books and celebrities in western Japan with an Osaka edition held at the Intex Osaka. The diverse content of the convention attracted fans from all over the world.  

China Literature, the leading online literature platform that owns Qidian, showcased Chinese IPs, including The King's Avatar, at the event. The interactive photo spot for The King's Avatar attracted many fans. As Wednesday was Ye Xiu's birthday, many fans wrote birthday wishes for him on the nearby message board.