Chinese fiction, rooted in narrative classics such as "A New Account of the Tales of the World", "Soushen Ji", "Wenyuan Yinghua", "Great Tang Records on the Western Regions", "Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang", "Taiping Guangji" and official histories, developed into the novel as early as the Song dynasty. The novel as an extended prose narrative which realistically creates a believable world of its own evolved in China and in Europe from the 14th to 18th centuries, though a little earlier in China. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and were more historically minded. They appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, and relative emphasis on collective behavior and the welfare of the society.