Chinese Literature Today

By Han Song & Nathaniel Isaacson (Translator)

Abstract

In the wake of a devastating attack on the Pentagon, ruins of the Great Wall are disinterred throughout the United States. Visiting restored sections of the Wall throughout the United States, a Chinese tourist meditates on the civilizational significance of this monument of engineering and human toil. Originally published in 2003, contemporary readers may find “The Great Wall” to be an eerily prophetic satire of contemporary American politics, where such a project is considered by some to be a national necessity, and by others to be economically unfeasible. Han Song’s story ties the discourse of the “end of history” into a Gordian knot, confounding questions of the origins of human civilization—Eastern and Western—and who its modern-day stewards are.

One

My first impression of the Great Wall at Washington, DC, is that it is little more than a stubby embankment of ochre earth, resembling the adobe walls of pigpens in Chinese villages.

Traveling back home, I have seen plenty of sections of the Great Wall like this. Segment upon segment, they lay silent and motionless on the frontier like the spinal column of a wild animal that has weathered eons of erosion and has invariably lost the power and grandeur of its time.

Abstract

After laying the groundwork by suggesting that ancient texts that offered supernatural explanations for natural phenomena demonstrated curiosity about the natural world as well as scientific imagination, authors Yao Jianbin and Wu Yan give an overview of major Chinese science fiction authors and trends since the late nineteenth century, when science fiction per se was introduced into China. Tying the development of science fiction in China to the nineteenth-century importation of Western science and science fiction, Yao and Wu trace the fortunes of this kind of literature through the turbulent decades of the twentieth century. They further connect the resurgence and international success of science fiction from China to China’s rise as a technological innovator and world power.

1: The Soil That Has Nurtured Chinese Science Fiction in China

Science fiction is the literature of the unique relationship between human effort and nature, and it is a genre that has deep cultural roots in China.