The Reincarnated Giant: Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction Read online

  THE REINCARNATED GIANT

  WEATHERHEAD BOOKS ON ASIA

  WEATHERHEAD BOOKS ON ASIA

  Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University

  Literature

  David Der-wei Wang, Editor

  Ye Zhaoyan, Nanjing 1937: A Love Story, translated by Michael Berry (2003)

  Oda Makato, The Breaking Jewel, translated by Donald Keene (2003)

  Han Shaogong, A Dictionary of Maqiao, translated by Julia Lovell (2003)

  Takahashi Takako, Lonely Woman, translated by Maryellen Toman Mori (2004)

  Chen Ran, A Private Life, translated by John Howard-Gibbon (2004)

  Eileen Chang, Written on Water, translated by Andrew F. Jones (2004)

  Writing Women in Modern China: The Revolutionary Years, 1936–1976, edited by Amy D. Dooling (2005)

  Han Bangqing, The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai, first translated by Eileen Chang, revised and edited by Eva Hung (2005)

  Loud Sparrows: Contemporary Chinese Short-Shorts, translated and edited by Aili Mu, Julie Chiu, and Howard Goldblatt (2006)

  Hiratsuka Raichō, In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun, translated by Teruko Craig (2006)

  Zhu Wen, I Love Dollars and Other Stories of China, translated by Julia Lovell (2007)

  Kim Sowŏl, Azaleas: A Book of Poems, translated by David McCann (2007)

  Wang Anyi, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai, translated by Michael Berry with Susan Chan Egan (2008)

  Ch’oe Yun, There a Petal Silently Falls: Three Stories by Ch’oe Yun, translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (2008)

  Inoue Yasushi, The Blue Wolf: A Novel of the Life of Chinggis Khan, translated by Joshua A. Fogel (2009)

  Anonymous, Courtesans and Opium: Romantic Illusions of the Fool of Yangzhou, translated by Patrick Hanan (2009)

  Cao Naiqian, There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night, translated by John Balcom (2009)

  Park Wan-suh, Who Ate Up All the Shinga? An Autobiographical Novel, translated by Yu Young-nan and Stephen J. Epstein (2009)

  Yi T’aejun, Eastern Sentiments, translated by Janet Poole (2009)

  Hwang Sunwŏn, Lost Souls: Stories, translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (2009)

  Kim Sŏk-pŏm, The Curious Tale of Mandogi’s Ghost, translated by Cindi Textor (2010)

  The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, edited by Xiaomei Chen (2011)

  Qian Zhongshu, Humans, Beasts, and Ghosts: Stories and Essays, edited by Christopher G. Rea, translated by Dennis T. Hu, Nathan K. Mao, Yiran Mao, Christopher G. Rea, and Philip F. Williams (2011)

  Dung Kai-cheung, Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, translated by Dung Kai-cheung, Anders Hansson, and Bonnie S. McDougall (2012)

  O Chŏnghŭi, River of Fire and Other Stories, translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (2012)

  Endō Shūsaku, Kiku’s Prayer: A Novel, translated by Van Gessel (2013)

  Li Rui, Trees Without Wind: A Novel, translated by John Balcom (2013)

  Abe Kōbō, The Frontier Within: Essays by Abe Kōbō, edited, translated, and with an introduction by Richard F. Calichman (2013)

  Zhu Wen, The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan: More Stories of China, translated by Julia Lovell (2013)

  The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, Abridged Edition, edited by Xiaomei Chen (2013)

  Natsume Sōseki, Light and Dark, translated by John Nathan (2013)

  Seirai Yūichi, Ground Zero, Nagasaki: Stories, translated by Paul Warham (2015)

  Hideo Furukawa, Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure: A Tale That Begins with Fukushima, translated by Doug Slaymaker with Akiko Takenaka (2016)

  Abe Kōbō, Beasts Head for Home: A Novel, translated by Richard F. Calichman (2017)

  Yi Mun-yol, Meeting with My Brother: A Novella, translated by Heinz Insu Fenkl with Yoosup Chang (2017)

  Ch’ae Manshik, Sunset: A Ch’ae Manshik Reader, edited and translated by Bruce and Ju-Chan Fulton (2017)

  Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, In Black and White: A Novel, translated by Phyllis I. Lyons (2018)

  Yi T’aejun, Dust and Other Stories, translated by Janet Poole (2018)

  History, Society, and Culture

  Carol Gluck, Editor

  Takeuchi Yoshimi, What Is Modernity? Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, edited and translated, with an introduction, by Richard F. Calichman (2005)

  Contemporary Japanese Thought, edited and translated by Richard F. Calichman (2005)

  Overcoming Modernity, edited and translated by Richard F. Calichman (2008)

  Natsume Sōseki, Theory of Literature and Other Critical Writings, edited and translated by Michael Bourdaghs, Atsuko Ueda, and Joseph A. Murphy (2009)

  Kojin Karatani, History and Repetition, edited by Seiji M. Lippit (2012)

  The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, edited by Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko (2013)

  Yoshiaki Yoshimi, Grassroots Fascism: The War Experience of the Japanese People, translated by Ethan Mark (2015)

  THE REINCARNATED GIANT

  AN ANTHOLOGY OF TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION

  EDITED BY MINGWEI SONG AND THEODORE HUTERS

  Columbia University Press

  New York

  This publication has been supported by the Richard W. Weatherhead Publication Fund of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University.

  Columbia University Press wishes to express its appreciation for assistance given by the Pushkin Fund in the publication of this book.

  Columbia University Press

  Publishers Since 1893

  New York    Chichester, West Sussex

  cup.columbia.edu

  Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press

  All rights reserved

  E-ISBN 978-0-231-54254-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Song, Mingwei, editor. | Huters, Theodore, editor.

  Title: The reincarnated giant : an anthology of twenty-first-century Chinese science fiction / edited by Mingwei Song and Theodore Huters.

  Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2018. | Series: Weatherhead books on Asia | Includes bibliographical references.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018001388 (print) | LCCN 2018004548 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231180221 (cloth : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780231180238 (pbk. : acid-free paper)

  Subjects: LCSH: Science fiction, Chinese—Translations into English. | Chinese fiction—21st century—Translations into English.

  Classification: LCC PL2658.E8 (ebook) | LCC PL2658.E8 R45 2018 (print) | DDC 895.13/0876208—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018001388

  A Columbia University Press E-book.

  CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected].

  Cover design: Noah Arlow

  CONTENTS

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Does Science Fiction Dream of a Chinese New Wave?, by Mingwei Song

  PART I: OTHER REALITIES

  1. REGENERATED BRICKS, BY HAN SONG (TRANSLATED BY THEODORE HUTERS)

  2. THE VILLAGE SCHOOLTEACHER, BY LIU CIXIN (TRANSLATED BY CHRISTOPHER ELFORD AND JIANG CHENXIN)

  3. HISTORIES OF TIME: THE LUSTER OF MUTE PORCELAIN (EXCERPTS), BY DUNG KAI-CHEUNG (TRANSLATED AND INTRODUCED BY CARLOS ROJAS)

  4. THE DREAM DEVOURER (CHAPTERS 5–7), BY EGOYAN ZHENG (TRANSLATED BY CARA HEALEY)

  5. THE DEMON-ENSLAVING FL
ASK, BY XIA JIA (TRANSLATED BY LINDA RUI FENG)

  PART II: OTHER US

  6. THE POETRY CLOUD, BY LIU CIXIN (TRANSLATED BY CHI-YIN IP AND CHEUK WONG)

  7. “SCIENCE FICTION”: A CHAPTER OF DAUGHTER, BY LO YI-CHIN (TRANSLATED BY THOMAS MORAN AND JINGLING CHEN)

  8. BALIN, BY CHEN QIUFAN (TRANSLATED BY KEN LIU)

  9. THE RADIO WAVES THAT NEVER DIE, BY LA LA (TRANSLATED BY PETULA PARRIS-HUANG)

  10. 1923: A FANTASY, BY ZHAO HAIHONG (TRANSLATED BY NICKY HARMAN AND PANG ZHAOXIA)

  PART III: OTHER FUTURES

  11. THE PASSENGERS AND THE CREATOR, BY HAN SONG (TRANSLATED BY NATHANIEL ISAACSON)

  12. THE REINCARNATED GIANT, BY WANG JINKANG (TRANSLATED BY CARLOS ROJAS)

  13. THE RAIN FOREST, BY CHI HUI (TRANSLATED BY JIE LI)

  14. THE DEMON’S HEAD, BY FEI DAO (TRANSLATED BY DAVID HULL)

  15. SONGS OF ANCIENT EARTH, BY BAO SHU (TRANSLATED BY ADRIAN THIERET)

  Notes

  Recommended Reading

  Contributors

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We are grateful to the thirteen authors and eighteen translators, whose diligent work and selfless devotion made this volume possible. We also appreciate the support of many colleagues, friends, and science fiction fans of both China and the United States, who have been following the progress of this project. Mingwei Song would like to express his gratitude to his coeditor, Theodore Huters, who not only fine-tuned the translations in this collection but also offered valuable guidance in other important ways. Mingwei Song would also like to thank David Der-wei Wang, who supported this project from the very beginning. He offered advice on selecting the texts and brought the manuscript to Columbia University Press. We thank Jennifer Crewe, of Columbia University Press, for her patience and guidance, and the press’s Christine Dunbar for her editorial expertise.

  Theodore Huters would like to express his gratitude to Mingwei Song, who initially developed the project as a special edition of Renditions and carried it through to the present volume. Theodore Huters would also like to thank his assistants at Renditions, Stephanie Wong and Sherlon Chi-yin Ip, who provided invaluable editorial help for those stories originally published there.

  INTRODUCTION

  Does Science Fiction Dream of a Chinese New Wave?

  MINGWEI SONG

  Until 2013, the only essay on Chinese science fiction published in the academic journal Science Fiction Studies characterized the genre’s history in China as a hesitant journey to the West and found science fiction “a fairly marginal phenomenon” in the Middle Kingdom.1 Or, in the words of the Chinese author Fei Dao, whose short story is included in this volume, Chinese science fiction was like a “hidden lonely army … laid low in the wilderness where nobody really cared to look at it.”2 The situation has changed drastically in the past five or six years. Chinese science fiction has suddenly gained worldwide recognition, thanks mainly to the success of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem (translated into English by Ken Liu), a novel that created an international sensation. It became a bestseller in the United States, causing the Wall Street Journal to report that “China launches a sci-fi invasion of the U.S.,”3 and it won the first Hugo Award for a novel written originally in a language other than English. Today Chinese science fiction is no longer a hidden lonely army, and the genre’s journey to the West is no longer hesitant; it has become a fresh new force that is helping shape the outlook of global science fiction.

  It should be noted, however, that even before The Three-Body Problem “touched down” in the United States, the novel and its two sequels had already become landmarks in the Chinese sf world, and before the trilogy was published in China between 2006 and 2010, a new wave of Chinese science fiction had already emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century. The success of the trilogy in the American book market is a small echo of its record-breaking popularity among Chinese readers. In addition, Liu Cixin’s success should also be contextualized as one of the many facets demonstrating the revival of the genre in China during the past fifteen years, something conditioned by the genre’s long, complicated history in China.

  At the very beginning of the twentieth century, Anglo-American and French science fiction novels were introduced to Chinese readers, primarily through translations based on secondhand Japanese translations. Jules Verne was one of the most translated Western authors between 1900 and 1912. The late Qing reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) borrowed a concept from his Japanese mentors, Yukio Ozaki (1858–1954) and Katō Hiroyuki (1836–1916), in coining the Chinese term kexue xiaoshuo (science fiction). The first “golden age” of Chinese science fiction lasted ten years, from 1902 to 1911, giving birth to numerous novels and short stories that combined science fantasy, political utopianism, and technological optimism. About ten years later, the rise of a truth-claiming literary realism employing the image of cannibalism to make visible the hidden “evils” of the Confucian tradition, a new literary trend pioneered by Lu Xun (1881–1936), also a translator of Jules Verne during his youth, eventually pushed science fiction to the margins of Chinese literary modernity. However, the realism “invented” by Lu Xun, which differed from the mainstream realism epitomized in Mao Dun’s (1896–1981) later epic novels, aspired to reveal the deeper truth beneath the surface reality, and the truth-claiming discourse of Lu Xun’s realism may have its roots in his earlier belief in scientific discourse and science fiction. Nonetheless, what is often referred to as May Fourth realism, Mao Dun’s naturalistic realism, and, later, the socialist realism under Mao’s regime made science fiction an obscure genre that was not taken seriously for most of the twentieth century. It enjoyed short revivals in Hong Kong during the Cold War, in Taiwan during the 1970s and 1980s, and in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) during the early reform era (1978–1983), but none of the revivals gained enough momentum to sustain the genre. The history of Chinese science fiction has, in other words, never been continuous.

  THE NEW WAVE

  The recent revival, particularly what I call the new wave, began almost exactly one hundred years after the late Qing golden age of Chinese science fiction. Some factors related to its recent revival appear similar to the circumstances of its boom in late Qing, such as a rapidly changing mediasphere and anxious expectations concerning change in China. In particular, the free platform for new authors to publish on the internet, the failure of a collective idealism for Chinese intellectuals in 1989, and the “perfect vacuum” for fantasy resulting when mainstream realism more or less lost touch with reality and thus could not avoid being marginalized in the field of literary production—all these could be the essential cultural and social conditions for the rise of the new wave. I first used the term “new wave” to refer to this recent trend of Chinese science fiction in 2013 when writing an article in Chinese for the academic journal Wenxue. Subsequently, I elaborated on the definition and aesthetics of the new wave in several articles written in English.4 My argument is that on its most radical side, the new wave of Chinese sf has been thriving on an avant-garde cultural spirit that encourages readers to think beyond the conventional ways of perceiving reality and to challenge the commonly accepted ideas about what constitutes the existence and self-identity of a person surrounded by technologies of self, society, and governance. However, the term “new wave” is a controversial concept for critics in China; its emphasis on the subversive, darker side of science fiction is questioned by those who have more faith in a utopia and China’s contemporary pursuit of wealth and power. Many scholars and writers in the mainland prefer the prosperous “golden age” to the subversive, cutting-edge new wave that sheds light on the darker side.

  It’s quite possible that, in a peculiar way, Chinese science fiction may have simultaneously arrived at its new golden age and generated a new-wave subversion of the genre itself. The poetics and politics of the new wave are both meaningful at a time when the Chinese government is engineering a “Chinese dream.” The new wave has unleashed a nightmarish
unconscious of a dream that does not necessarily belong to an individual but rather to a collective entity. In its aesthetic aspect, the new wave speaks either to the invisible dimensions of reality or simply to the impossibility of representing a certain reality dictated by the discourse of the national dream.5

  This new wave has been marked by a dystopian vision of China’s future, ambiguous moral dilemmas, and sophisticated representations of the power of technology or the technology of power. The poetics of the new wave point to the darker, more invisible sides of reality, as mentioned, and in this connection several new-wave writers, with Han Song, Fei Dao, Chen Qiufan, and even Liu Cixin as prominent examples, often refer to Lu Xun in their stories. The irony in the history of Chinese science fiction lies in the seemingly improbable marriage of a truth-claiming realism and science fiction. The new wave achieves a high-intensity realism that surpasses the conventional realistic depictions of everyday life. It speaks to the deeper truth beneath the surface reality, as Lu Xun did in “A Madman’s Diary.” Han Song’s 2011 novel, Ditie (Subway), takes readers into the nightmarish, absurd, irrational, cannibalistic, and abysmal underground world beneath a prosperous Chinese metropolis. Han Song has stated, “China’s reality is more science fictional than science fiction,”6 pointing to a reality that people may fear to see, as so evident in the title of his short story “Kan de kongju” (Fear of seeing, 2002), but science fiction, through metaphorical, figurative, or poetic means, represents that incredible reality. To call again to mind Lu Xun, Han Song’s characters discover the dark secret of the social system. Like the madman’s discovery of the cannibalism in Confucian society, the secrets Han Song reveals are horrifying, unsettling, and challenge the fundamentals of contemporary Chinese society.

  Does science fiction dream of a Chinese new wave? The invisible darkness that the Chinese new wave illuminates is the very magnetic force that makes the genre alive, attractive, and provocative in a worldwide context.