China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 4/4

November 23, 2011

Even after 1949 with the founding of the People’s Republic of China, science fiction literature continued to flourish. During this period, the genre adopted a popular science approach and directed the majority of its stories towards younger readers.

However, during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), science fiction stagnated and then revived after March 1978 when the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council convened a national scientific congress in Beijing, proclaiming to China, “Science’s spring has come.”

Scientific enthusiasm and popular science followed, greatly promoting the development of science fiction in China.

From China.org we learn, “The monthly circulation of Science Fiction World, one of China’s most popular magazines, has exceeded 500,000, dwarfing all international counterparts. Yang Xiao, head of the magazine’s editorial board, said 70 percent of its readers were students who shared single copies of the journal between dozens of friends because they could not afford their own. Millions of Chinese young people were affected by science fiction, said Yang, who hailed the rise of the modernist genre among the people who would decide the nation’s future.”

Another sign of the progress of science fiction literature in China first took place August 25, 2007 at the Chengdu International SF/F Conference. Over two days, authors from America, Canada, Britain, Russia, Japan, and China, and over twenty-thousand science fiction fans arrived in Chengdu for the event, which in turn increased the influence of SF in China due to media coverage.

Then from Chinese Science Fiction.org, we discover the second Chengdu Science Fiction and Fantasy conference was held November 12, 2011 in Chengdu.

Meanwhile, China continues with plans to build a space station, and then a productive mining colony of rare-earth minerals on the moon with a future exploration of Mars on the books, while the United States space program languishes.

The cause of this development is due to the US national debt and the costs of the war on Islamic terrorism, which may have been caused by what Henry Kissinger calls, “American exceptionalism is missionary. It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world” even if the world isn’t interested resulting in this resistance from the Middle East.

In addition, many young people in the United States with a high sense of self-esteem do not read books while watching too much TV has been scientifically linked to lack of a development in part of the brain where imagination blossoms.

Return to China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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Note: You may read more on this topic [written by British thriller writer O. C. Heaton] over at A Rush of Green.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 3/4

November 22, 2011

The history of science fiction in China predates the CCP’s encouragement today, and that interest started in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — a cultural phenomenon that emerged from Western Europe’s Industrial Revolution. One site I visited while researching this topic even dated science fiction to ancient China.

In Sci-fi books? China’s got tons of those, Asia Obscura.com says, “When it comes to sci-fi movies, China’s really falling behind. One that really did impress me, though, was the very first to be produced in China: 1980′s gorgeous, fun, and campy ‘Death Ray on Coral Island’ (珊瑚岛上的死光).

“In ‘Death Ray,’ a good-hearted team of Chinese scientists, based in what appears to be San Francisco, finally succeed in completing their fabulous futuristic invention. That is, until the sinister back-stabbing Americans, played with Bond-villainous glee by Chinese actors in whiteface and prosthetic noses, decide to steal the invention for their evil plots…”, which reveals another perspective of the US.

Then Foreign Policy.com introduces us to The Prosperous Time: China 2013, written by 58-year-old Hong Kong novelist Chen Guanzhong, who has lived and worked in Beijing for much of his life.

“China 2013 presents an ambivalent vision of China’s near future: outwardly triumphant (a Chinese company has even bought out Starbucks), and yet tightly controlled”, which may be a prediction that China’s one party republic is here to stay.

Continued on November 23, 2011 in China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 4 or return to Part 2

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Note: You may read more on this topic [written by British thriller writer O. C. Heaton] over at A Rush of Green.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 2/4

November 21, 2011

The British Telegraph’s HG Wells on Google: which of his predictions came true? reminds us that H. G. Wells first mentioned genetic engineering in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), lasers in The War of the Worlds (1898), the first moon landing in The First Men in the Moon (1901), nuclear power and weapons in the World Set Free (1914), and the Second World War in The Shape of Things to Come (1933).

In addition, Computer Science Schools.net lists 15 Science Fiction Predictions that came True, while Blog Tutor.com lists eight.

Blog Tutor says, “At the time of their writing, these science fiction ideas often seemed impossible to fantastic to ever come true—and yet today’s technology seems to keep pace with the dreams of writers past.

“Although Cyberspace hasn’t quite reached the level of technology William Gibson predicted in 1986’s Burning Chrome, no one can deny that the Internet’s alternative worlds … are working towards the virtual…”

With that introduction, it may not come as a surprise that science fiction fits with China’s goals to catch up with and possibly surpass the West and reclaim its heritage and history of being the most powerful and technological advanced country and culture on the planet as it was for more than two thousand years before the 19th century and the Opium Wars.

In fact, we learn from The Race is On that “China’s Government actively encourages its citizens to read Science Fiction… Mark Charan Newton calls this the “Cult of Science Fiction – that is, the faith in dreaming up Big Ideas… So perhaps the Chinese are onto something with their focus on science fiction: a genre that weds the scientific to the artistic.”

Continued on November 22, 2011 in China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Note: You may read more on this topic [written by British thriller writer O. C. Heaton] over at A Rush of Green.

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 1/4

November 20, 2011

This Blog explored (with Tom Carter’s guest post) how Harlequin Romance Invaded China without mentioning that romance literature in China has a history reaching back before the Dream of the Red Chamber (1715-1763), which has a tragic Romeo and Juliet love story between its covers.

I’ve also written of the rise of China’s film industry in Hollywood to Bollywood to a Rising Chinawood, while exploring the folklore and films of China’s Vampires.

As a child, I read many historical texts on Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, the Napoleonic Wars, the British Empire, and historical fiction on similar subjects.

Then as an adolescent in middle and then high school I devoured science fiction and fantasy novels often one or two a day.

Today, I mostly read mysteries and literature but find my science fiction fantasy fix from film productions such as The Lord of the Rings, TV’s Stargate and Star Trek franchises in addition to George Lucas‘s Star Wars Saga.

Recently, I’ve been watching the complete series of Earth 2 while reading mysteries and thrillers.

In fact, the future we live with today was predicted in the early pages of Western science-fiction literature and China has noticed that science fiction literature often predicts and precedes scientific innovations such as laptop computers, the Internet, the Amazon Kindle and even doors that open automatically.

Continued on November 21, 2011 in China’s [Politically Motivated?] Science Fiction Craze – Part 2

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Note: You may read more on this topic [written by British thriller writer O. C. Heaton] over at A Rush of Green.

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The ordinary side of urban China delivered by Chi Li

November 19, 2011

My wife and daughter returned from China last summer with a crate of Chinese movies on DVDs—there wasn’t one American movie in the mix and many do not have English subtitles.

Therefore, it is strange that the one Chinese film that impressed me the most (so far) was one I discovered at a local Half Priced Books. The movie was Life Show (2002) adapted from a book by Chinese author Chi Li.

Since the late 1980s, Chi Li has been considered a pioneer of “new realism” and her work depicts ordinary life in China so critics have identified her work with the Western school of “existentialism”.

In fact, it was the “ordinary element” of her work that I saw in the film which captured my curiosity to learn more. Since I’ve traveled to China several times since 1999 and not with tour groups, I’ve visited streets similar to the ones that appear in the film. I’m sure most foreign visitors to China that visit on packaged tours do not see the ordinary side of China as I have.

My wife says Chi Li is one of her favorite Chinese authors. The first time I was introduced to Chi Li’s work was through Life Show, which tells the story of Lai Shuangyang, a restaurant owner played by Tao Hong. Shuangyang’s life is busy dealing with family and business but she is lonely until one of her long-time customers, played by Tao Zeru, shows a romantic interest in her.

Zeru plays a middle-aged businessman, and Shuangyang takes a risk and the two strike up a romance that ends when she discovers he is the developer behind the modernization of the area where she has her restaurant.  He offers to take care of her but it is obvious that Shuangyang values her personal freedom and independence and in a fiery scene, she breaks up with him.

Lai Shuangyang’s life is filled with complications. Her younger brother Jiuju is a drug addict in jail/rehab.  The woman that loves Jiuju is Mei, who works for Shuangyang in her restaurant. Mei attempts suicide because Jiuju is not interested in her, and then Shuangyang arranged a marriage for Mei to another man, who is mentally ill.

Her sister in law, Xiaojin, is trying to regain the Lai family’s home, which was given to a neighbor during the Cultural Revolution. In addition, Shuangyang is at risk of losing her restaurant due to a redevelopment project in Wuhan.

Chi Li, the author of Life Show, is one of China’s best-known writers and several of her novels have been translated into French by publisher Actes Sud.

Chi Li was born 1957 in Wuhan, Hubei province, graduated from the Chinese Language Department of Wuhan University and then worked as an editor of a literary magazine called Fang Cao (Fragrant Grass).

Chi Li rarely travels and avoids “literary circles”.  “If my unsociability is thought to be a flaw, I admit I’m a person with a flaw,” Chi has said.

Chi Li, Chinese author of "Life Show"

During the Cultural Revolution, like millions of other young Chinese, she was sent to the countryside to become an “educated youth”. Later she studied medicine and practiced for five years before becoming a teacher.

Today, she is a member of the National People’s Congress (NPC), which provides an opportunity to discuss politics with other representative of the NPC providing an understanding/education of China’s policies and political atmosphere.

Chi Li’s work relates to love, marriage, divorce and extramarital affairs of contemporary Chinese life, while her characters are imbued with common human traits such as ambition, deceit, jealousy, and sexual desire. Her work, Comes and Goes, was a story of extramarital affairs occurring in Wuhan and became a TV series of same name.

The city of Wuhan comes alive in her work—enough to be considered a character. Although many of her novels have been translated into French, there are no English translations yet, which is a shame.

Discover Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress or Not One Less

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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