-
Advertorial
-
FOCUS
-
Guide
-
Lifestyle
-
Tech and Vogue
-
TechandScience
-
CHTF Special
-
Nanshan
-
Futian Today
-
Hit Bravo
-
Special Report
-
Junior Journalist Program
-
World Economy
-
Opinion
-
Diversions
-
Hotels
-
Movies
-
People
-
Person of the week
-
Weekend
-
Photo Highlights
-
Currency Focus
-
Kaleidoscope
-
Tech and Science
-
News Picks
-
Yes Teens
-
Budding Writers
-
Fun
-
Campus
-
Glamour
-
News
-
Digital Paper
-
Food drink
-
Majors_Forum
-
Speak Shenzhen
-
Shopping
-
Business_Markets
-
Restaurants
-
Travel
-
Investment
-
Hotels
-
Yearend Review
-
World
-
Sports
-
Entertainment
-
QINGDAO TODAY
-
In depth
-
Leisure Highlights
-
Markets
-
Business
-
Culture
-
China
-
Shenzhen
-
Important news
在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
The heart can’t be folded
    2016-09-05  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Winton Dong

    dht620@sina.com

    CHINESE science-fiction author Hao Jingfang became the first Chinese woman to win the Hugo Award on Aug. 20, beating best-selling horror and fantasy American writer Stephen King in the best novelette category.

    The 32-year-old Chinese, a Ph.D. graduate from the Economics and Management School of Tsinghua University, won the prize for her novelette “Folding Beijing,” in which she depicts the Chinese capital as a city divided by social castes. It is an imaginative story about future Beijing that literally folds and rotates every day. The gigantic city is constructed and divided into three areas, namely the First Space, the Second Space and the Third Space. But only one of them stays above the surface at any point, while the other two fold up and go underground.

    The First Space, home to the elite of society, regards the extra soil as their privilege. The First Space only houses 6 percent of the city’s 80 million population, but feasts on 50 percent of the resources. While in the Third Space, the poorest area of the city, over 60 percent of the population gets just 6 percent of the resources. Moreover, the difference in the number of surface hours between residents in the First Space (24 hours out of a 48-hour cycle) and the Third Space (eight hours) is also very stark.

    The protagonist in the story is Lao Dao, a middle-aged waste processing worker living in the Third Space. In order to create a better living environment for his family, he makes desperate efforts to earn enough money to send his adopted daughter to kindergarten. With an undaunted view, the author tries to build a moving tale of paternal honor and familial love. The author once described how she got the inspiration for the novelette, “I saw a lot of people bargaining at a flea market that sold cheap products. At that time, a taxi driver told me that the family was struggling to send their children to kindergarten. I came to realize that in this city people can just pass through everyday life without seeing one another,” she said.

    The story grapples with some serious notions such as unemployment, marriage, class stratification, population explosions, inequitable wealth, environmental protection, housing prices, educational resources, advances in automation and other social issues.

    It is really an interesting idea to deal with such social problems in a highly automated and overpopulated society by folding up the stratified city, allowing only certain people to be awake at certain times. Despite the fact that it is categorized as a science fiction, the story is very thought-provoking, and to some extent, a mirror of the actual world we are living in. After reading the book, one cannot help but wonder which space he or she is from. Maybe that’s the reason why the story is so well received all over the world.

    When being interviewed at the award ceremony in Kansas City, the U.S., Hao said she doesn’t want Beijing to turn into the city she describes in the novelette. “My story suggests a possibility for the future and also proposes a solution. In my story, the future is brighter than we thought,” she said.

    

    In my opinion, Hao’s words are encouraging and implicit. Frankly speaking, no matter if we acknowledge it or not, big cities all over the world may already be folded or will be folded in the future.

    But even if our bodies are trapped in a folded city or a limited space, our hearts can, by no means, be folded. In this respect, Lao Dao, the hero in “Folding Beijing,” is duly respectable and can be regarded as a vivid portrait of many common Chinese men. He tries to fulfill a dream of sending his adopted daughter to a good kindergarten through desperate actions, but without violating his morals and integrity as a human being.

    (The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily and guest professor of Shenzhen University with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)

深圳报业集团版权所有, 未经授权禁止复制; Copyright 2010, All Rights Reserved.
Shenzhen Daily E-mail:szdaily@szszd.com.cn