Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw by Hua Li

Abstract

Reviewed by: Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thawby Hua Li Angie Chau How Chinese SF Conquered China. Hua Li. Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw. U of Toronto P, 2021. 234 pages. $65 hc & ebk. In her straightforward and well-researched study Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw, Hua Li focuses on the literary production of sf in the post-Mao period, lasting roughly from 1976 to 1983. This short span of literary history has generally been overlooked in existing discussions about Chinese sf, which tend to emphasize either its emergence during the late-Qing early modern period, or the global enthusiasm for works associated with the recent "New Wave," as signaled by the success of Liu Cixin's T hreeB odytrilogy. According to Li, the post-Mao thaw usually refers to the period [End Page 184]beginning with Mao Zedong's death in 1976 after the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and ends with the 1983 Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, but the works covered in Li's monograph extend to a longer time span, from the 1950s to the 1990s. The significant contribution that Chinese Science Fiction during the Post-Mao Cultural Thawmakes to the dynamic and growing field of Chinese popular culture is threefold: first, Li pays careful attention to works of Chinese sf that have previously been marginalized in English-language scholarship, particularly those belonging to the subgenre of "tech-sf" ( jishu kehuan), a mode of utopian writing about the promise of technology by mostly novice writers that failed to flourish in the 1980s, but whose thematic concerns, as Li demonstrates, eventually shaped the work of subsequent giants such as Liu Cixin. Second, Li rightfully situates Chinese sf in conversation with the broader category of world literature, especially in relation to Japanese, Russian, and anglophone sf, such as in her detailed discussion in Chapter 5 of the translational linkages between Xiao Jianheng's short story "Buke's Adventure" (1961) and the issue of organ transplantation promoted in Soviet-era sf narratives and theories (100-103). Finally, the book traces Chinese sf's transmediality ( kua meiti) to an earlier pre-digital age of "small-scale, fledgling, and yet significant media convergence" (135), confirming the genre's lasting adaptability and appeal. Methodologically, Hua Li builds on the work of literary scholar Ken Gelder, adopting a "quasi-academic or para-academic reading" approach to analyzing works of popular fiction that attempts to balance more academically bound "form-and-ideology interpretations" (4) with a deeper dive into the production, distribution, and consumption of Chinese sf. Eschewing close readings of texts, Li explains that her project analyzes the sociopolitical and cultural factors that have shaped Chinese sf, in order to identify their uniquely "Chinese" circumstances (5). For example, in chapter one Li shows how sf must strive to overcome the limitations associated with two genres, kexue wenyi(literature and art in service of popularizing science) and children's literature, to finally assume "its rightful place in Chinese literature as an independent subgenre of popular fiction" (5). Organized into eight chapters, the book begins with a concise introductory overview of the field, followed by four chapters devoted to individual authors, all prominent and prolific figures in Chinese sf: Zheng Wenguang, Ye Yonglie, Tong Enzheng, and Xiao Jianheng. Together, these chapters are a convincing testament to the flexibility of the genre in the Chinese context, ranging from Zheng Wenguang's anthropocenic turn in his M arsseries (1954-1984) and Ye Yonglie's sf crime thrillers, to Tong Enzheng's archaeological take on aliens and Xiao Jianheng's youth fiction about robots. In the book's last three chapters, Li works up to her main argument that sf from mainland China during the post-Mao cultural thaw, despite being a "government-backed literature," can nevertheless be characterized by subversiveness—in Li's words, "blooming, contending, and boundary-breaking" elements (165). Chapter six sheds light on the forgotten category [End Page 185]of tech-sf writers in the context of China's Four Modernizations movement, as initially proposed by Zhou Enlai in 1963, then promoted by Deng Xiaoping in the late-1970s. Chapter...