Science fiction writing has made a successful comeback in China after it was banned for almost 30 years during the Cultural Revolution and the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign of Deng Xiaoping. Leading the comeback is 33-year-old Hao Jingfang who won the Hugo Award in 2016.
She won for the novelette “Folding Beijing.” Hao beat a novel by Stephen King to win the award considered the Pulitzer prize for sci-fi, Caixin reported. The award was conferred on her by the World Science Fiction Society.
Liu Cixin, another Chinese writer, was a second-time nominee for his novel “Death’s End” in the Hugo Award given on Thursday. He was the 2015 awardee.
“Folding Beijing” Inspiration
Hao’s dystopian novelette, “Folding Beijing,” has Lao Dao, a waste worker who struggles to pay for the education of his adopted daughter, is the protagonist. To earn extra money, he delivers secret letters between a man and a woman having an illicit affair, although it is a dangerous job.
A complaint by a cab driver on the difficulty of having his daughter accepted by a school in Beijing inspired Hao Jingfang to write the novel. Hao, also an economic researcher at the China Development Foundation, has inequality as a recurring theme in her novels, according to the New York Times.
Opening Schools
With the award money that she got, Hao would use it to open a social enterprise that would introduce science and art classes to Guizhou and Hebei schools. Guizhou is one of the poorest provinces in China. Nature, the universe, and art would be taught in the schools. She noted that students in poor Chinese provinces are exposed to Chinese language and math, but not science and art.