Columbia University Press New Story of the Stone: An Early Chinese Science Fiction Novel

"The New Story of the Stone is a key work of late Qing science fiction. In it, author Wu Jianren takes the beloved young protagonist of the Ming masterpiece The Story of the Stone, Jia Baoyu, along with two of the novel's more ancillary figures, and transports them over a hundred years into the future, to 1901 Shanghai. Here, Baoyu and his companions encounter myriad new technologies, social and cultural practices, political realities, and other bewildering stimuli. Steamships, newspapers, foreign food, and semicolonial treaty port commerce astound Baoyu as he attempts to come to terms with how much China has changed in just one hundred and fifty years. The first half of the novel (roughly) is set in the real world. But the latter half is much more fantastical: after escaping arrest for making provocative comments about a political meeting, Baoyu finds himself in the utopian "Realm of Civilization," which is overseen by a sage patriarch named "Eastern Strength." Here, in stark contrast to the imported consumerist "civilization" of Shanghai, Baoyu is shown a different mode of (Asian-coded) "civilization"-one that is concerned with using technology to care for its people, both by achieving mastery over the natural world and by building an invincible military. In his 1997 Stanford monograph, David Wang calls it "one of the most fascinating utopias of the late Qing era.""-- One of China’s first works of science fiction, New Story of the Stone is a belated twentieth-century sequel to the beloved eighteenth-century masterpiece Story of the Stone (more famously known as Dream of the Red Chamber). One of China’s first works of science fiction, New Story of the Stone is a belated twentieth-century sequel to the beloved eighteenth-century masterpiece Story of the Stone (more famously known as Dream of the Red Chamber). The story follows protagonist Jia Baoyu, borrowed from the original Story, as he is dramatically hurled forward over a hundred years from his own time into a bewildering future: first the decadent semicolonized late Qing China of the author’s own time and later an astonishing high-tech Confucian utopia called the Realm of Civilization.Baoyu is equally disoriented in both places: in China proper, he is distressed by the growth of foreign influence and weakening of the traditional moral code in favor of capitalist consumerism and selfish gain; in the Realm of Civilization, he is amazed by everything he encounters—from flying cars and ingenious medical technologies to the perfectly moral populace. Seen through Baoyu’s eyes, the Realm is everything that late Qing China has failed to be and offers a hopeful vision of what it might yet become.This quick-paced romp deftly highlights some of the major preoccupations of the tumultuous final decade of China’s last dynasty while raising important existential questions about China’s future. Enlivened by author Wu Jianren’s vivid imagination and wry sense of humor, this playful, satirical adventure is essential reading for lovers of science fiction and Chinese literature in translation. Autorid: Jianren Wu, Elizabeth Weber