SFitze Chengdu issue 07 2023 part 1
-newSFplatter by ST-
A DIFFICULT RETURN
I have run out of apologies as to the irregularity of these newsletters.
I cannot invoke cold equations, stringent physical laws, good old chaos theory, or obfuscating outer-dimensional forces to account for these numerous delays and low productivity stats that would frustrate any subscriber (let alone any paid subscribers!). This ‘newsplatter’ started with a Sinophone aim at its heart, or at least with an inclination to try and give due importance to the unfolding of the Sinosphere. Our task (one of many!): decenter SF by embracing its truly non-Western, planetary, and revolutionary aims.
All theoretical and critical concerns herein are stimulated by encounters with others, but also with various new and old media materials as digested through the lived experience of someone who was born in Eastern Europe and has lived through the end of the Cold War and the Rise of China on the world stage. As much as possible this newsletter has avoided a total and totalizing future and has tried to make room for a more inclusive, always partial, and xenophiliac vision.
No more excuses this time because – our bags as visitors to the Chengdu Wordlcon 81st Convention (to pick up on Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1986 essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction recently republished by Ignota), have been filled up nearly bursting.
Wherever I turn my head, nested Chinese boxes vibrate with numerous memory implants and indelible feelings about face-to-face encounters with new Chinese friends and comrades who also happen to be great SF fans. Below are just a few tasty morsels fished out of the constantly cooking and boiling spicy Sichuan cuisine SF hot-pot (be sure to visit the Sichuan Cuisine Museum as well as fhe freshly inaugurated SF Museum if you get the chance!). To be relished after midnight hour while sitting on bamboo chairs, with friends at a table on a terrace open on one side to the street so that more can come in, lit and criss-crossed by the fuchsia neon glow.
How else but difficult this return from one of the most transformative encounters of my life? The most edifying and concrete SF thing that happened is that I have finally made it to the New China. I never told anyone till the last minute I was going there. My bad for not really trusting or not daring to think that this is not some possible timeline easily abandoned or some wishful thinking. Also, I guess I did not want to get too depressed if it turned out it to be just a figment of imagination.
This encounter has been postponed for quite a while. I never felt ready for what was waiting for me there. My HelloChinese app Lessons languished, my Calligraphy brush looked down at me reproachfully. I am saying this because I have grown up with Havoc in Heaven animations and having certain inclinations before getting to China. Somehow my parents showed me some Romanian versions of China Today (called China Nouă in Romanian) magazines from the reform days of the 80s relating political, economic, industrial, agrarian, cultural and archaeological news. End of the 80s came The Red Sorghum 红高粱 directed by Zhang Yimou watched with my father at a Bucharest cinema on Magheru Blvd. Translations of Journey to the West, Dream of A Red Chamber, Water Margin and Chinese poetry came a bit later. Also Wu Jingzi and Lu Xun. But my encounter with Chinese SF was largely mediated by Western publications after the 2015-2016 breakthrough. Later I heard from my Chinese friend Zixuan about the two editors from SFW’s(Science Fiction Magazine), including the first editor-in-chief Tan Kai, who traveled in the 1990s Timisoara at the Eurocon Annual European SF Conference (Eurocon 94?) chaired by Mircea Oprita, esteemed writer and historian and encyclopedist of local SF fandom. Truth be said, gave to catch up with my reading - still not finished the Broken Stars Chinese SF anthology edited & translated by the invaluable Ken Liu. And it's the second time I make a note to self: read the books by Chengdu Pidu District (郫都区) born writer Yan Ge (pen name of Chinese writer Dai Yuexing 戴月行) - Strange Beasts of China, Elsewhere and The Chili Bean Paste Clan (oh those huge fermenting jars filled with thick, magma-like aromatic chili paste!). Lots to catch up with.
In one of the rare exhibitions I curated back in Romania during the 4th Covid wave – I tried contacting the Chinese Embassy which, through its cultural attaché Stefania Chen Shuyi provided some rare books for our small exhibition library. These were books about the History of Chinese robotics by Wang Hongpeng (translated into Romanian at Idea Europeana publishing), a new History of Chinese Science and Technology, and a monography on China’s world-renowned speed railway system with lots of data and historical background. And oh, got to mention a dense and stimulating talk I got invited to in Romanian about common Chinese passions on left wing YT Dezarticast channel with writer Adi Schiop and cultural critic Alin Rautoiu.
(img provided by RiverFlow from a TW by ChengduWorldCon)
CHINESE FANDOM MAPPINGS
Still, first and foremost I owe my participation and visit to China to @RiverFlow aka Heliu (河流), which for a better word I regard as some sort of Harry Seldon of Chinese fandom, and I do not mean this lightly. I have no greater respect and appreciation than for his genuine efforts & incredible China-spanning research. Also I'm humbled by the fact that that his health and his interests in biomedical SF are interlinked - very sadly and painfully, also his suffering from debilitating troubles have kept him from enjoying the full breath of the Worldcon program, from what I understand from a Clarkesworld interview he was kind enough to send me. That being said, he's recognizable to many fans and his inquiries and interviews have acted as a connecting tissue for this very widespread and dispersed fandom. It's hard not to appreciate how important it is to meet in rl, to actually bond & discuss offline and why direct contact between SF fans are a rare and precious occasion. Distances and tickets are still an hard economic issue for those having “lots of time but little money” and this is the same everywhere, in China included, but especially in Eastern Europe.
One has to care for a certain sense of history and be able to think beyond the next convention, the next bestsellers or the half-life of a media stunt by Elon X Musk parking his Tesla in orbit with a Hitchhikers Guide quote. Without ado, I was instantly attracted to his mappings, graphs and emblem collections of various Chinese SF clubs and groupings. These tracings of meetings and flickering SF associations demonstrated a comprehensive approach. It was an endeavor and willingness to offer an integral image of an emerging and evolving phenomenon before it got completely historicized or solidified into manuals and monographs. Probably such an initial recognition moment – resulted from a similar artistic and speculative representational effort (but in a much less systematic way), of trying to bring together various bold and playful ways that SF fans have developed over time. Essential reading in this sense is the CHINESE SCIENCE FICTION PLATFORMS: PROFESSIONAL AND FAN-BASED published in Strange Horizons in 2022 written by RiverFlow and translated by Emily Liu.
(img provided by RiverFlow from a TW by ChengduWorldCon)
How do fans speculate about the not-yet-here, how do they gather, celebrate and then disband? How do they relate to a rapidly and hard-to-catch-up with SFictionalizing world, but where fictioning (as conjoined but distinct from philosophy or the natural sciences - as Steven Shaviro points out in his Introduction to Discognition) opens up the unthought, the unimagined or unpredicting the predictable? How do they share values and transcend their early stirrings? What whimsical symbols of galactic “Peace, SF, Science and Development”(as in the 1990s SWF sticker that I still find relevant) have they produced over time? Reaching for the stars is also featured in this year's symbol featuring a Giant Panda exploring the universe while looking outside of its planetary ring (or portal).
