IN 2016 a short novel by Hao Jingfang, a young Chinese writer, won a Hugo award, an international prize for science fiction. In her story, “Folding Beijing”, the population of the capital has been separated into three groups who not only live in different areas but are not even awake at the same times. The 5m members of First Space—the rulers—are allowed to work, eat and go outside between 6am one morning and 6am the next. The 25m middle-class occupants of Second Space are up and about from 6am on the second day to 10pm that same night. The downtrodden denizens of Third Space are awake only between 10pm and 6am on the third morning, when the rulers wake and start the cycle again. Drugs keep everyone asleep, except during their hours of wakefulness.
Ms Hao has just announced that her story of a divided capital is to be made into a film. But in the past two weeks, real life in Beijing has been telling it in tragic form. On the evening of November 18th a fire broke out at a...Continue reading
Source: China http://ift.tt/2kbw483
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