Which Chinese City Will Give Birth to the Next Liu Cixin?

The hit TV series "The Three-Body Problem," which has been trending since the beginning of the year, concluded with a breathtaking "Operation Guzheng."

From "The Wandering Earth 2" to "The Three-Body Problem," a series of critically acclaimed and commercially successful films and TV shows have lit up screens. Space elevators, planetary engines, human-powered computers... these magnificent sci-fi concepts are gradually stepping from abstract text into reality. Take the recently trending ChatGPT—doesn’t it seem like an AI straight out of a sci-fi novel?

Perhaps, as Liu Cixin once said, "The future is like a summer downpour, drenching us before we even have time to open our umbrellas."

Gazing into the vast cosmos, humanity’s curiosity and spirit of exploration never cease.

The roots of science fiction are deeply embedded in the soil of reality.

Liu Cixin’s vision of Earth engines was conceived beneath the Taihang Mountains in Shanxi; the fantastical perspective of "Folding Beijing" emerged from the sight of skyscrapers glimpsed through Beijing’s hutongs; in Chengdu’s streets and alleys, tales of saving the world burn as fiercely as its boiling hotpot... Sci-fi and reality blend subtly, sparking diverse inspirations against the unique backdrops of different cities.

The stilted houses of Hongyadong tell stories of people and the mountain city, spanning past, present, and future.

Photo/ByronChan

"The Wandering Earth" and "The Three-Body Problem,"

Born from the industrial fantasies of northern industrial hubs.

A power plant in a small northern city is hailed as a "sacred site of sci-fi."

Familiar sci-fi fans might guess immediately—it’s the Niangzi Pass Power Plant in Yangquan, Shanxi, where Liu Cixin worked and lived for years. As is well known, the coal industry looms large over life in Shanxi.

In Shanxi, it’s not uncommon to see coal mining and urban life coexisting.

In the semi-autobiographical short story "The Fire in the Earth," the protagonist, named "Liu Xin," spends his childhood and youth in the mines, living alongside scenes like "the towering derricks of the vertical shafts, the massive winding wheels at their peaks turning, lowering unseen cages deep into the earth," and learning to swim in "the coal-stained waters of the vast bathhouse pools."

"Everything here was coated with a layer of coal dust by time; the entire mountain was a shade of gray-black—the color of Liu Xin’s childhood, the color of his life. Closing his eyes, he listened to the sounds of the mine below, as if time itself had stopped flowing here."

Open-pit mines, as if dissecting the earth with a scalpel.

Amid the daily grind of massive coal-fired generators, heavy machinery, and the harsh realities of survival, Liu Cixin found stardust in the coal slag and glimpsed the Milky Way in flowing water. His novels dazzle with brilliant "ideas," born from an extreme passion and imagination for technology.

Another renowned sci-fi writer, Han Song, penned an essay titled "Passing Through the Sacred Sci-Fi Site of Niangzi Pass," where he sketched his impressions:

"Coal plants and thermal power stations abound, belching black smoke, the air thick with the smell of coal dust. Freight trucks rumble past, many hauling coal or flammable chemicals, like prehistoric beasts charging by. Oh, it was in such a place that Liu Cixin 'hid' and wrote his earth-shaking, tear-jerking words."

—Han Song, "Passing Through the Sacred Sci-Fi Site of Niangzi Pass"

The steam-belching locomotive, with its steel frame, formed the arteries of the coal mines.

In the fleeting moment passing the Niangzi Pass Power Plant, Han Song finally understood that "fantasy springs from barrenness, pain, and the act of catching up."

This is a highly condensed summary of Liu Cixin, and perhaps of Chinese science fiction as a whole.

Looking at *The Wandering Earth* film series and *The Three-Body Problem* TV adaptation, especially the former, they have almost single-handedly constructed an aesthetic unique to Chinese sci-fi cinema. It is an aesthetic born from the Soviet industrial system, brimming with mechanical and industrial vibes, yet built upon modern technology—its core being the pursuit of industrialization (or modernization) through technology.

The space elevator embodies a romanticism filled with raw power.

Photo: Still from *The Wandering Earth 2*

Having long resided on the arid, dust-laden eastern edge of the Loess Plateau, Liu Cixin never lost his concern for this land. In *Round Soap Bubbles*, he envisioned, with an "electrician's romance," how to use soap bubbles as large as entire cities to "divert water from east to west," allowing rain to nourish this yellow earth.

The Taiyuan Botanical Garden uses sturdy steel to support fragile bubbles.

At the end of the story, the light rain arrives as promised, and the skies of the northwest are filled with giant bubbles, becoming a "sky of dreams."

"During the day, the bubbles in the sky were barely visible, save for the reflections on their walls scattered across the blue expanse, turning the entire sky into a rippling lake under sunlight, while the shadows of the enormous, distinct bubbles drifted slowly over the land. The most magnificent moments came at dawn and dusk, when the rising or setting sun on the horizon gilded the river of bubbles in the sky with a brilliant gold."

—Liu Cixin, *Round Soap Bubbles*

Gazing eastward, the cold yet fertile plains of Northeast China are dotted with rusted pipelines, towering chimneys, and cooling towers exhaling memories of heavy industry.

Steam, railways, machinery—industry is the deep hue of the Northeast.

In *The Puppet City: Jing Ke Assassinates the King of Qin*, sci-fi writer Zhao Lei constructed a "cyber Northeast" teeming with prosthetics, androids, electronic eyes, and projections of colossal structures, only to reel in the soaring imagination with a line from Peking Opera *The Tale of Jing Ke*: "Alas, a wisp of heroic spirit, ambition unfulfilled, heart already broken." His nostalgic prose records the lives of people struggling amidst technological upheaval. Within aged steel fortresses, the warmth of human life thrives—humanity is the true sci-fi essence of this land.

Gazing at urban wonders in staggered spaces

In recent years, the city of Chongqing has earned a label: "cyberpunk."

Chongqing is mountainous, and its buildings cling to the slopes like vines, giving it a dizzying three-dimensionality unlike most modern cities. Rapid urban development has jumbled old and new structures together like chaotic building blocks. Cable cars and light rails slice through the perpetually misty sky, while neon lights in red and blue cast a humid, decadent futuristic vibe reminiscent of *Blade Runner*.

At the confluence of two rivers, how much surrealism gathers in Chongqing?

Walking its streets, one often encounters buildings with stress-defying, jaw-dropping structures. Looking up, colossal skyscrapers and bridges loom faintly in the hazy mist, evoking intense emotions—even a sense of "Big Dumb Object" (BDO) aesthetics.

This city is like a giant ant colony—complex, bustling, with an extreme interplay of scale and surrealism between the vast and the minute. It is a spectacle forged by both people and mountains.

Skyscrapers, old neighborhoods, and construction sites intermingle haphazardly as the city grows at breakneck speed.

Oregon’s desolate 13,000-hectare sand dunes made Frank Herbert confront humanity’s insignificance, birthing the classic *Dune*. Meanwhile, Chongqing’s urban spectacle showed sci-fi writer Han Song not just nature’s grandeur but also humanity’s eerie complexity.

Han Song, a journalist by trade, weaves through subway stations, hospitals, and urban corners, quietly observing and sharply documenting surreal realities. His ghostly prose, like Chongqing itself, brims with "the wondrous within the mundane."

“Water leaps, moves, feels alive yet carries the weight of death, like a flood. It converges differently from mountains or plains. Water stirs the imagination,” Han once remarked in an interview about Chongqing’s influence on him.

Chongqing is a mountain city but even more a river city, wrapped by the Jialing River. Water imbues it with narrative depth—mist rises between peaks, gorges, and waterways, lingering as fog that cloaks the city in mystery, adding layers of fantasy and sci-fi allure, as if untold secrets unfold in this surreal space.

The river-crossing cable car slices through the misty haze.

To locals, these "wonders" are just part of daily life. Chongqingers, steeped in the city’s pragmatic vitality, often exude a laid-back, street-smart yet flamboyant self-identity, a legacy of its dockyard culture.

Walking its streets, you’re struck by surreal contrasts: a bustling commercial block cradling a Buddhist temple, or a Ming-Qing architectural cluster at a road’s end. You never know what world lies beyond the next doorway.

This "wondrous within the mundane" is precisely what makes Chongqing unique.

Such stark contrasts, raw and vivid, seep into Han Song’s writing. Chinese sci-fi’s "two poles" are Liu Cixin and Han Song—the latter’s observation, imagination, and portrayal of China’s reality reach a pinnacle of another dimension.

Unlike Chongqing, Beijing’s "spatial" disarray unfolds on a different plane, where lives diverge drastically, tradition clashes with modernity, and power intertwines with culture. These multilayered dimensions, captured by Hao Jingfang, birthed *Folding Beijing*.

History and future fold into the mere 6.3 kilometers between the Forbidden City and Guomao.

Crossing Beijing east to west feels psychologically as arduous as Lao Dao’s journey between *Folding Beijing*’s First and Third Spaces.

Heading north along the central axis, you pass Nancheng’s old-Beijing charm, the Forbidden City’s cultural symbolism, the glittering high-rises of the Second and Third Ring Roads, and the Olympic Forest Park’s sprawling greenery. Farther north lie ant-hill-like residential blocks housing not just "Beijing drifters" but also youthful dreams.

Gazing up at the futuristic Galaxy SOHO from a hutong is Beijing’s quotidian marvel.

Photo by DC.Zhang

A single road folds in Beijing’s myriad corners. Amid such contrasts, everyday wonders abound: peering from humble, lively hutongs at sleek, luminous skyscrapers. Sometimes, parallel worlds are just a wall apart.

Chaoshan, seemingly "the least sci-fi,"

Sci-fi grows in the crevices between history and reality.

Chaoshan feels like the unlikeliest sci-fi setting. While sci-fi often conjures glossy future tech, here it’s altars, ancestral halls, and deities that dominate.

In the Puning region, high-speed trains roar past ancestral halls.

"Richard Strauss's 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra' blended with the Howie Lee remix of Chaoshan Yingge dance music echoes from the horizon, resounding through the skies. The sublime sense of mysticism and the clamorous rhythm of secular life are intricately deconstructed like delicate embroidery, then rewoven into a Dolby holographic soundscape, transmitted via virtual livestreams to the bone-conduction headphones adapted for the white boxes atop the heads of 300,000 subscribers."

—Chen Qiufan, "Ancestral Hall in a Box"

You see, the fusion of Chaoshan's traditional crafts—woodcarving, ancestral halls, clans—with sci-fi is seamless.

Chaoshan Yingge dance exudes robust masculinity.

Sci-fi writer Chen Qiufan, a native of Chaoshan, is renowned for his stories about cyberpunk, virtual spaces, and digital life. In a piece themed around his hometown, he wrote this sci-fi story blending tradition and modernity, "Ancestral Hall in a Box."

In Chaozhou, "gold-painted woodcarving" is a uniquely exquisite craft. It began in the Tang Dynasty and flourished in the Song Dynasty. For instance, the famous Huang Clan Ancestral Hall in Chaozhou preserves many gold-painted woodcarvings—vivid, intricate, and resplendent with dragons, phoenixes, and gilded details.

Woodcarving is not just a technique; it is deeply intertwined with archways, ancestral halls, temples, and the highly associated clan relationships, family discussions, and emotional bonds tied to these architectural forms. It can be said that woodcarving transcends "craft" itself, embedding deeply into the local culture and identity.

The resplendent woodcarvings integrate into homes, ancestral halls, and temples, profoundly shaping this land.

To this day, the enduring traditions of ancestral halls, the ancient wood and stone carvings, and the blurred boundaries between people continue to deeply influence this region.

Against this backdrop, Chen Qiufan digitized ancestral halls, encapsulating them into small wooden boxes. These are not just condensations of refined craftsmanship or virtualized architectural details—most importantly, each box embodies a piece of history, a story, a culture.

Chaoshan residences resemble neatly arranged wooden boxes, each hiding a microcosm of life.

Moreover, to experience them, the boxes require "physical interaction—touching with fingers, smelling with the nose, appreciating their wonders from different angles." Ultimately, they become part of our bodily skills, a uniquely human experience that machines or digital means cannot replace.

In an era of relentless technological advancement—even absolute worship—gold-painted woodcarving faces immense pressure from industrial assembly lines. Yet, aren’t we humans also in need of rediscovering and redefining our own value?

The skeleton of sci-fi is born from the "smoke and fire of daily life."

Changwang noodles, chili oil, silk dolls, ice jelly, hotpot skewers...

These Guizhou delicacies aren’t just featured in food documentaries—sci-fi writer Ling Chen, a native of Guiyang, vividly incorporates these regional snacks into her work "Infiltration into Guiyang."

From afar, Guiyang is a bustling metropolis towering among mountains.

In the classic sci-fi film "Blade Runner," there’s a scene where Harrison Ford’s character, the killer Deckard, eats noodles at a street stall in an Eastern city resembling Hong Kong. He deftly splits chopsticks, rubs them together, and smooths out the splinters to avoid pricking his mouth.

Up close, Guiyang is a culinary capital where the aroma of food rises like smoke.

This simple yet lifelike design instantly brings the film to life, making it believable—because it shows that Dick, as an assassin who kills without a trace, finds his best way to hide in a metropolis by "disappearing in plain sight." The design of this humble noodle stall, brimming with the vibrancy of everyday life, also adds diversity and depth to the city.

Similarly, in *Infiltrating Guiyang*, the assassin Lei Yu, a non-human replicant, is set to infiltrate Guiyang at dawn to carry out his mission. His way of experiencing the world—or more precisely, experiencing Guiyang—is through the city's countless mundane yet vivid details.

Qianchun Interchange, an 8D fantastical visual spectacle.

"With over 600 years of history, Qingyan is filled with ancient Ming and Qing architecture, nestled against mountains and water, exuding serene tranquility. Temples, Taoist shrines, and churches coexist in the town, often leaving Lei Yu marveling at the locals' religious tolerance. Lost in thought, he would walk to the Centenarian Arch to gaze at the stone-carved mountain lions, beasts that seem poised to flee into the sunset at any moment.

He is but a passerby in this city... Coming to Guiyang feels less like searching for that person and more like searching for himself."

Cuisine, local customs, and the lifestyles of the people are always intertwined. A city's character inevitably seeps into everyone, leaving behind collective memories, whether faint or profound.

In the misty rain, history and modernity overlap in Guizhou.

"Early spring in Sichuan is typically drizzly; barely into March, and the basin is already suffused with a warm, moist air. The trees' tender leaves, pale yellow, are bathed in the milky-white haze of dawn. Less than fifty kilometers south of Chengdu lies a small town called Jiangkou."

This is the opening line of *The Stars*, a novel by sci-fi writer July, a native of Sichuan deeply familiar with Chengdu. In interviews, July has said that when writing, he favors "details with a tangible skeleton," so in his stories, details are closely tied to locations, giving readers an extra sense of familiarity.

"Elements entirely driven by Chengdu's essence—like the Global Center, Wuhou Shrine, and other landmarks—shape the characters' logic as well." To July, Chengdu's culture is highly representative, "a city with a distinct character in China."

Pandas, ubiquitous here, might also be part of the city's charm.

Chunxi Road, Kuanzhai Alley, hotpot, skewers, teahouses—all evoke a uniquely Chengdu flavor at the mere mention. Like the "old Canton vibe" for Guangzhouers, the Chengdu traits in July's novels capture the city's essence and way of life.

Chengdu has long been intertwined with sci-fi. In 1979, *Science Literature*, the precursor to *Science Fiction World*, was founded here, marking the start of China's 40-year sci-fi rise. In 1986, the Galaxy Awards, China's highest sci-fi honor, was born in this city, turning authors like Liu Cixin, Wang Jinkang, Han Song, He Xi, and Liu Wenyang into stars of the sci-fi firmament. With tech firms flourishing in the High-Tech Zone and a sci-fi park under construction, Chengdu will soon host the World Science Fiction Convention. The title "China's Sci-Fi Capital" is well-deserved.

The surreal Taikoo Li, nestled among old streets and alleys.

China is vast, and many cities carry a sci-fi aura. Take Xi'an, where steel and concrete stand alongside ancient bricks and stones, lending a surreal sense of time's passage in Xia Jia's stories. Or Shanghai, with its neon lights, plane-tree shade, and garden villas—delicate yet fragile. *Shanghai Fortress* turns it into a battleground, while *Paper Shanghai* sets it ablaze again and again, using ruin to make us reflect on the preciousness of the mundane.

Stripped of its glamour, Shanghai reveals a resilient tension.

Science fiction is a prism refracting reality.

Standing on the soil of different cities, sci-fi writers weave dazzling tales of imagination. When reality constructs profound stories in the mind, even the most ordinary—even dull—things gain immense possibility and power.

This is why we need science fiction—

We cherish the ground beneath our feet, yet forever chase the myriad stars above.

In the urban jungle, we gaze into the profound future.

By Su Xiaoqi, Cat Knight

Cover Image | chrixed

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