A grandmother, desperate to protect her family from a poisonous, airborne disease, locks everyone up in a hermetically-sealed flat. Years go by and the family survive the pandemic, only to discover that they lack the extra nostrils and yellow puss developed by those exposed to the illness which are needed to re-enter the real world. This story, written in 2015 by Tang Fei, one of China’s young SF authors, is ironically called “The Path to Freedom.”
It may be exactly what it appears to be, a work of speculative science fiction. Or perhaps it was written as an allegory about stagnation within a closed society. Either way, Tang Fei’s simple tale reads like an unnervingly accurate prediction of China’s radical response to COVID-19. And it reminds us that Chinese authors can be political, critical and topical, as long as they’re writing fiction. In China fiction, as opposed to nonfiction, offers space for authors to distance themselves from what they are writing, and for readers to interpret the meanings themselves, to read between the lines. Of course, fiction works this way in many countries but in a repressive country like China is emerges as less of a choice, than a necessity.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]
For a brief moment, non-fiction flourished in the very earliest days of the outbreak in Wuhan. As people hunkered down in their apartments writers, sensing widespread anger and suffering, dared to speak plainly and bravely. Poems flooded the internet, expressing fear of the unknown, theories about government cover-ups and commemorating the unburied dead, including the whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang who died from the virus not long after being penalized for “making false comments.” Most famous of all was Wuhan author and “battlefield diarist” Fang Fang, whose daily Weibo posts documented the individual heartbreak and hardship of those at the frontline and, therefore, the reality behind all the depersonalized—and often absurd—official statistics pumped…
Source : time
