Setting the Scene
Xueting Ni is a writer about Chinese cultures. She curated and translated her own collection of contemporary literature called Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction. One of her goals is to bring light to modern China from historical and contemporary perspectives. So Xueting, it’s really interesting to, I would say, meet you face-to-face.
XUETING
Yeah. We are kind of face-to-face across the digital seas.
Author and curator of literature and culture
Exactly, exactly. I’d like to ask you a question I ask all my guests, and that is, if I were to say, “I just had a great conversation with the most interesting woman. She’s…” How would you want me to finish the sentence?
XUETING
Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been described as many things by my readers and audiences, including one reviewer that said, “One person wrecking crew. Destroyer of cultural blindness.” But I’ll settle for author and curator of literature and culture.
JANE
Oh, I think wrecking crew is a lot more interesting. So I have read Sinopticon more than once.
XUETING
Oh, wow. Thank you.
The origins and purpose of “Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction”
And it’s quite a collection. And my first question to you, where does the name Sinopticon come from?
XUETING
That’s a really great question. Thank you so much for reading my book and more than once. So it’s a made-up word made of Sino, meaning China, Chinese-related, and synopticon. Primarily we chose it because it sounds cool and sci-fi-ish. And I think I’ve since then seen it as an art project. Some academics have interpreted it in terms of surveillance and Foucault’s theories, but it’s not meant to have that meaning at all. It’s supposed to convey, first of all, cool sci-fi that’s related to China that shows a window into the society and culture.
JANE
Well, you partially answered my second question, which is why did you create this collection? What was your purpose?
XUETING
Well, I’ve been a sci-fi fan since really when I was little. The first sci-fi I remember reading is actually Russian sci-fi because I grew up in China. I mean, I spent my childhood there. I was probably a little bit too young for it. But then I kind of also watched a lot of TV series of American sci-fi when I was a teenager and then read a lot of classics during my university years and afterwards, and now I read more recent work. So I’ve always been a sci-fi fan. And furthermore, with the Chinese sci-fi, I started reading it probably like a decade before I got the chance to do this collection.
So I suppose why I really wanted to make a collection, make a curated anthology, is that a few years before the contract, I got this opportunity. I was touring with a talk called, it was a brief history of Chinese science fiction with the contemporary scene. And I changed it to The Chinese do Sci-fi!? Because so many people in the audience were saying to me, “There is such a thing in China, it exists?” And I say, “Well, yes it does, actually for a hundred years, it had a few breaks, but it’s a tradition.” So yeah, it’s been a long-term goal and it was a case of when I got the opportunity to do that. I’m still working in the tradition in a lot of short form works at the moment.
JANE
How did you choose the stories or the authors that you decided to include?
XUETING
My criteria was to have as varied a style, tone, subject matter, and author demographic as possible to showcase a wide range of the literature of the literary tradition in China and what it’s like now. And then of course it’s got to be good writing. So it’s a case of it was a mixture of approaches of writers I met earlier on and writers I was introduced by agency and media company. They also let me know a lot about writers that they don’t represent. So I had nice people to work with and writers I’d read before as well that I managed to get in contact with since I’ve started making the selection. So it’s a mixture.
The role of science fiction in exploring societal issues and the future and the past
Do you believe that science fiction helps people discover realities about today as well as the future and the past, I would say?
XUETING
I think it certainly does. I think in a way, what science fiction can show us about the future and maybe the past, because the future always has to do with the past, it’s something almost algebraic. Because we have a lot of territorial disputes of geopolitics and gender, sexuality, identity debate at the moment, and they come with a baggage, they come with a lot of baggage. But if you put it in the context of, say, two made-up planets, imagined planets that are in binary rotation or you have a set of aliens, then although I have no control over the readers’ understanding, I would hope that at least some of them would understand that this is an allegory for perhaps some issues in reality. And I hope that this presents an opportunity to allow the readers to examine these issues without the prejudices that they might bring into it in a real situation.
JANE
Yes, I think you’re right. I interviewed about a year ago, Stanley Chen Qiufan, whom you probably know.
XUETING
Yeah, I worked with him recently, I think on a panel about Wandering for the BFI. He was over in Europe and then visited the UK a couple of years ago. And now we’re working together on a new sci-fi anthology. But yeah, I think he’d probably have a lot to say about future.
JANE
He does, yes. I should get the two of you together in a conversation. That would be really interesting.
XUETING
Oh, that would be cool. Yes, that would be really interesting.
The interplay between technology progress and preserving humanity and human connection
Technology is advancing so fast. How can humans stay relevant?
XUETING
We can stay relevant by keeping the human factor involved really. This can be on very simple levels like having people instead of the self-checkout in the supermarket or having actually people in the chats on customer services instead of algorithms and having kind of people at the end of customer service lines as opposed to just an automated voices. But definitely in terms of art and translation and anything to do with creativity, writing, I think the human element is very important. I myself have experienced this on a professional level in that I’ve edited stuff that’s been translated by an AI. Although the editor, my colleague had been through it, I felt like I needed to redo it myself. So that in the creative elements, definitely the human, keeping the human involved is very important.
And I think we kind of maybe need to fight the algorithm a little bit because there is definitely a place for AI and algorithm. But then if we look at things like the influencers and these videos who are everywhere these days, what these influencers are really doing is kind of keeping up with the algorithm because it decides whether it pushes their work or not. And that is a very, very crazy, crazy thing. And so I think now more and more we are living in a very siloed existence kind of whether it’s post-pandemic work patterns or socialization. People seem no longer as bothered to get out and meet one another. So I think we should have more live events, more social contact, and remember that human connection.
JANE
That comes up a lot in the stories that you chose. And one of them was The Return of Adam by Wang Jinkang, I think you would pronounce it.
XUETING
That’s right.
JANE
And you were surprised, you said, by my liking The Return of Adam. And I found it such a powerful story, the old gentleman you had in there who had a Nobel Prize winner for, what, three times. Well, you can probably explain it better than I can about the new humans.
The meaning in The Return of Adam
Yes. So he invented the technology to fuse the brain with an implant that enhances the intelligence of the human brain and by different degrees. There’s an upgrade. There’s a first one, and then there’s an upgrade. But I think in the end, he regrets it.
JANE
Yes. Remember he talks about the fact that there were just a few people left on the planet. He said that we’re in more in favor of the, did you call them the old humans or the regular humans versus the new humans? There were very few people who wanted, most people were happy to become a new human. Is that right?
XUETING
That’s right.
JANE
Because they were smarter, they were faster.
XUETING
That’s right. Most people were happy to be a new human except himself, the professor. I mean, I think the bit you picked up, the part you picked up is one of my favorite parts of the story actually. And of course Adam himself, who was tempted by this honey trap into him adopting the implant, I think he regrets it because he doesn’t get on with his new human wife that much.
JANE
How do you see that story as a, I don’t know what to call it, maybe a sign or an indication of a direction that we might be moving as humans? Because I felt like that story was very strong.
XUETING
Yeah, that’s a really, really great point about that story. That does seem like no matter how many sci-fi stories people read, they want to go in that direction. No matter how many warnings of losing our humanity, they want to go in that direction. And certainly you see it in more narrative now, even in Western narratives like I’ve been watching Alien: Earth, which I really enjoy. And in that story, there is one of these synthesized humans who really loves to be very intelligent. He likes sciences, he wants to work in the lab, and he just uploads these books into his brain. He doesn’t need to study them, he just uploads them. It’s a very similar idea to Wang Jinkang’s story written in the nineties. So yeah, people seem to be going that way. And even kind of instant access to things, to information or to knowledge seems to be the desired product of a lot of consumer societies. It seems to be where many parts of society are going. But then on the other hand, there is this movement for authenticity I think as well. I can see going back to, people are going out into nature to be more in tune with nature or they hand-build things, hand-make things. They repair old computers, a kind of old object. There is, I think that counter movement to it as well.
JANE
You have this back and forth between people who want to go to the future and people who want to take certain things from the past. And in a lot of the stories, there’s this back and forth flow between the past and the future and looking for a balance. And I think that’s one of the underlying themes of Sinopticon is that past-future thing.
People in China are looking to the past to see who we were in order to inform the future
That’s a really, really excellent overall point, overall kind of theme that you’ve observed from Sinopticon. Because I think very much now in Chinese society, people are trying to connect with their past. This has been severed before through modern history, the turmoil of modern history events like the Cultural Revolution and the May the Fourth Movement. And now they’re allowed to look at the past. They’re allowed to reconnect with tradition, with classical culture, very much looking to the past into who we were in order to inform the future. And I think to some extent, that’s universal. I think we all have to look at where we came from and what we’ve done, what we’ve been through in order to move forwards.
JANE
I think most people don’t realize that. I don’t think most people think about, I need to think about what I want to do, how I want to change my life, how I want to move into the future without thinking much about the past. At least that’s my experience.
XUETING
Yeah, I think, yeah, maybe it’s not an everyday concern. But if we’re thinking about the wider world, wider society, if you’re thinking about culture and history, then it is very much relevant.
Older Chinese Sci-fi writers Wang Jinkang and Han Song
Yes, it’s absolutely relevant. In fact, I don’t think you can really think about the future without having a sense of the past. Speaking of that, one of your writers, I think the oldest writer that you have in the collection lived through the Cultural Revolution in China, and he then has now become a leading figure in Chinese science fiction. I find that fascinating. Can you remind me who he is?
XUETING
So that’s the writer you were talking about, Wang Jinkang. He’s the oldest writer. But I also have Han Song on there. I have a novella from Han Song, Tombs of the Universe. And he is younger than Wang. He’s in his sixties, I believe. He also lived through the Cultural Revolution, and you can see that in his writing in things like Subway. Those two are two of the four great masters of sci-fi. And then the others being Liu Cixin, who wrote Three Body Problem, and He Xi as well. And you can see the history in Liu’s writing too.
JANE
Yeah, very interesting. I think Chinese science fiction has a, I mean, I don’t grasp it at all really yet, but a depth that I think is very powerful. Do you think it has more depth than I would say English language science fiction?
The depth and themes in Chinese science fiction, including the influence of historical events like the Cultural Revolution
I am not sure if we can compare it like that. I think that every sci-fi traditional or literary tradition needs to be looked at in context. And I’m sure anglophone science fiction has a lot of depth too. They can be enjoyed. Of course, you can just read a story and like it, or you can analyze it and go into good writing in any language or have depth. Yeah, and I understand what you were saying though about these writers having gone through that. The Cultural Revolution seems so far away, but it’s really been a century of chaos in the 20th century for China, probably for a lot of countries in the world, especially for China. I think for a while the writers were not allowed to talk about it, and now it’s better, it’s more relaxed now. But I’m really glad that these writers were able to talk about it, were able to work through these collective memories of recent history in their science fiction. And that’s one of the things that genre fiction can help people do. There are more tools in the box for the writers to use, and it gives them a safe space for them to do that.
JANE
And that’s really interesting that they can do that in China. I don’t know to what extent they can do that in America today. I think there’s actually… Well, today is special, was special, I don’t know if it’s special or not. I’m just beginning to read a book about the decline of America or the decline of the American century being the 20th century and the 21st century being a time when the United States is declining. Oh, one question I had that’s a little bit different from what we’re talking about in a way is about storytelling. And my question was, what role does storytelling have in shaping the future? And I’ve talked to different people who believe that storytelling is a very important part of how we shape the future. One of them is Wole Talabi. He has a number of things that relate the past to the future. Very, very interesting. He’s really done some amazing work. He’s someone who’s not well enough known, in my opinion, in the, I don’t know what to call it, the northern world. I don’t know what to call it. But in sort of the traditional sci-fi world, I don’t think he’s very well known, and I think he should be. And he makes a big deal out of storytelling. Now that is really what is important.
The importance of storytelling and reading in shaping the future
Yeah. Thanks for reminding me about him. I’ll definitely check out his work. Yeah, storytelling is definitely without doubt really important. Some people might be like, oh no, I don’t read fiction, I only read nonfiction. But stories are really important because we all need stories. I mean, if we talk about it from a more philosophical level, then there’s a lot of popular psychology about how humans need stories for our minds to function properly. And these could be different types of stories, whether these are ancestral stories or other people’s stories or what we’d see in the media, what we read, or our own experiences. We need these stories. We can’t really live without any of these, with none of these at all, because they teach us how to live really in a way. Whether they’re real life stories or fictional books, really epitomizes educational element of stories. So yeah, you’re right. They’re really important, storytelling.
JANE
You’ve got a nice story about the importance of books near the end about the library.
XUETING
Starship Library.
JANE
Yes. That was a very interesting story. What can you share with us about that story? Relates to what we’re talking about.
XUETING
Importance of stories or the importance of reading, the process of taking in the words and letting them do their magic rather than… Again, there is some similarities with second intelligence in Return of Adam. I think the world or the galaxy, the human world certainly atrophied because everybody was using these imprints to directly upload knowledge, upload books, and they’re not reading them. And that’s why their civilization went into decline. So the importance of reading. And stories, yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s like we get multiple stories into one piece of short fiction we have. We’re told the stories of many planets that Ehuang the librarian has visited, and we also have the story of Ehuang herself and her adopted companion. I won’t spoil it for the people who are yet to read it. So many stories. And then there’s of course the one with the paper men, which is almost like they render her story into kind of myth. She becomes a goddess to them in the end, and it is like a myth. And she gives them their final mission, if you remember. The extremely pugnacious race of warriors end up guarding the library and the stories, all these stories so they can forever roam the universe.
JANE
We’re sort of laughing when we say it, but I think that could be very important just on the planet we have here today to be able to guard and protect libraries.
XUETING
Absolutely.
JANE
In different countries around the world. Just keep it down to our own planet, already there are some problems there. Things that the whole book banning movement in the United States.
XUETING
Following that in the news, yeah, it’s-
JANE
It’s incredible.
XUETING
Yeah, it’s quite terrible. But I’m really glad to see all these campaigns against and all these protests by people, librarians and publishers.
Ethical dilemmas around technology, privacy, inequality, and AI
Yes. Speaking of book banning and the reasons they ban books, brings up my question I wanted to talk to you about ethical dilemmas. And there are ethical dilemmas that could become important in the future, like human rights, safety, people’s ability to do certain things freely. And some of these things are coming into question now. And I just wondered what ethical dilemmas you think could become central in the future as we move so fast through technology? Privacy is another one. Is privacy something that we should have? Is it ethically speaking something that we should have? And if we don’t, what can we do about it? I’m sorry my question is sort of all over the place.
XUETING
Oh, no, that’s okay. In fact, I just translated a novella by a new writer called Dan Shi, and that concerns female identity, feminism, and privacy actually of the body with regards to high advanced tech. The novelette is called Second Skin.
JANE
Ah, interesting name.
XUETING
Is that conjuring up certain ideas about it?
JANE
Well, Second Skin, I don’t know, I think it’s an intriguing name. What is your first skin? And if you have a second skin, what will your third skin be? That’s sort of the kind of questions that are running through my head.
XUETING
Oh, wow. Interesting. I’ll send you a link to it. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts. That’s certainly one of the dilemmas, privacy. Very much autonomy versus technology seems to be one of the debates, kind of how much technology gets into our lives, into our private spaces, our phones and computers with our data. And that seems to be, and certainly where things, it gets even more advanced, that’s one of the ethical dilemmas. What if Wi-Fi is all around us and we can connect to it just by an implant, then, well, the government or the corporations know everything about us. That kind of thing. And probably redistribution of resources, which my editor actually reminded me recently, they’re not limited, they’re just all going to certain people and not enough of it is going to the rest that actually need it. So how we distribute or redistribute resources and wealth, that’s another ethical dilemma.
And things like, we already talked about this before, how do we retain our humanity in late stage capitalism, which seems to be symptomatic in some European countries and the US, how do we retain the human in that? And of course, there’s what we talked about a little before about AI, I know that a subject you have a lot of interest in. And I think really companies that use AI should perhaps pay tax on the AI product because if they used proper voice actors or graphic designers or illustrators, these people would also have to pay a tax. And then the tax would go towards the hospitals, the welfare, and into caring for the people who actually need this care. And maybe that would make the cost of AI more expensive or even a bit more than employing a human. And then that could encourage corporations to keep on employing human creativity. So yeah, just a few ideas about ethical debates.
JANE
Yes. And of course a big ethical debate is the fact that a lot of these technologies are in the hands of a very small number of people who control the companies.
XUETING
That’s right. Yes.
JANE
They have incredible power over the rest of us, don’t they?
XUETING
Yeah.
JANE
I mean, what can we do if we decide we’re not going to use the internet or we’re not going to, maybe that’s a bad example, but we’re not going to use a particular search engine or we’re not going to use Wi-Fi? I mean, we can’t today make that kind of decision because we can’t function in society today.
XUETING
Absolutely. And I do appreciate a lot of the middle-class population, some more aware people for boycotting Amazon or ordering from organic sources, from independent suppliers. It’s good if we can afford to do that, but a lot of people who with low income, they probably have no choice. They have to order from Amazon because they need to get things cheaply in order to live. So yeah, it’s a really complicated kind of dilemma that we’re facing.
JANE
And it so often comes down to money, like what you just said. Because people cannot afford to do certain things, therefore they do other things. And those other things are not necessarily good for them or good for society, but they have no choice.
XUETING
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Misconceptions about the future
One of my questions was one that I’ve asked before, and that is I think people have misconceptions about the future, good misconceptions, bad misconceptions. People have strange ideas about the future. Is there any particular misconception people have that you think is absolutely wrong?
XUETING
Probably that it’s all fucked. Can I swear? Can I swear on this?
JANE
You can, absolutely. Of course you can. Yeah, people do, they do think that, yeah, that it’s all fucked. Absolutely.
XUETING
It seems like there’s the idea that everything’s too late or everything’s awful, nothing can be done. That sort of just feeds certain authoritarian people in government. They just want others to give up and then they can do whatever they want. And actually, it’s not true. There’s always something you can do. If we look at a simple example of maybe a vase and there’s a crack in it, that can be fixed very quickly with some glue or some kind of crafting. Then we need to be more careful with the vase not to break it, keep it in a good place, a safe place. But even if that vase shatters again, it can be repaired. Two cracks takes a bit longer, can be done. But if it breaks into a million atoms, a million pieces, the atoms can theoretically be assembled back together, but that’s a hell of a lot harder. So probably the misconception is that it’s not impossible, not that nothing can be done, it’s just going to be really hard, a lot of things. So that’s one of the things that the biggest misconception seems going on.
JANE
I think you’re right. I think that’s a serious misconception because it blocks a lot of people. Overall, are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future? I can guess. You’re an optimist, aren’t you?
XUETING
That’s right. That’s right. I’m an optimist. You guessed absolutely right. Which is why I keep getting disappointed. Yeah. I think I would have a much better time if I didn’t have expectations of the world or people. But I suppose it’s good to have them in a way. There’s always a chance that I won’t be disappointed, that people might live up to the expectation, or some of them like they might vote. It’s always good to have their say. They always can make a difference if they vote. And if the people who are in power actually govern properly, that would be great. And yeah.
JANE
Yeah. It comes down to people even doing a very small thing, like you say, voting and thinking about what they’re voting for and holding the people elected responsible. That’s not happening all the time.
XUETING
No. Certainly in the UK, there were huge amounts of people not voting. And then of course, there’s not really a balanced representation of the opinions in the nation then if we’re only taking into account the ones that have voted. But yeah, it’s just kind of you’re holding governments to account, as you say, and believing that from a local level, from a regional level to a national level, things can change. And maybe we need to just start off by from the little things. Like to quote the excellent Bill & Ted, we need to be excellent to each other.
XUETING
It could seem quite overwhelming if the whole world seems like it’s going wrong. It can be on a person-to-person level, on a local level, be better to people around us, keep the social connections going, kind of reach out to a wider… I mean, I’m hoping that, you know, apart from kind of just looking after the people that we care about who are around us, our friends, keeping that contact, and also kind of improving, working to improve our local community. Perhaps, you know, what I’m hoping as an author is that SFF genre publishers, literary publishers, fiction publishers will pick up a wider range of works. We were talking about storytelling is really important, but if I read stories only from one kind of people in one kind of economic political social cultural environment it would be kind of boring
We need stories from people from all kinds of different backgrounds in society that enriches storytelling and enriches our understanding of the world. Yeah, publishers could really do with that. Anglophone publishers reach out to people with a wider world view, or we can make that happen…by reaching out to more multicultural writers.
How the future may develop
How do you see your future developing. Maybe it’s a little bit along the lines of what you were just now talking about, publishers, encouraging them to have broader spectrums. Specifically, how do you see your own career developing?
XUETING
So, I have a roadmap of one writing about one non-fiction on Chinese cultures and one fiction curating Chinese literature. And I hope to alternate between those, follow this roadmap and alternate between those two formats of writing and hope to continue to work with more genres, more writers, bring in new voices. And regarding the non-fiction, I’d like to write about subjects which I would, I want to write about. And this is, and I’m making my decision based on my Chinese culture radar is what I call it. What I can see is coming up in the shape of the world with regards to representation of Chinese culture. I can see something coming. I can see it’s going to be popular. People are going to be into this very soon. And that’s how I pick my subjects. And I hope that publishers and agents can trust me enough to allow me to bring these into the world.
JANE
And so you think there’s an interest building up now in Chinese culture that you will be able to help promote it or not maybe promote it, but clarify it and share it. Is that correct?
Xueting
So, my aim has always been to improve understanding of China through its cultures, Chinese society, its people, history with the right context and through its art and entertainment and literature. So, I hope to continue to do that. And specifically what I can see becoming more popular right now is wuxia or martial arts fantasy storytelling. I’m writing a book about that because apart from the novels and this TV series, which are being translated into English and also being seen by global audiences through the streaming platforms, it’s well-received. It’s also a kind of storytelling that deals with different stratas of society, multiple generations. And it brings in the exploration of different political systems, different imagined alternate polities of how we can do things better and debates about power and who gets to wield it, how it should be wielded. So, I think that in the current upheaval of the world, I think this will be a very popular storytelling. It might seem like it’s steeped in Chinese history and tradition, but actually, I think there’s a lot of universal elements that can be applied to some totally different place
JANE
Do you have a name for the work?
XUETING
At the moment, the prospective title is The Book of Xia, Xia being what is popularly known as the errant knight, the swordsman who goes out of their way to help others when in need.
JANE
I had another couple questions. We know that the future is uncertain. And my question to you is a personal question. How do you prepare in your mind for an uncertain future? Is it something you do mentally or is it emotional, physical, or do you just not think about it?
XUETING
Probably a bit of everything. I think I’ve had a lot of complicated experiences in my life so far previously. And I think uncertainty has, I’m afraid, been a lot of it. So I feel like maybe I’m kind of prepared for it in a way. There was a period of stability, I think, in the middle, but now I think the world seems to be very uncertain.
XUETING
Over the last half a decade or so, I’ve been seeing and experiencing an increasing amount of Sinophobia, Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant sentiments. Sometimes this has been on a professional occasion even, other times it’s been in situations like daily life. Just in the middle of this month I went into London for a literary festival. It was a day of the far-right rally and I did feel a bit nervous passing the participants at that, but I was also strengthened by the fact that there was an anti-racism march on the same day and the fact that I was appearing alongside my fellow East and Southeast Asian authors at a festival that celebrated our creativity was heartening. The audiences who attended it were clearly multicultural. So I mean the future is always uncertain if by it being the future and we don’t know what’s going to happen I think in my line of work I take a lot of short form work and because my remit is so wide, I kind of work across different genres of fiction and across different facets of contemporary culture. I never know which facet is going some work will appear. And the curation of literature side of it is definitely primarily aimed at helping people understand Chinese cultures and societies via an accessible channel. As for the non-fiction, I’ve always found that good non-fiction has always enlightened and connected the world for me. So this is one reason why I’ve chosen to work outside of academia, so that I can do that for the general public. In other words I’m saying that the future is currently quite bleak but we can make it brighter. I think we just keep an open mind and do the best we can.
JANE
Do you have any last-minute thoughts that you’d like to share?
XUETING
Well, it’s just been a really pleasant and interesting and fun conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thank you.
I’m so glad.
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