Chinese Sci-Fi Author Hao Jingfang Nominated For Hugo Award For 'Folding Beijing'

Hao Jingfang, 32 years old and born in Tianjin, is the second Chinese author to have her works nominated for a Hugo Award. Her novelette, Folding Beijing was nominated.

The Hugos recognize the best science fiction and fantasy works. They are named after Hugo Gernsback who was the founder of the American science fiction magazine Amazing Stories.

In 2015, the first ever Chinese author Liu Cixin won a Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Three-Body Problem, which has a huge readership in China and is the first part of a trilogy. Surprisingly, the beloved The Dark Forest (the second novel of Liu’s trilogy) was not nominated.

Hao, who lists her influenes as Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Arthur Clarke, and Liu herself, posted on Weibo that she felt sorry about Liu's second novel being snubbed in this round. Liu was a big encouragement to Hao, especially during times of self-doubt. 

If you are not familiar with Hao and her writing, you should go and check her other publications. Her other achievements include:

• Being awarded First Prize in the New Concept Writing Competition in 2002
• Gained her undergraduate degree from Tsinghua University’s Department of Physics, and her PhD in economics and management from the same university in 2012
• Was a part-time economist at the IMF from 2011 to 2012
• Published two full–length novels, Wandering Maearth and Return to Charon
• Published a book of cultural essays, Europe in Time; and a short story collection, Star Travelers
• Drew the cover of Star Travelers herself 

Aside from those feats, she is also a project officer at the China Development Research Foundation, the mother of a 2 year-old girl, and runs an official WeChat account about parenting. 

The nominated novelette, Folding Beijing, was translated into English by Ken Liu, who is a sci-fi writer himself, and was also the translator of Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem.

As for the novelette in question, Folding Beijing only took Hao three days to write in 2012. The novelette depicts a Beijing divided into three spaces based on people’s social class. “I saw a lot of people bargaining at a temporary market that sold a lot of cheap products. Around that time, a taxi driver told me that his family struggled to send their children to kindergarten. I thought that in this city people can just pass through everyday life without seeing one another. People don’t have much interest in knowing other people. For me it was heartbreaking to read about how people in different spaces had different amounts of time when they had access to daylight,” Hao told Unscanny about how she got the idea.

Hao Jingfang is looking forward to the Hugo Awards ceremony, because she “will meet author Stephen King,” who is also nominated in the same category. The results of the Hugo Awards will be announced on August 18 in Kansas City, and we wish Hao all the best. You can read the full-version of Folding Beijing here, and also vote for her here.

More stories by this author here.

Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
Twitter: @flyingfigure
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Photo courtesy of jd, weibo