MCLC: China embraces science fiction

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China embraces science fiction
Source: Sinosphere, NYT (9/17/15)
China Embraces Science Fiction (Just Don’t Take It Too Far)
By AUSTIN RAMZY
The growing popularity of science fiction in China has caught the attention of the country’s leadership. This week, Vice President Li Yuanchao met with authors — including Liu Cixin, who wrote the Hugo Award-winning novel “The Three-Body Problem” — and called on them to inspire interest in science and encourage young people’s “faith in realizing the Chinese Dream,” the state news agency Xinhua reported.
But even as the Chinese leadership offered praise for the writers, the police have been reminding people not to use social media to flex their imaginations. An effort to stamp out online rumors has had several people punished for relaying tales that could have come straight from the classics of fantasy and science fiction. The tales of hysteria over Orson Welles dramatic 1938 radio performance of “War of the Worlds” are largely fiction themselves, but the authorities have been assertive in preventing any such panic.
Here are some of the online rumors that have met with official reprimands in China:
There’s a female zombie in Guangzhou. On Sept. 5, the police in the southern city published a notice online that a Weibo post with images of a woman covered in blood and a note suggesting she was a zombie was fake. It added a reminder to avoid hallucinogens. A 21-year-old local man surnamed Zhang was given 10 days detention for posting the item, the Guangzhou Daily reported. The images were actually from a film shot in Jiangsu Province, the newspaper said.
There’s also a zombie in that sarcophagus in Henan Province. In 2014, photos of a mummified corpse circulated online with suggestions that they were evidence of a zombie found in the eastern city of Nanjing or in Jianli County in Hubei Province. The police said the images were of an archaeological dig the year before in Henan Province that turned up the well-preserved body of a Qing dynasty official, but no signs of the undead.
A mythical beast is roaming Beijing. Also in 2014, photos emerged showing a Gollum-like creature kneeling in a rocky ravine with a message declaring that it was a “mythical beast” discovered in the Huairou District of Beijing. The local police said these were merely images of an actor in a film who was photographed going to the bathroom while in costume, the website of the People’s Daily reported.
That’s an alien in the fridge. In 2013, a farmer in Shandong Province claimed to have encountered five extraterrestrial creatures, one of whom was killed on an electric fence. His claims, and photos of the purported alien corpse he kept in a freezer, drew widespread attention online. The local authorities investigated and held a news conference to announce that his claims were false, and that the dead alien was actually made from rubber, Southern Metropolis Daily reported. The farmer, who is surnamed Li, was sentenced to five days detention for disturbing public order, Xinhua reported.
by denton.2 at osu.edu on September 17, 2015
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