Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation

Yellow-Beard said, “All the fire-oil carriages running about in Jinyang were built here. They make up more than half the Institute’s income. The newest model will be released soon. It’s called Elong Musk—for the long-lasting fragrance of fire-oil after the vehicle darts out of sight. Even the name sounds fast!

All he wanted was food, a bed, and a roof to sleep under; to spend his leisure time chatting and drinking; to be able to roll into bed after eating, express his aspirations online, visit the brothels when he had the money; to be at ease with the world.

Meaning was not reducible to language. But if it couldn't be spoken about, how could it exist?

Las escalonadas ramas verdes del antiguo cipresal, cual si de un cortafuegos se tratara, nos separan del ruido y el polvo del mundo secular. No obstante, mi vida diaria no es ni de lejos aburrida: barrer, trabajar, salmodiar, debatir y copiar. Libre de posesiones materiales, he estado durmiendo sin problemas por primera vez en años, y ya no vivo con el continuo terror a la repentina vibración de mi móvil; aunque, de tanto en tanto, mi cuádriceps derecho aún sufre el síndrome de la vibración fantasma. Sin embargo, mi mentor me asegura que si, día tras día, recito tantos mantras como cuentas tiene mi mala —sin saltarme ni una de las mil ochocientas— durante ciento ochenta días, quedaré curado por completo. Yo creo que es porque queremos demasiadas cosas, más de las que nuestro cuerpo y mente están preparados para soportar.

En esta época, la verdad escasea tanto como la virtud. Y lo que es todavía más trágico: al enfrentarse a la verdad, la mayoría de la gente es dada a dudar de su verosimilitud porque prefieren creer en el espejismo de verdad elaborado por su propia mente.

Mere mortals doing what needed to be done a hundred years earlier would have the same effect as divine intervention.

I had no idea back then why there were so many apocalyptic legends; maybe everyone felt living in this world wasn’t safe.

It was three-quarters of the way into the hour of the sheep, after lunch but well before dinner, naturally a fine time for business in the brothels of Xuanren Ward. Powder and perfume steamed in the sun; gaudy kerchiefs dazzled the eyes of passersby. Snatches of music drifted through two sets of walls from Pingkang Ward, on the opposite side of West Street, where the licensed courtesans of the Imperial Academy entertained blue bloods and VIPs. But the sisters of Xuanren Ward held their neighboring colleagues in contempt. They thought all that training as unnecessary as pulling down your pants to fart—the end result, after all, was still the same creak-creak-creak of a bed frame.

But I say the apocalypse has long since arrived. It has been with us since the birth of the world, but we have become inured to it by familiarity. The end of the world comes not with the destruction of everything, but with the fact that nothing that happens around us has any meaning. The world has returned to primordial chaos, and we have nothing.

You force yourself to exercise, leaving your apartment after ten at night to go jogging so that no one will see you. But you don’t like to run; as you force your legs to move, one after the other, you ask yourself why the road is endless and what good will it do even if you finish.

You believe that the root of the problem is that each of us lives on a thin, smooth layer of illusions. These illusions are made up from “common sense,” from repetitive daily linguistic acts and clichés, from imitating each other. On this iridescent film, we perform ourselves. Beneath the illusions are deep, bottomless seams, and only by forgetting their existence can we stride forward.

I can tell you a secret about life: once you realize how insignificant the individual is in the vastness of space-time, you can face anything.