Mingwei Song is a scholar of modern Chinese literature and intellectual history, and director of the Chinese program at Wellesley College. His first monograph, Young China, was published by Harvard University Press in 2015 and investigates the origin and development of modern Chinese youth discourse. His second book, Fear of Seeing, is a deep-dive into the emergence of the “new wave” of Chinese science-fiction writers, heralded by the publication of Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem. Song earned his bachelor's degree at Shandong University, a Master's at Fudan University and a Ph.D. at Columbia University. In this lightly edited interview, we discussed the reasons behind a resurgence in interest in Chinese science-fiction, and what it might reveal about China.
Song Mingwei.Illustration by Kate Copeland
Q: What first got you interested in Chinese science-fiction?
A: Actually, I was working on something totally different in the 2000s, my book project with Harvard University P
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