Folding Beijing (Novella)
Hao Jingfang
Winner of the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette
Folding Beijing is set in a futuristic society home to an extreme gap between the different classes. By literally folding and unfolding Beijing city, time and space are divided unequally. Around 5 million powerful elites enjoy a perfect environment and half of the 48-hour period.
25 million white-collar workers are granted only 16 hours over two days, but their living conditions are otherwise reasonable. 50 million members of the underclass on the other hand can only step out of their sleeping capsules and take a breath of the polluted air from 10 pm to 6 am.
The protagonist Lao Dao, a garbage picker living with the underclass, has a chance to sneak into the middle and upper-class areas to deliver a love letter. By describing this dystopian Beijing through the eyes of Lao Dao, Hao offers her take on the possible future of today’s world.
