Utopian Fiction in China

Unlike previous studies that have examined the late Qing utopian imagination as an ahistorical motif, a literary theme, and a translation phenomenon, in this book Shuk Man Leung considers utopian fiction as a knowledge apparatus that helped develop Chinese nationalism and modernity. Based on untapped primary sources in Chinese, English, and Japanese, her research reveals how utopian imagination, blooming after Liang Qichao’s publication of The Future of New China, served as a tool of knowledge formation and dissemination that transformed China’s public sphere and catalysed historical change.

Embracing interdisciplinary approach from genre studies, studies on modern Chinese newspapers and intellectual history, this book provides an analysis of the development of utopian literary practices, epistemic meanings, and fictional narratives and the interactions between traditional and imported knowledge that helped shape the discourse in early 20th century China.

Shuk Man Leung, Ph.D. (2013), School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, is Assistant Professor of the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. Her works on late Qing and modern Chinese fiction, Hong Kong literature and print culture during the cultural Cold War have appeared in journals such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Asian Studies Review, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature Studies and Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese.

"In this meticulously researched and carefully argued new study, Shuk Man Leung guides her readers towards a coherent and complex understanding of Chinese “New Fiction” from the first decade of the twentieth century. Building on and moving beyond existing studies of the genre’s literary characteristics, Leung demonstrates its significance in sparking a “utopian imagination” that came to pervade all aspects of Chinese modernity, shaping the ways of knowing China’s future that circulated among participants in the period’s flourishing print culture, intellectual debate, and political activism."
– Michel Hockx, University of Notre Dame

"Shuk Man Leung’s monograph offers an in-depth and original investigation into Utopian fiction in Chinese in the final years of the Qing dynasty at the beginning of the twentieth century. Her work explores how this genre, imported through translation first of Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, played a vital role in the reimagining of the political arena and the nation-state at this critical juncture in modern Chinese history. Leung also demonstrates how utopian visions of China’s future underpinned the entire project of modern Chinese literature. A must read for researchers in modern Chinese intellectual history, modern Chinese literature, and translation studies."
– James St Andre, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

"Literature does not merely represent reality/history; it creates “reality”/history that leads to a coming future through imagination at a critical historical turning point. Leung’s book precisely tells us how the Chinese literary modernity of utopian fiction in the early twentieth century contributed to modern Chinese nation-building. From a global perspective and fresh way, she demonstrates how modern Chinese utopian fiction functioned as an influential and unique mass medium and contributed to people’s identity formatting at the outset of Chinese nation-building. This book tells us how language, particularly utopian fiction, mediates and bridges between the past, reality and the coming future and how literary imagination can create history."
– LIN Shaoyang, Distinguished Professor, History Department, University of Macau