New Story of the Stone - by Jianren Wu

About the Book

"The New Story of the Stone is a key work of late Qing science fiction. In it, author Wu Jianren takes the beloved young protagonist of the Ming masterpiece The Story of the Stone, Jia Baoyu, along with two of the novel's more ancillary figures, and transports them over a hundred years into the future, to 1901 Shanghai. Here, Baoyu and his companions encounter myriad new technologies, social and cultural practices, political realities, and other bewildering stimuli. Steamships, newspapers, foreign food, and semicolonial treaty port commerce astound Baoyu as he attempts to come to terms with how much China has changed in just one hundred and fifty years. The first half of the novel (roughly) is set in the real world. But the latter half is much more fantastical: after escaping arrest for making provocative comments about a political meeting, Baoyu finds himself in the utopian "Realm of Civilization," which is overseen by a sage patriarch named "Eastern Strength." Here, in stark contrast to the imported consumerist "civilization" of Shanghai, Baoyu is shown a different mode of (Asian-coded) "civilization"-one that is concerned with using technology to care for its people, both by achieving mastery over the natural world and by building an invincible military. In his 1997 Stanford monograph, David Wang calls it "one of the most fascinating utopias of the late Qing era.""--

Book Synopsis

One of China's first works of science fiction, New Story of the Stone is a belated twentieth-century sequel to the beloved eighteenth-century masterpiece Story of the Stone (more famously known as Dream of the Red Chamber). The story follows protagonist Jia Baoyu, borrowed from the original Story, as he is dramatically hurled forward over a hundred years from his own time into a bewildering future: first the decadent semicolonized late Qing China of the author's own time and later an astonishing high-tech Confucian utopia called the Realm of Civilization.

Baoyu is equally disoriented in both places: in China proper, he is distressed by the growth of foreign influence and weakening of the traditional moral code in favor of capitalist consumerism and selfish gain; in the Realm of Civilization, he is amazed by everything he encounters--from flying cars and ingenious medical technologies to the perfectly moral populace. Seen through Baoyu's eyes, the Realm is everything that late Qing China has failed to be and offers a hopeful vision of what it might yet become.

This quick-paced romp deftly highlights some of the major preoccupations of the tumultuous final decade of China's last dynasty while raising important existential questions about China's future. Enlivened by author Wu Jianren's vivid imagination and wry sense of humor, this playful, satirical adventure is essential reading for lovers of science fiction and Chinese literature in translation.

Review Quotes

This unique science fiction novel from the dark days of the Qing empire's last decade revives a beloved protagonist of Chinese literature, ushering him into a modern world filled with wonders and then a future world built on a combination of Confucian morals and advanced technologies. Though it was written more than a century ago, Wu Jianren's novel is closely connected to the current new wave of Chinese science fiction. Both social satire and utopian fiction, it is an ideal book for a range of classes and deserves to reach many readers.--Mingwei Song, author of Fear of Seeing: A Poetics of Chinese Science Fiction

A skillful and nuanced translation of one of the most influential novels from early twentieth-century China.--Paola Iovene, author of Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China

This impressive first-ever full translation of Wu Jianren's late-Qing New Story of the Stone is a valuable addition to available texts in translation from this period and a key example of some of the earliest Chinese science fiction.--Nathan C. Faries, Bates College

About the Author

Wu Jianren (1866-1910) was a leading figure of the late Qing literary scene, best known as a writer of satirical exposé fiction and influential romances. His other notable works include Strange Events Eye-Witnessed Over Twenty Years and Sea of Regret.

Liz Evans Weber is an assistant professor of instruction in Chinese and research assistant professor at the University of Rochester. She is a 2025 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, which will support work on her next translation project.