Various media products based on Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem Photo: VCG

 
One day, Confucius ascended Mount Tai, only to find that the world had already perished countless times. Yet, in the end, after all the hardships, he did encounter a future China. This is a narrative contained in the renowned short story "It Dwarfs All Peaks Under My Feet," crafted by Jia Liyuan, an associate professor at Tsinghua University, who writes under the pseudonym Feidao.

In this story, Jia seeks to express that within the cyclical nature of history, even in times of war and chaos like the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods (770BC-221BC), people are also in pursuit of "Tao," or "truth."

Mount Tai, located in Confucius' home province of Shandong in the east of China, is a listed UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage Site and a symbolic emblem of Chinese civilization. Over the past 2,000 years, emperors have regarded the act of offering sacrifices at Mount Tai as the highest honor of their lifetimes. This place is also where Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism intersect and blend.

From November 8 to 10, Taishan College of Science and Technology held a science fiction carnival at the foot of this mountain, attracting hundreds of science fiction writers from home and abroad. The Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Awards (FFSFA) were given to outstanding writers, translators, publishers, teachers, artists, media professionals and others, in recognition of their contributions to promoting the influence of science fiction.

The best novel award went to Tianrui Shuofu's We Live in Nanjing, which tells the story of a group of ordinary Chinese who use modern technology to save the future Earth.

Following China's hosting of the World Science Fiction Convention last October, the Mount Tai event took the country's sci-fi craze to a new height.

Over 100 sci-fi writing contests were held nationwide last year, offering prizes totaling more than 44 million yuan ($6.2 million), which were supported by either the government or enterprises. The annual output value of China's sci-fi industry, which includes publishing, games and movies, exceeded 110 billion yuan in 2023.

Jia said that the surge in popularity of science fiction in China is truly remarkable. This year commemorates the 120th anniversary of the inception of Chinese science fiction. When esteemed author Lu Xun and his contemporaries introduced the genre to China at the turn of the previous century, they aspired for it to broaden the intellectual horizons of the populace and to ignite new aspirations.

Like many fields, this genre had traditionally been monopolized by the West, however, it is now becoming a vibrant "soft power" and being exported from China to the rest of the world.

The Three-Body Problem has sold tens of millions of copies worldwide and has been adapted into a Netflix television series - with its fans including Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg.

Yang Ping, a key organizer of the event at Mount Tai, stated that the burgeoning popularity of science fiction in China is a reflection of the nation's economic and technological advancements. Yang himself is a sci-fi writer known for covering subjects such as cyberpunk and Mars exploration.

China is constantly promoting the development of artificial intelligence, implementing lunar and Martian exploration programs, and has vowed to realize the strategic goal of building a strong country in science and technology by 2035.