Ma Qianzhu was unhappy with Chinese language progress. An engineer at a big state-owned enterprise, he belonged to a technology that grew up believing engineering is future, that China’s future can be constructed, bolt by bolt, by folks like him. Then Ma found one thing extraordinary: a wormhole to the late Ming Dynasty. With greater than 500 friends, he commandeered a ship and traveled again in time 400 years, to a preindustrial China wracked by international invasion and inside decay. Their mission: set off an industrial revolution up to now that may, sooner or later, make trendy China nice (once more).
This, strictly talking, didn’t occur. It’s the plot of The Morning Star of Lingao (临高启明), a sprawling, collectively written science-fiction internet novel that has consumed a nook of the Chinese language web for practically twenty years. It now totals thousands and thousands of phrases. It has by no means been translated into English. Virtually nobody within the West is aware of it exists. Learn extra
