BIBFRAME Work

Title

New story of the stone

Type

  • Monograph
  • Text

Contribution

Genre Form

Language

Classification

  • DDC: 895.13/48 (Assigner: dlc)
  • LCC: PL2732.U24 X5613 2025 (Assigner: dlc) (Status: uba)

Content

Supplementary content

Summary

"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.""-- Provided by publisher.

Authorized Access Point

Wu, Jianren, 1866-1910. New story of the stone

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-30T22:44:05.215220+00:00
  • Agent: cbc
  • Status: c
  • Derived from: 23924065

Admin Metadata

  • Date: 2026-09-30
  • Cataloger id: Unknown
  • Description level: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe-2-6-0/
  • Description language: eng
  • Description authentication: pcc

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