Title

Pursue and Surpass: Young China and Interstellar Colonization in New Humble Words of an Old Countryman

Author

Wong Kwo

Genre

Article

Pages

341-378

DOI

10.6503/THJCS.202306_53(2).0005

Download

PDF

Language

Chinese

Key words

Lu Shi’e 陸士諤, New Humble Words of an Old Countryman 新野叟 曝言, Young China, interstellar colonization, Golden World

Abstract

New Humble Words of an Old Countryman 新野叟曝言 was written by Lu Shi’e 陸士諤 (1878-1944) as a sequel to Humble Words of an Old Countryman. He wrote this sequel in order to present the two concepts of “Young China” and “Waking Lion” for imagining a powerful China and thinking about the bright future of the nation. This imagination reflected a common desire of scholars in the late Qing Dynasty. Secondly, the plot involving “flying battleships” and “sea battleships” shows that the intellectuals in the late Qing Dynasty felt threatened and anxious about Western ironclad warships and their powerful navies with excellent weaponry. At the same time, the intellectuals took this as a direction to pursue and surpass European countries. Furthermore, the author deliberately designed Jupiter as a formerly uninhabited zone. This was because he wanted to depict a new model of colonization that was different from Western-style colonization. It means that the activity would not harm any original inhabitants in the process of building the new interstellar community on Jupiter. However, at the end of the novel, Lu Shi’e incorporated the concept of comets destroying the world in order to disconnect China from utopia because Lu could not ignore the actual crisis that China was undergoing at the time. Although scholars have formerly paid more attention to Western influences on Lu’s work, this article attempts to emphasize the complex contradictions presented in his novel.