See China

As the much-anticipated Shanghai World Expo is to be unveiled in May 2010, a book written by Lu Shi’e (陆士谔) in 1910 aroused great interest nationwide. Lu, a Qing dynasty novelist and one of the “ten most famous doctors” of Shanghai in his time, wrote a fictional book entitled New China (新中国) when he was 32 years old, in which the protagonist “dreamed” of Shanghai’s bustling business, subway, Pudong Bridge and above all, the opening of Shanghai World Expo exactly a hundred years later.

In this small book of about 20,000 words, the protagonist of the novel, Lu Yunxiang (literally meaning “flying over clouds”), in a Rip-Van-Wrinkle-style dream over time, found himself in a new Shanghai totally different from the one under the reign of western colonialists as one would see in 1910. In this new city, “extraterritoriality on foreign concessions is abolished, foreigners who used to be arrogant and dominating are now respectful to the Chinese, and innumerous changes have taken place in the street, those trams which used to have lots of accidents with pedstrians are now changed into underground trains, … (after fierce debate as whether to move the trams to elevated bridges or underground railways)…, the ground is hollowed to make way for tunnels, where rails are installed and electric lights are lit day and night, and trains flow to and fro like flying…  a huge bridge is built across Huang Pu River to link Pu Dong with Shanghai, … so as to facilitate the big Exposition to be held in Pu dong, which is already as thriving as Shanghai.”

In the end of the book, the protagonist Lu Yunxiang stumbled on a threshold in his house and woke up from this miraculous trip. When he told his wife this dream, she said, this must be ”all hallucination” since he had been so addicted to such visions.

“Don’t say it’s just a dream”, answered the husband, “who knows this will not happen in that year? I would like to write it down as an evidence for them to see then.” (surprisingly assured!)

The book New China was written for a story contest held by “Reformative Novel Society” (改良小说社) as one of quite a number of activist literary circles of Shanghai in early 20th century. But it was then widely scorned by its contemporary readers as being too utopian and “unreal”. According to Lu Zhenxiong, Lu Shi’e's grandson who now lives in Huangpu District of Shanghai, there is only one copy of the original book in the Shanghai Library and a few ones in the world. Lu also testifies that his grandpa is very “learned”, “joined many reformative groups”, had great affections for his wife and family, and “really liked drinking good wine”. He has also written many other stories under the influence of both traditional Chinese literature and western science. “He’s a doctor,” explains the well-composed grandson unsurprised by the sudden waves of admiration for his prophetic ancestor, “it must be his profession to travel a lot and make close observations of Shanghai, hence the scientific location of subways, bridges and so forth.” —That, for sure must have given him a good ground for such “wild” dreams too!

(source from douban.com, huanqiu.com, etc.)