New Zealand Speculative Fiction website launch

Jack Ross: NZSF website

When Massey flew me to Beijing late last year, I foresaw a certain amount of downtime between classes. It does sound strange to say that, doesn't it? Imagine a state of affairs where one could simply fly from country to country with minimum fuss! All Science Fiction to us now, of course.

Accordingly, I decided that I'd better bring some stuff to work on - and what better project to concentrate on than my long-projected, long-protracted series of essays on NZSF (whether defined as 'Science' or "Speculative' Fiction).

Things went much as I forecast. Nothing focusses the mind like being away from home comforts, in the somewhat inimical precincts of the Ariva Hotel:

Some of the essays first appeared in such scholarly contexts as Ingrid Horrocks and Cherie Lacey's 2016 VUP anthology Extraordinary Anywhere: Essays on Place from Aotearoa New Zealand, and John Geraets' special 'New Writing 1975-2000' issue of the Journal of New Zealand Literature (2016). One, on Mike Johnson's Lear (1986), was published in brief magazine. Quite a few of the others first saw the light of day on this very blog.

All this meant a certain amount of rewriting and reconciliation of various competing referencing systems had to be accomplished before I could think of the end result as in any way unified.

It did take a while. The main work was done in those ten concentrated days in the hotel in China, but putting the website together has taken me quite some time, too. Funnily enough, a thing called the Coronavirus interrupted all my lofty plans for 2020, and - like everyone in the education industry - I've been struggling ever since to roll with the punches and try to keep on top of my students' needs.

It's good to have a hobby, though - and this has been mine for the past decade or so, before more intensive work on it started this time last year.

And what have I ended up with? A series of essays on what I believe to be some of the true masterpieces of NZSF. I don't claim that anyone else would compile the same list, and I'm certain I've left out a lot of wonderful books, but the great advantage of a website is that it can be added to over time. I've provided a chronology at the end which will certainly be supplemented frequently.

I suspect that new essays will be added as well, however. In any case, if you're curious to know more about it, you can find the table of contents here.

The SF genre seems to be exploding in Aotearoa New Zealand at present, so it will become harder and harder to compile a comprehensive summary such as this. It's hard to move forwards if you don't know where you've been, however, so I don't myself see too much of a problem in taking such a long lingering look at the past. Way back is way forward, as they say, and if I know anything about SF fans (I should do, since I'm one myself), they love detail.

If you have any comments, queries or corrections, feel free to share them with me on this site or the relevant page of the NZSF. As for my dominant metaphor, Psychogeography, you can find out more about that here.

Will Self & Ralph Steadman: Psychogeography: Disentangling the Modern Conundrum of Psyche and Place (2007)

The Summer Palace, Beijing

The Summer Palace
[all photographs: Jack Ross (25/10/19)]

Temple

Last time I was in Beijing, in 2018 (see my four posts on the subject here), I visited the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, and the Ming tombs. I missed out the Summer Palace, though, so this time round I decided to repair the omission.

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How do you get there?

Beijing Subway map

Park layout

Walking map

Wildlife map

The one mode of transport I appear to have mastered, in my state of dire ignorance of all things Chinese, is the subway system. Luckily I'd kept my card from last time, so it was a simple matter of topping it up and checking which line to use in the copy of Lonely Planet China I'd cannily purchased in advance. It's actually just up a couple of stops from Peking University (PKU).

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Into the park

Entrance

Entrance (looking back)

Classy

Fountain

Bridge

As you can see, the park is a strange mixture of garish decoration and natural beauty. The system of lakes and canals is extensive, and stretches for kilometres. There's always a buck to be made from visitors, though!

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Attractions

Fake deer

Stalls

Zodiac statues

Schoolkids

Not that I want to sound critical, mind you. I myself invested in a couple of the zodiac statues pictured above (which are now resting on my Chinese literature bookshelf at home). The schoolkids pictured above were a bit of a trial, though, running around everywhere and yelling at the tops of their voices - every bit as unruly as Kiwi kids, in fact ...

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Signs

Viewing area

Inscription

Sign

Close-up

Victor Hugo

So why a statue of Victor Hugo, you ask? (Apologies for the thumb at the side of the shot). Well, because he wrote a letter protesting at the barbarism of destroying this miraculous beauty spot in 1860, when it was burnt down by orders of the British High Commissioner Lord Elgin during the Second Opium War ...

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Ruins

Ruins

More ruins

Still more ruins

They really did make beasts of themselves, those Brits, one must say

You have to pay extra to get into this section of the gardens. I have to say that it's a rather uncomfortable spot to be a Western tourist (somewhat thin on the ground at the best of times). No-one actually glared at me directly, but I did feel obscurely guilty at the cultural sacrilege ... All in the sacred cause of forcing other nations to buy up your opium crop, of course.

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Peace

Lake

Pond

Canal

Peace

I have to say, it's by far the most peaceful place I found to sit around and contemplate existence in any of my trips to China - I'm so glad I didn't miss it this time..

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PKU

Gate

Weiming lake

Ducks

NZ Centre office: A/ Prof Liu Hongzhong & intern

Not that there's anything wrong with Weiming Lake, and the grounds of Peking University (the New Zealand centre is located near the shores of the lake), but they do pale a bit when you've seen the vast extent of the summer palace - located a bit to the north of the campus. As for the rest of the city, though, it's a vast metropolitan megalopolis. I did see some beautiful sunsets from the window of my hotel room, though:

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Ariva Hotel, Beijing

Sunset

Clear day

Foggy day

View

Traffic

The sole thing I regret about my stay, in fact, is the fact that I didn't manage to see the Cao Xueqin Memorial House, located in the grounds of the Beijing Botanical Gardens. Lonely Planet gave instructions on how to get there, but I was afraid of getting lost if I had to switch to surface rather than underground travel and try to penetrate the local bus system ...

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Cao Xueqin, author of the Red Chamber Dream

Cao Xueqin (c.1715-1764)

Entrance

Memorial

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This is the 500th post I've put up on this blog. I started in June 2006, so it's only taken me 13-odd years to reach that total. In that time, I've had well over a million hits - which I suppose isn't all that impressive really, when you think about the number of months, weeks and days involved - but at least it shows a certain degree of ongoing interest.

In any case, here's to the next 500!

Jack's Beijing Adventure (4): To Peking University

Ariva Hotel, Haidian Road South, Beijing

So, if you imagine us taking a walk through the streets of Beijing towards Peking University, this is our starting point: the massive Ariva Hotel.

A somewhat Edward Hopper-esque window view

From there you can take either of two routes. Either the subway:

map of the Beijing subway

Or else the half-hour walk along Suzhou Street, through all the traffic and noise:

footbridge

looking north

Haidian Bridge, facing west

In any case, eventually you have to go in by one of the gates, showing your ID to get in. This is the West Gate:

West Gate

And here's the main administration building (no less a personage than Mao Tse-Tung himself was once the librarian at Peking University, but that was when it was still located near the centre of the city):

Administration Building

stone lion outside the Administration Building

It really is quite a spectacular campus. The most beautiful part of it is undoubtedly Weiming Lake:

map of Weiming Lake

Weiming Lake

ducks

bridge

stones from the old Summer Palace

The ruins of the old Summer Palace are a little way north of the campus. They were destroyed by barbarian invaders - i.e. us - in 1860 during the second Opium War. The rebuilt palace is some distance away, and is a celebrated beauty spot (I didn't get the chance to go there, unfortunately).

temple

memorial for Edgar Snow

Here's another interesting sight: a memorial to Edgar Snow, author of Red Star over China (1937), the first comprehensive account of Mao Tse-Tung, the Long March, and other historic details of the Chinese communist party's rise to power.

pond beside the New Zealand Centre

The NZ Centre is fortunate to be housed in a building so near the most beautiful part of the university. My friend Xiaotong told me that all through his childhood he had dreamed of walking by the Weiming Lake as a student of Peking University. Now that he'd achieved that ambition, he felt a little lost.

the pagoda

towards the East Gate

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l-to-r: Professor Lui Shushen, me, A/ Prof Liu Hongzhong & A/Prof Mei Shenyou

My hosts were kind enough to invite me to dinner at a very famous restaurant, Quanjude Peking Duck Restaurant, to sample the celebrated delicacy ("you can't go home without trying it"). It was certainly very tasty, though a trifle complicated to eat.

Discussion time after my second lecture, with Hongzhong & me
& some visiting Kiwi students from Canterbury (28/11/18)

So there you are. It was certainly a great experience. I hope the rest of the course goes well - I've already sent in my exam questions for the students, so now it's all up to Hongzhong and the others. I did get lost once - on the way back from the university, the first time I went there, but luckily a kind English-speaking passerby took pity on me, and gave me directions back to the hotel.

Haidian Road South & the Ariva Hotel (21/11/18)