Yangquan, Shanxi - Twenty years after The Three-Body Problem propelled Chinese science fiction to readers around the world, Liu Cixin returned to the center of that story in his hometown of Yangquan, where Chinese and international writers, scholars, media professionals and science-fiction enthusiasts gathered this week to celebrate the milestone and look toward what comes next.

The Fourth Liu Cixin Hometown Science Fiction Culture Week brought together readings, thematic discussions, book signings, site visits and international exchanges, while highlighting Yangquan’s growing identity as a center for science-fiction culture.

I was honored to be invited to travel from Chongqing to Yangquan and join a multilingual literary program celebrating the global reach of science fiction. As a Chongqing-based writer, I had the opportunity to take part in the gathering alongside writers and guests from Canada, Germany, Chile, Sri Lanka, Egypt and China.

Liu Cixin addresses the Fourth Liu Cixin Hometown Science Fiction Culture Week in Yangquan, Shanxi. (Photo/Jorah Kai)

“Twenty years ago, science fiction was still a minority interest,” Liu told the audience. “Its readership was not very large. There were fewer writers, the community itself was smaller, and there was less room for creative work.”

Today, the landscape is very different. Liu began writing science fiction while working as an engineer. His hometown now has a museum devoted to his literary legacy, making him the first Chinese science-fiction writer to have a dedicated museum of his own. Meanwhile, science fiction has expanded into publishing, film, television, education, tourism and other cultural fields.

“Yangquan is a home for my soul,” Liu said.

The city sits among the mountains of eastern Shanxi and has long been shaped by coal, power generation and heavy industry. It also holds a distinct place in modern Chinese history and is increasingly building science fiction, education and cultural tourism into its public identity.

Coming from Chongqing — a metropolis whose monorails, layered highways, rivers and neon skyline can already feel suspiciously like speculative fiction — I found Yangquan’s relationship with the future quite different. Chongqing often looks futuristic; Yangquan is deliberately making the future part of its identity.

For Liu, however, science fiction begins with something more fundamental than futuristic scenery.

“Science fiction is not simply fantasy,” he said. “It is imagination grounded in science. It is also a clear-eyed reflection on humanity’s future and on the development of technology.”

That balance helps explain why The Three-Body Problem travelled so far beyond China. Its technologies are speculative, but its questions are recognizably human: how people respond to uncertainty, how civilizations confront danger, and what happens when scientific progress changes the way we understand ourselves.

International voices in Liu Cixin’s hometown

International participants gather at a Liu Cixin-themed science-fiction exhibition during the Yangquan program. (Photo/Gao Wei)

One of the liveliest moments of the event was a multilingual reading. I performed an excerpt from Amos the Amazing, my Chongqing-inspired solarpunk science-fiction and fantasy novel, for an international audience. The reading drew an enthusiastic response, and it felt fitting to bring a story born in Chongqing to a celebration in the hometown of the writer who helped carry Chinese science fiction onto the global stage.

Amos the Amazing comes from a very different imaginative landscape than Liu’s cosmic universe. My story stays closer to the ground, drawing on Chongqing’s mountains and rivers, layered roads, rapid technological change, environmental pressures and the strange futures already visible in everyday life.

Science fiction does not have to begin with distant galaxies. Sometimes it begins with the city outside the window. For me, that city has been Chongqing. For Liu, it was Yangquan.

A quieter hour with Liu Cixin

Some of the week’s most memorable moments happened away from the public stage. A small group of international guests spent about an hour with Liu during a closed-door session over tea. The atmosphere was warm, thoughtful and informal.

I passed along greetings from my Canadian friend and fellow science-fiction writer Robert J. Sawyer. Liu replied comfortably in English, and we chatted briefly before exchanging signed books.

I was struck by his kindness and patience with fans. Liu is famously reserved, almost the antithesis of the “rock-star writer,” yet he seemed noticeably more at ease than when I had last seen him at Worldcon in Chengdu. Perhaps that was only natural. This was his hometown, after all, and we were only a few hundred meters from his home.

Chongqing-based Canadian writer Jorah Kai speaks with Liu Cixin during the science-fiction program in Yangquan, Shanxi. (Photo/Gao Wei)

I gave him a signed copy of my novel The Sun Also Rises on Cthulhu. In return, he signed a hardcover edition of The Three-Body Trilogy for me, then a set of his Chinese books for my two-year-old granddaughter.

He had been moving from meeting to meeting all day and was visibly tired, yet continued answering questions and signing books for the international guests. The following day, he would face an even larger crowd at a public signing session, greeted with great enthusiasm by science-fiction fans.

On the surface, the week was about Liu Cixin’s past: 20 years of The Three-Body Problem, decades of writing, and the rise of Chinese science fiction from a niche genre to one with global reach. But again and again, Liu turned toward the people who come next.

“The future of Chinese science fiction will ultimately depend on generation after generation of writers keeping their feet firmly on the ground, continuing to explore, and creating science-fiction works with greater individuality and greater power,” he said.

That line caught my attention not only as a writer, but as a teacher. Most weeks, I spend far more time in front of students in Chongqing than sitting across from Hugo Award-winning novelists. My students are growing up in a world where artificial intelligence can answer questions instantly, technologies change faster than curricula, and the jobs they may one day do could look very different by the time they finish university.

So when I had the chance to ask Liu a question directly, I asked one for them: What advice would he give young people trying to prepare for a high-tech future that none of us can reliably predict?

His answer was simple: “The future is difficult for any of us to predict, so we should do our best to develop our imagination and consider all the different possibilities the future may hold,” Liu said. “Then we should try to prepare ourselves to adapt to those possibilities.”

Preparing to return to my classrooms in Chongqing, I found it the most practical message of the week. The students I return to may never become science-fiction writers. They may become engineers, teachers, artists, programmers, doctors — or enter professions that do not yet have names. But Liu’s advice reached beyond writing: imagine more than one possible future, and stay flexible enough to meet it.