This was a pretty diverse but mixed bag of essays and SFF short stories entirely by women and nonbinary authors and translators with ties to China, either being from the country or as a member of the diaspora. I really appreciate that this collection exists and commend the editors for taking great care in curating the essays and stories in this book. It was fun to explore a different mode of SFF storytelling—specifically that they don’t follow Western conventions—though it did take getting used to. A lot of the way these stories were told was new territory for me as a non-Chinese reader, since the authors (not surprisingly) drew heavily from their culture, traditions, and history to craft their respective stories.

Unfortunately, for a book with nearly twenty short stories, I only enjoyed about a quarter of them. I think the main issue I ran into with the stories I didn’t enjoy as much was that I didn’t fully understand what was happening due to missing contextual information. That being said, and as Kaung aptly pointed out in her essay on translation, it’s incredibly tricky for translators to figure out just how much explaining needs to be done for readers unfamiliar with the culture/history, a lot of it being rather political. Translation aside, though, I did find some stories could have been more developed, as a few lacked substance (to me, at least).

Perhaps it’s the academic in me, but I found the essays incredibly insightful and a lot more interesting. It definitely helped fill in the blanks for some stories, too, but I just appreciated learning about the Chinese literary landscape and the state of translating from Chinese. Of the essays, I have to say the one that really stood out to me was “Net Novels and the ‘She Era’” by Xueting Christine Ni, who wrote in great detail about internet novels (e.g., dānměi) and their female readers and writers.

Overall, the intention behind this collection was one I really appreciated. Even if I didn’t end up enjoying most of it, I still think it’s worth picking up this book to read some of the stories and essays offered.

Some favorites: “The Futures of Genders in Chinese Science Fiction” by Jing Tsu (essay), “A Saccharophilic Earthworm” by BaiFanRuShuang (tr. Ru-Ping Chen), “The Way Spring Arrives” by Wang Nuonuo (tr. Rebecca F. Kuang), “New Year Painting, Ink and Color on Rice Paper, Zhaoqiao Village” by Chen Qian (tr. Emily Xeuni Jin), “The Woman Carrying a Corpse” by Chi Hui (tr. Judith Huang), “Net Novels and the ‘She Era’: How Internet Novels Opened the Door for Female Readers and Writers in China” by Xueting Christine Ni (essay), and “Writing and Translation: A Hundred Technical Tricks” by Rebecca F. Kuang (essay)