So, I went to Beijing again at the end of last month, my second time in China after visiting Beijing and Chengdu for Chengdu Worldcon in 2023. I was an invited speaker at the 9th China Science Fiction Convention, itself part of the 2025 ZGC Forum, a joint project of the various layers of government in the Beijing region and the China Association for Science and Technology. It was an industry and politics event, showcasing the various economic successes of investment in science fiction (books, films, games), though there was also a substantial presence from the leading Chinese writers, and plenty of student fan groups had stalls in the exhibition area.

My invitation arose out of a conversation I had had at Glasgow 2024, A Worldcon For Our Futures, with Gong Weimi, Deputy Director of the Beijing Science and Technology Commission, who was exploring paths of creative structured cooperation between Worldcon and the Beijing Zhongguancun Science Fiction Industry Innovation Center, which is (as far as I could tell) a joint project of the Beijing Regional Government and the China Association for Science and Technology. The fact that there is no permanent Worldcon secretariat makes this more difficult for the industry-oriented Chinese establishment.

The outcome of the conversation was invitations to speak at the conference for me (as Hugo administrator last year and this) and Esther MacCallum-Stewart (as Chair of Glasgow 2024). Other foreign guests included Francesco Verso, who has spent years celebrating Chinese SF in Italian and English; Disney storyboarder Grant Dalton Jr; and Vladimir Norov, the former foreign minister of Uzbekistan, subsequently Secretary-General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. We were very well looked after by Icy Xiaohan Chen, who I had met in Glasgow with Mr Gong, and her colleagues Caroline Yueqi Zhang and Lydia Xia Qian. (I am following the convention that if people have Western names, I use Western name-personal name-surname, but if they don’t, I use surname-personal name; the ladies I just mentioned are Chen Xiaohan, Zhang Yueqi and Qian Xia to their friends.)

We were given a tour of the ZGC Science Fiction Industry Innovation Centre, where I tried out a VR helmet and found myself in outer space, then on a spaceship, then on the surface of the moon.

Proprietary AI morphed my face into Chinese legend:

Back at the conference there were the inevitable dancing robots.

I talked to aspiring writers and student groups, and I may have committed television.

Some impressive cosplay as well.

We were also hosted for various meals by a number of organisations. The Future Affairs Administration organised a fantastic Sichuan hotpot for us with the Chinese Doctor Who fans led by Yan Ru. Wang Jinkiang and Liu Cixin on behalf of the Beijing Yuanyu Science Fiction and Future Technology Research Institute hosted us for a Mongolian hotpot. And the China Science Fiction Research Centre and the China Research Institute for Science Popualarisation jointly hosted us for a Cantonese spread with Stanley Qiufan Chen. I must say that I came away with a much greater appreciation of the variety of regional cooking within China – on my first two evenings, I had two very different work-related meals both featuring Yunnan cuisine.

I gave my own keynote speech to the conference as well of course, citing Mary Shelley, Jules Verne and Lao She.

Games being such a major part of it all, Esther was in her element (and spoke twice to my once):

The conference was held in a former industrial park in Shijingshan District, repurposed to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, so the architecture was a bit unusual.

This modern architecture is overlooked by the Gongbei Pavilion on top of the Shijinshan Mountain, a recent reconstruction on an ancient religious site.

One of the things I particularly came to appreciate is just how huge and varied China is. Beijing is in fact only the third biggest city in China. Shanghai is the second biggest, and Chongqing has the most inhabitants of any city in the world. How many of us could find Chongqing on a map? I met colleagues and fans from all over – from Hainan in the far south to Xinjiang in the northwest, and everywhere in between. Many of them had studied in North America or Europe, and come home to deploy their knowledge profitably. China knows more about us than we know about China.

To address the elephant in the room, I got a sense that for the Beijing folks, the mistakes made by Chengdu Worldcon are an embarrassment and they want to move forward (and incidentally reinforce Beijing’s centrality). I was grimly amused that two people separately recommended R.F. Kuang’s Babel to me; it is very popular in China, and when I replied that it had been banned from the 2023 Hugos, they shook their heads in disbelief.

In discussions with my professional contacts more generally, given that I was the man from Brussels, it will not surprise anyone that the topic of tariffs on electric vehicles came up a lot. I even got to drive one out in E-Town, the BAIC Stelato X9, which is capable of parking itself after you get out.

The Internet of Things is real in China. WeChat / Weixin is the go-to app for everything, and you need to have installed it and Alipay (and linked both to your payment system) before you go. The DeDe car-sharing app is a kind of super Uber – even out at the Great Wall it was possible to get a ride back to Beijing in three minutes. One taxi driver puzzled me as I got in by saying, in firmly interrogatory tones, “wǔ wǔ yāo sì?” I looked blank, so he held up five fingers twice, then one, then four – of course, the last four digits of my phone number, to confirm that I was the right client. (Taxis incidentally are very cheap, but the traffic in Beijing is awful – it took two hours to get from the conference centre on the western side of the city to the Sichuan hotpot on the east.) Shopkeepers and service staff would speak into their translation apps and show the  message that they wanted to convey in English. It can be useful to save frequently used phrases as an image.

I did three tourist expeditions. First, the Dongye Temple, a Daoist shrine within walking distance of my employers’ Beijing office, founded in 1319, gutted during the revolutionary period, restored in 2002. The courtyards are full of memorial steles.

The original gateway is now on the other side of the main road.

The joy of the temple is 76 small rooms, of which maybe half a dozen are clearly favoured by regular worshippers. Each small room contains a dozen statues representing a part of the Daoist otherworld, some of them more attractive than others.

Some of the individual statues are quite striking.

It’s a little dilapidated, but clearly still has a faithful following. I noted also a tree with ribbons tied to it, not so different from what you might find in rural Ireland.

The next day, I went to the Tiantan, the Temple of Heaven, one of the landmarks of Beijing. It’s a massive religious complex to the south of the Forbidden City, which I had visited in 2023. This is where the Emperor made the annual sacrifice for the continuing good of the kingdom. This is also where, sickeningly, the Eight-Nation Alliance led by the British and French based their occupying military forces during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, building a railway station on the sacred ground. They didn’t teach you about that in school, did they?

At the sacred stone which is the Heart of Heaven, there was a queue of tourists waiting to stand on it; about half of them prayed when it was their turn, and about half posed for photos.

As with the Forbidden City, many people (almost all young women as far as I could tell) had chosen to dress up in traditional costume and pose for photographs.

Posing is definitely a thing.

And I also went out to the Great Wall, the largest man-made structure in existence. To get the 80 km up to Badaling is only €20 by DeDe, an hour from Shijinshan, and the same back again. Once you get to the base, there is a cable car ride up to the top. (Alternatively, you can hike up or down if you like, but I’m 57.)

It’s crowded, and the path along the top of the wall itself is steep, and there’s no explanation of what’s going on or what happened; but it’s a spectacular structure and a spectacular view. I don’t feel that I need to go back, but I’m very glad that I went.

Anyway, it was a fantastic trip, with good fellowship. Many thanks to Mr Gong and the Beijing Science and Technology Commission, and to my work colleagues, for looking after me for this extraordinary week and a bit. (Arrived 23 March; left, 1 April.)