“The Space-Time Painter,” written by Chinese author Hai Ya, won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette at the 81st World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon), held in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu. Hai became the third Chinese winner of the Hugo Award, following sci-fi writers Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang.
“The Space-Time Painter” was published in 2022. It was inspired by the life experience of the talented Chinese painter Wang Ximeng during the Northern Song period (960-1127), who created the 12-meter-long landscape painting “One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains”. “I watched a program of China Media Group named ‘National Treasure Archive’ and the detailed information of the painter of ‘One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains’ was introduced, which interested me,” Hai said, adding that the painter was a gifted young man but was never seen again in history, which is a concept (概念) that could be explored with science-fiction.
Based on the life of Wang, Hai created a painter named Zhao Ximeng, a prodigy (神童) that painted for the emperor more than 1,000 years ago. After much misery and suffering, Zhao gave up his physical body and entered a space where a modern policeman that was investigating a case concerning an ancient painting got into his memory. It tells a story about the political power struggle of the time combined with diverse elements such as Chinese traditional culture, history, and science fiction. In this story, Hai did his best to balance the relationship between story, characters and history, hoping to bring readers a good work.
Hai, also a financial worker, thinks himself more of a sci-fi enthusiast than a writer. “I write while doing my job, so I have very little time to write every day,” he said. ‘But I think as long as I love it and am willing to put efforts in it, I will see hopes and the dawn.”
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