A short life of the author
Hao Jingfang (born 1984) is a Chinese science fiction writer whose Hugo Award-winning novelette “Folding Beijing” (2015) brought international attention to a new generation of Chinese SF writers working in the wake of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. Where Liu’s work operates on cosmic scales, Hao’s fiction is intimate and sociological — concerned with class division, labor, education, and the human costs of economic transformation in twenty-first-century China.
Life and Career
Hao Jingfang was born in Tianjin, China, in 1984. She studied physics at Tsinghua University, one of China’s most elite institutions, then earned a PhD in economics from the same university. She has worked at the China Development Research Foundation, a policy think tank, giving her fiction an unusual grounding in economic theory and development policy.
She began publishing science fiction in Chinese magazines in the early 2010s. “Folding Beijing” (北京折叠, 2012 in Chinese, 2015 in Ken Liu’s English translation) was her breakthrough. The story imagines a Beijing literally divided into three spaces that fold over one another on a twenty-four-hour cycle: First Space for the elite (who get a full day), Second Space for the middle class (who get sixteen hours), and Third Space for the working poor (who get eight hours of night). A garbage worker from Third Space risks crossing the boundaries to deliver a message.
The story won the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, translated by Ken Liu. It was widely read as an allegory for the class divisions and invisible labor that undergird Chinese economic growth — though Hao has noted that the story is about urban inequality everywhere, not just China.
Vagabonds and Later Work
Vagabonds (流浪苍穹, 2016 in Chinese, 2020 in English translation) is Hao’s major novel — a philosophical science fiction work set in a future where Mars has been colonized and developed a communal society that diverges from Earth’s capitalism. A group of young Martians visit Earth, and the novel explores their experiences of cultural collision, ideological difference, and personal identity. The book draws on Hao’s economics training to think seriously about alternative social systems without idealizing either.
Hao has also been active in children’s education, founding Tongxing Academy, a nonprofit that develops creative and scientific thinking programs for Chinese children. This pedagogical work connects to her fiction’s recurring interest in how societies shape (and constrain) human potential.
Key Works
- “Folding Beijing” (2015)
- Vagabonds (2020, English translation)
Collecting Hao
“Folding Beijing” was first published in Chinese in Frontiers of Science magazine and in English in Uncanny Magazine (2015). It was collected in Ken Liu’s anthology Invisible Planets (Tor, 2016). Vagabonds was published in English by Saga Press/Simon & Schuster (2020) — first edition hardcovers are readily available at modest prices ($20–$50). Hao is still early in her career, and the collecting market has not yet developed significantly for her work. Signed copies from Chinese events are available but uncommon in the Western market. As a Hugo winner and one of the leading voices in Chinese SF, her early editions may appreciate as the field grows.