The third major force that distinguishes “magic realism” from the “ultra-unreal” is the internet. There has never been anything quite like it before. Many of China’s “ultra-unreal” phenomena are written about on the internet immediately after they occur. Reality is a text to begin with, and now that the internet can show us “ultra-unreal” phenomena that we otherwise would not know about, we end up with a sort of doubled “ultra-unreal.” This has created a huge challenge for fiction. Fiction can no longer just tell straightforward stories about single topics following single narrative arcs; reality is providing us with all sorts of rich possibilities for experiments in fictional form. To some degree, the more true to reality fiction is these days, the more avant-garde it will seem. The way we look at things determines the way we write about them. Reality is mutable. For instance, if you look at reality from the viewpoint of tradition, then the reality you write about will seem traditional. If you look at reality from the viewpoint of the “ultra-unreal,” then your writing will be “ultra-unreal.” This is not to say there is no difference between the perspectives. There can be no question that it is the viewpoint of the “ultra-unreal” that is more in tune with the present time.

I believe that “writing in the age of the ultra-unreal” is distinguished by the following four characteristics, which I will explain as simply as I can.

1) Writing in the age of the ultra-unreal engages the present situation. Contemporary Chinese reality has brought about a seismic transformation to our world, and the writing of the current age should engage these enormous changes. It should engage the social issues that are the hottest topics of the popular discussion of the moment. But in engaging, it should remain strictly within the territory of literature, meaning that human beings should remain its central concern. Human beings have become as complex and multifaceted as the surface of a machine-cut diamond. The same modern technology that cuts diamonds and shapes people has ravaged the land. The state of the environment mirrors the state of our souls.

2) It is philosophically speculative. When we are critical of the world around us, we are very clear about what we are criticizing and why. But in literature worthy of the name we need to remember that in life and in human nature there is much that is not clear. In life and in human nature there are paradoxes. Some of what we do is in accord with our nature and some of what we do is at odds with our nature. The interaction of human nature and reality is exceedingly complex. There are things we can discern with clarity, and things we cannot discern with clarity. Therefore in our writing we need to allow ourselves a certain freedom.

3) It is has the quality of a fable or an allegory. Reality itself has the quality of a fable. Earlier I mentioned the short story “The History of Sound.” After the “end of time,” the two old folks are like an elderly Adam and Eve. One way to give fiction freedom is to maintain its “fabulous” quality.

4) It takes risks. The viewpoint of the “ultra-unreal” is a complex viewpoint; it is a complex modality of perception, and so when it becomes the foundation of fiction it changes the form fiction takes. There is risk in any change. There is an artistic risk for the writer, and if even the risk succeeds and the results are good, the reader still has to take a very big risk.

My own writing has been greatly altered by my sense of the “ultra-unreal” and my need to confront it. I have always been a writer who emphasizes the expression of my own feelings, and up until recently most of my work has been set in Tibet. As you all know, Tibet is a symbol of unspoiled nature; it has a spiritual or metaphysical meaning for people the world over. I lived in Tibet for several years, and while I was there I experienced something completely of my own. But China’s “ultra-unreal” reality has hit me like a tsunami, and in the end it forced me to stop writing about my emotional tie to the Tibetan plateau. I’ve been forced to directly engage the “ultra-unreal.” The novel I published last year, Three Trios, is the result of this engagement. In both its title and its structure, the novel borrows from Eliot’s poems collected as Four Quartets.

There are three layers to my novel. The first is the story of a man who has been infatuated with libraries since childhood. He is the narrator of the novel. His dream is to live in a library, and in his apartment he has a lot of books and a lot of mirrors. Because of the infinite regress effect of the reflection of the books in the mirrors, he is able to approximate his childhood dream of living inside a library. He has no disability, but he likes to do his reading while sitting in a wheelchair. He likes to wheel himself around among his books and mirrors. He becomes a volunteer companion to inmates on death row, and he moves into the prison for a while. He talks to the inmates the way a priest would. He thinks of the prison as another sort of library. In the second and third narrative layers of the book, the narrator tells the stories of two inmates who have been sentenced to death and have become his friends. The first was the CEO of a large, State-owned company, and the second was the personal secretary to the governor of a province. The CEO finds out he is about to be investigated for corruption, and so, taking a large amount of cash with him, he flees to a small town by the ocean, where under an assumed identity he rents a room in the apartment of a woman who is a primary school teacher. The story recounts how someone who has lost power returns to ordinary life and rediscovers what it feels like to be human. The habits of someone with power, however, haven’t left the CEO. He and the teacher begin a physical and emotional love affair. But because he once had great power he has become half human and half monster. In the end, she turns him over to the authorities.

The personal secretary to the provincial governor is less fortunate. He becomes subject to what is known in China as “shuang gui,” which means “double designation.” This is a form of detention and interrogation particular to China. It is opaque and extrajudicial. It means that a Party member suspected of wrongdoing is required to be in a designated place at a designated time for questioning. It usually works like this: the Party member under suspicion is suddenly detained by investigators and taken away, often to a hotel room somewhere, and is interrogated in secret. In Chinese pulp fiction about officialdom there are detailed descriptions of “double designation.” In my novel, “double designation” happens but not in the usual way and not in the usual place. In my novel, the interrogation is carried out in an abandoned factory complex that has been turned into an art district. In the age of the “ultra-unreal” there is a similarity between politics and art, and poets and officials have much in common. The factory in my novel was built with the assistance of East Germany, and the buildings are in the Bauhaus style. After the factory was decommissioned, the buildings were turned into artist studios, galleries, bars, workshops, and spaces for performance art and experimental theater. The Party investigators, getting into the spirit of the place, bring in an artist known as the “White Artist,” as in “artist of the color white,” as well as an interrogator who has terminal cancer. They subject the provincial governor’s personal secretary to an “inquest by whiteness” and an “inquest by mortality.” This interrogation is the most radical form of performance art ever undertaken in the art district.