China's romance with the Moon

Chang'e riding a rocket.

Wednesday's launch of a Long March 3A rocket carrying the Chang'e I lunar orbiter is the first step in a project that ultimately should result in a manned moon landing. Xinhua journalist Han Song noted on his blog that the launch of the lunar project arrived one year later than scheduled and thousands of years after the Chinese people first dreamt of traveling to the Moon:

On the last day of 2003 four years ago, Sun Laiyan, then vice-administrator of the China National Space Administration, revealed a long-anticipated piece of news to foreign and domestic journalists: in 2004, China would formally begin its lunar exploration project, with plans to launch a rocket bearing a lunar probe before 2007 (looking back now, the year's delay means that Japan got the jump).

At the time, media reports said that the program would ultimately lead to Chinese people landing on the Moon. What an exciting day for so many Chinese people! China has dreamt of going to the Moon for millennia, all the way back to the story of Chang'e, recorded in the Huainanzi. One day when Chang'e returned home, she saw that her husband Houyi had obtained a pill from the Queen Mother of the West. Probably thinking it to be an aphrodisiac, she ate it; her body then became light as a feather and she flew up to the moon.

起飞时 18:05:04

In fact, the launch may even have been later still. Speaking to reporters immediately after the launch, Cen Zheng, chief commander of the Long March rocket system, acknowledged a slight delay:

We fulfilled our promise to give a on-time launch and a precise orbit. But there was a 4.6 second delay from our anticipated time of 18:05.

Cen also explained basic principles of acceleration to visitors who wondered why the rocket was so slow leaving the launch pad.

However, a report in Friday's Guangzhou Daily carried an opposing view from Cheng Jing, chief engineer at the Xichang center:

As for reports by some in the media who said that the launch of the Chang'e satellite was delayed 4.6 seconds, Cheng Jing said that he was there in the launch control center at the time: "I'd say it was on-schedule. I don't know whether by delay the media are referring to ignition or to lift-off. There's about three seconds between a rocket's ignition and its lift-off."

A short time later, the reporter contacted Li Benqi, the chief commander who issued the "ignition" command at the launch center. He told the reporter that the "ignition" command was issued on-time, with no delay.

At right is a crop of a scene of mission control taken from CCTV's broadcast of the launch. The line of red counters along the top represent various times; the furthest to the right reads "Lift-off Time: 16:05:04."

Beijing Newspeak gives a peak at the activity in a different sort of control center: the Xinhua newsroom:

Then, at 18:05, the moment arrived. A call from a Xinhua journalist at the landing site in Sichuan confirmed blast off. The mouse was clicked. The headline was filed. "FLASH: CHINA'S LUNAR PROBE CHANG'E-1 BLASTS OFF." Cheers and applause on floor four. Successful launch of story onto international wire, foreign press defeated. And it was a full 15 minutes before a glaring grammatical mistake was made in the subsequent updates.

The post also includes a selection of responses to the space program by journalists and BBS commenters, some of whom feel that the money should go to other purposes.

Xichang, where the satellite launch center is located, won't be complaining. Henan Commercial Daily cites an estimate by Chen Le, vice-director of the city's tourism bureau, that puts revenues from the moon project at more than 40 million yuan to date. The city's top eleven hotels had occupancy rates above 90% for the launch. Chen predicts that tourism revenue will eventually top 100 million yuan.

Han Song continues his blog post by noting that for the past century, modern Chinese literature has carried on a long engagement with the Moon, beginning with Lu Xun's translation of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon in 1903 and continuing with the rise of domestic science fiction.

Illustration from The Moon Colony, Chapter 19.

The Moon Colony (月球殖民地小说) by Huangjiang Diaosou (荒江钓叟, "Old fisherman on a remote river"), published in the journal Illustrated Fiction in 1904, is usually taken to be the first example of modern, domestic science fiction.* The story follows Long Menghua as he roams the world in search of his wife following his flight from China after an abortive assassination attempt on a Qing official. His travels take place in a balloon belonging to a certain Mr. Tamataro, a Japanese inventor.

The story is obviously inspired by Verne's Five Weeks in a Balloon (which was translated the previous year), but it eventually takes its protagonists to the titular Moon colony, where it stops abruptly, unfinished.

The Chinese press last featured retrospectives of Chinese science fiction when the country sent its first manned spacecraft into orbit in 2003. Here, Han looks at moon-related SF in particular, with an eye to what it says about society at the time (the book summaries are drawn largely from Lin Jianqun's master's thesis on late-Qing science fiction):

[...in The Moon Colony] with the help of a Japanese man, Long Menghua rides a balloon to America, Europe, Africa, and finally India in search of his wife. When they are reunited, they fly off to the Moon in a balloon, where they can live full, happy lives.

--> In short, they flew to the Moon because China at the time seemed unlivable.

Another year passed, and in 1905, Xu Nianci wrote The New Story of Mr. Windbag (新法螺生先传), which told of a Chinese man whose soul separated from his body under the gravitational influence of another celestial body. His own body descended to a kingdom at the earth's core. His soul was "refined into a light source; he had originally wanted to use this light to lead a revival for China, but his countrymen were beyond hope, and in his despair he threw his soul away." Upon learning of China state of corruption, his soul rises upward and collides with the Moon, where it gains true knowledge. Later on, the man learns of "brain electricity" on the Moon. He ultimately returns to Earth to help the Chinese people stand up.

--> Evidently, a renaissance for the Chinese people means first landing on the Moon. But while the soul can go, the body cannot. This may only work for Chinese people; Verne would have a hard time making sense of it.

One other Moon-related science fiction story is Bao Tianxiao's Last Days of the World (世界末日记), published in 1908. He wrote of a day when the sun is about to extinguish. China and the rest of the nations in the world are thrown into a panic, and they discuss how to escape catastrophe. One youth suggests building "new types of flying machines" to travel to another planet. Just as everyone is rejoicing, news suddenly arrives from the meteorology station warning that the Moon is on a collision course with the Earth! So all of their efforts are for nothing. Finally, as the Moon draws near to the Earth and exerts its gravitational pull, storms and tides engulf the globe, killing half the world's population while survivors make for high ground.

--> Here, the Moon is a harpy that destroys our five-thousand-year-strong civilization. Is this the same moon to which Li Bai lifted his cup, or the heavenly palace that Su Shi questions while holding his glass? How could such a trifling moon bring the Chinese people such despair?

However, it's not all depression. A year later, in 1909, Lu Shi'e published New Humble Words of an Old Rustic (新野叟曝言) which tells of how the Emperor of China commanded that "flying ships" be built to solve the overpopulation problem by migrating people to the Moon and other planets. Before leaving Earth, China conquers the 72 nations of Europe. Subsequently, riding on the flying ship "Awakened Lion," Chinese travelers land on the Moon. The landing party finds that the mountains on the Moon are made of glass, the towering trees are made of emeralds, and the water in the lakes is mercury rather than normal water. There are no aquatic plants on the Moon, neither are there men or beasts. The immigrants plant the Yellow Dragon flag of China on a mountain peak to express the pride of the Chinese people.

All are past and gone. For a long time after 1949, few Chinese people wrote stories about landing on the Moon. "Reach the ninth heaven and embrace the moon" was the leader's prerogative. The leader added another line afterward: "Descend to the five oceans and capture a turtle." It seems Chang'e is only fit to be paired with a turtle, so the former has turned away in shame and anger.

The first science fiction story in new China described how the Chinese conquered Mars. Later, we conquered Mercury and Sirius. But never the Moon, until at the dawn of the 21st Century, Ling Chen wrote the classic Back Side of the Moon. That story describes how in 2055, the Chinese who reach the Moon build a massive, beautiful lunar city (called the "Dragon City"). However, what ought to have been a great day for our country is undermined by corruption, and a shoddily-engineered boondoggle takes shape 380,000 kilometers from earth.

The year after Ling Chen's novel was published, Sun Laiyan announced the launch of China's Chang'e Project. Here, I am reminded of an outstanding colleague of mine, Yu Fei, who wrote an article in the late 1990s that was later rated as one of the year's best news reports. The report said that the first Chinese to set foot on the Moon would not be human beings, but rather a weird sort of robot.

Note 1: "Domestic" because of earlier translated literature, and "modern" because of certain fantastic stories from as far back as the Han Dynasty that have SF elements, such as the story of the automatons of Master Yan that appears in the Liezi.