CHINA+100: Book launch and exhibition opening

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Join us for the launch of the China+100 anthology with Comma Press and attend the preview of our exhibition. The book launch will start at 5:30PM. You will get the opportunity to visit the preview of our exhibition "Building China: Landscapes of Change", also on at The Holden Gallery from 5PM. TICKETS ARE FREE VIA EVENTBRITE: https://china100booklaunchexhibition.eventbrite.co.uk About the Book Launch What might China look like in the year 2119, a century after the first outbreak of Covid-19? This is the question posed by editor Xueting C. Ni to ten leading Chinese science fiction writers in Comma Press’s new anthology China +100. Join us to explore the book and its themes, including readings from two of the anthology’s authors – Anna Wu (Wu Shuang) and Dan Shi, visiting from China courtesy of the Confucius Institute at Manchester University – followed by a panel discussion with the book’s editor Xueting C. Ni. Expect stories of future pandemics, surprising new vaccines and love between scientists, as well as a wide-ranging discussion of the book’s creation and its place in the wider context of contemporary Chinese science fiction. Followed by an audience Q&A. About the Exhibition Building China: Landscapes of Change This exhibition marks the twentieth anniversary of The Confucius Institute at The University of Manchester. It explores how China has been shaped through construction, infrastructure and everyday life over the past seven decades. Paintings, photographs, drawings and installations move from the 1950s to the present, from neighbourhood streets and urban markets to public parks and the vast landscapes of the Yangtze River, tracing its entanglement with human settlement. Rather than telling a single story of development, the exhibition asks what architecture can reveal about social change, how large systems are lived on the ground, and how connections between Manchester and China may generate new perspectives. About the Book China + 100 poses a simple question to ten Chinese writers: what might your country look like in the year 2119? How might the legacy of Covid-19 – which triggered a global health crisis – reach across a century of technological progress, social engineering and medical advances, to shape the country and its people? Will the lessons of the pandemic have been learned? Will the people’s trust in science have been repaired? Featuring stories by Lu Hang, Zhou Dedong, Ling Chen , Dan Shi , He Xi & He Zun, Anna Wu, Tang Fei, Zhao Haihong , Yimei Tangguo and Chen Qiufan, with translations by Xueting C. Ni, Jack Hargreaves, Yahia Ma, Gigi Chang, Christopher MacDonald, Judith Huang, Andrew Rule and Mel Etvolare Lee.