3 things this week | the world in folds

Arc’teryx × Cai Guoqiang Himalayan campaign, Folding Beijing, M Lin’s new book

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Earlier this month, when my writer friend M Lin came to town, we biked around and dipped into the clubbing scene, chasing her early-2000s Beijing memories. Organized by the (relatively) new techno brand Need! Music and YinYang Productions, the Worker’s Stadium was alive: heavy techno beats vibrating through the roofless space, lightning streaking across the night. Inside, Gen Zers in loose pants and silky tops swayed like campers immersed in sound. Millennials in tight dresses and high heels could have stepped straight out of Vox or Mix a decade ago.

Meanwhile, at the gates, people paused to peek in curiously, only to be stopped by the guards: “invitation only.” It was a literal Folding Beijing moment, different worlds layered on top of each other, separated by nothing more than a thin gate and a security guard.

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Folding Beijing is a sci-fi story that went viral in 2015 and is now considered a classic. In the story, the city folds and unfolds, each social class allotted its own portion of the day before ceding space to the next. The protagonist, a city cleaner from the Third Space, decides to cross into the First Space to earn more money for his daughters’ education, and in the process stumbles onto the ugly truths of inequality. The story is a sharp metaphor for separation, privilege, and exclusion driven by limited resources. It’s also a cold fable about how different realities can coexist in one place without ever fully touching.

This week’s Arc’teryx × Cai Guoqiang drama felt like a real-life reflection of this. Perception gaps caused by class privilege weren’t folded neatly into the night; instead, the internet tore open its carefully stitched boundaries and exposed them to the public. The well-known artist Cai Guoqiang set off fireworks on the fragile Tibetan Plateau, sparking backlash. The PR crisis was handled disastrously, as observed by Yaling from Following the Yuan and sharply analyzed by Ivy from Calling the Shot.

Netizens questioned how such a decision was ever made and concluded that it was pure ego, a collaboration between Anta’s CEO (which became Arc’teryx’s largest shareholder last year) and the artist, both men from Fujian. Their status as laodeng: elderly men in power, the rough equivalent of “old white men”, underscored the sense that their worldview was completely different from ordinary citizens’. The uproar echoed a similar dynamic in Folding Beijing between the city planners and the cleaner. I won’t spoil more of the story, give it a read and see what you think.

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Meeting M Lin felt like breathing fresh air I hadn’t taken in for years, maybe even a little crush I was too shy to confess. Both of us grew up in Beijing, studied in the States, and her family home is not far from my grandparents’. We grew close instantly. Introduced by my Chinese editor, she is a fiction writer, former screenwriter, extremely savvy but effortlessly chill. She carries a California breeze, a New Yorker’s intellect, and the alert sensitivity to authority of a Beijinger, such a mix of charms!

Professionally, she’s a bold one. She won the 2023 Emerging Writer’s Contest for Ploughshares with a story that weaves together quite a bit. It’s astonishing what imagination can do to fill in the silences of events, in ways both humane and profound. The contest judge Gish Jen applauded her ambition in taking such a risk. That story is now part of her debut short story collection, Memory Museum, available for pre-order.

Reading her work made me reflect on the growing pool of young Chinese writers who choose to write in English without camouflage or dilution. They tackle contemporary fiction without compromising any cultural nuances. But why English? Is it for freedom, for distance, for reinvention? Li Yiyun once said she wrote in English to claim new personal territory after her Chinese writing had been ruined by education and family history. Working on my own fiction, I have my answer, but I am still curious about others, maybe an interview series is in order?

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As the night went on, talking with M Lin reminded me how conversations shift across geographies. She noticed how Gaza and Israel dominate discussion abroad but remain largely absent in China. Another journalist friend, Julie Blussé, pointed this out too (her Dutch media features are worth reading). But what’s the danger of that absence? To ignore or stay tone-deaf to conflicts beyond us? Growing up, we are often warned about the danger of becoming a “world police” like the U.S., of interfering too much. But what about the danger of disengagement?

At my Buddhism study session this week, the teacher spoke of compassion not as abstract altruism but as the practice of dissolving opposition and coldness. It struck me that compassion is also a refusal to fold ourselves away from the world, even when it feels far from us. As much as we may resist, the global does shape us. In what ways? I guess we shall see.

*Lately I’ve been applying for creative writing MFAs, deadlines looming constantly, workshops and online workshops piling up. My attention is split into many directions, but maybe that’s how life nudges forward, one layer at a time. I’m thinking of you, my readers, and hope this piece keeps our dialogue alive as usual :)

**As usual, spacial thanks to ChatGPT for the edit