The night before Oct 18, I pondered whether a 28’ suitcase would fit my trip to Chengdu Worldcon or a 20’ would be sufficient since extra luggage could always be mailed back to Shanghai. I was back with the 20’ case and nothing else. The harvest could be applied to my Worldcon journey, too, in a most disappointing way.
I’ll start with my taxi experiences. Venue was located 30 km away from downtown, which prevented me from staying at my friend’s house. I didn’t think about it much, just booked a hotel 2km from the place. A volunteer pointed to a wrong place where I called a taxi and watched the taxi go round and round for 20 minutes on Gaode map. I then canceled the order, realizing the blocked road surrounding the place was not marked ‘blocked’ so navigation kept directing through roads that driver was not allowed in. I started from two blocks away and got another taxi to the hotel. This was the first day. After the Hugo award ceremony, I met a friend who kindly walked me all the way to the end of the road block and got in the taxi. The driver was again very confused by the navigation because it kept directing through blocked roads with police standing by. I told the driver to just drive out first then we’ll see which way to go next. After some time, the surroundings became so quiet that I was suddenly aware of the fact I was alone with a male driver who had absolute control of the vehicle we were in, in the middle of nowhere. Beside the road, crops grew in the fields, I could rarely see any buildings.On the Gaode map, nearby places got names like ‘xx village/mound’. I was scared for myself, doubting whether attending this fucking con was the worst and last decision of my life until I could see some road lights ahead. I texted my friend after getting back to hotel but didn’t mention my emotional concerns to him.
I won’t go into detail how many hours I was stuck in traffic on the way to meet my local friend who lives in Chengdu downtown but didn’t get a chance to attend because tickets stopped selling without any notice beforehand. The change of venue caused many troubles. First, Pidu does not belong to Chengdu before, you can imagine how remote the venue was and it was no longer possible to gather with friends for a nearby drink or hotpot after an eventful day, people have their own hotels to go, this was also the case with guests who were arranged to different hotels. Second, the new venue was not finished and Worldcon’s time had to be rearranged from August to October. I couldn’t imagine the disappointment from students because most events were arranged on weekdays and most students would be reluctant to miss classes so not attending would be the default choice for them. Similarly, people from abroad would expect the con to be in August so a calendar block was supposed to be in August but not in October. For potential foreign guests with a full calendar, a change of time would mean events conflict very likely. Last but not least, even then the venue was not entirely finished but put to use.
Let me address the last point separately. For myself, this bothered me from the moment I realized I had to wear a mask to the minute when I could finally get rid of the mask. According to HeavenDuke’s notes(https://www.douban.com/note/855529873/), the venue was still under interior construction and it smelt badly even with air freshener just one day before Worldcon opened. Well, we are Chinese and we are used to these circumstances. So my expectation changed from ‘Yeah we are going to the world-class sci-fi con!’ to ‘Guess what we will be there to help the venue get rid of irritating gas, physically’. Yeah, ‘expectation rearrangement’, check. What I didn’t expect was RiverFlow got sick and was transported to hospital(‘Worldcon patient No.1!’) after a few hours in the venue on Day 1. And again, he was admitted into hospital after Hugo award ceremony where he received the award. How sarcastic, for God’s sake. I bet he was not the only one who was beaten by irritating gas since I had a headache and sore throat whenever I took off the mask for more than half an hour. What astonished me next on my first day was that there were so many students in school uniforms led by teachers visiting. I had a hard time trying to understand why. School aged students were physically more fragile than us adults, they should not be put into harmful environments, not to mention deliberately and organizationally. Unless the whole thing was for something else, political achievements considered rather than some uneasy complaint from children or sci-fi fans didn’t get a chance to buy either packaged-ticket or single day entrance.
Now that I’ve mentioned ticket, I’ll share my experience with the precious ticket. I may be among the first 100 people who placed an order for Worldcon long before its opening, but the order was not paid since the system did not support any paying method except wire transfer. I could not find any way to wire online without going to the bank so I just left it there with an order number for maybe half a year. One day, I found the tickets had stopped selling on WeChat subscription account and single day entrance would soon be sold. It was not until a valid order number was required to register for the lucky draw that I realized my order was not paid yet. Spent four days waiting for my transaction to be recognized via custom support hotline. There must be all kinds of problems that attendees met since my waiting time for human service extended from one customer ahead to 19 customers ahead. In the end, the committee prolonged the end time for the lucky draw. My ticket number was made valid and I got Hugo award ceremony attendance. Well, at least my plane tickets and hotel room would not need canceling. My friend did not have the luck. The single day entrance sold out so abruptly that it was over before she found where it was sold. Watching students roaming the floor, I thought I would be in a much better mood if I could have her company and students could be in a better, healthier environment as long as they were not here. During the whole time, I thought about what I would be dealing with if I were a foreigner. On another occasion, I met a foreign friend who complained about missing the chance to buy a ticket for Worldcon since there was so little information on the official website. I told her that the most frequently updated information source was WeChat subscription account rather than the official website. She was very disappointed and told me that Chengdu committee promised they would sell 30,000 tickets(or so) to foreigners when they were competing for the 2023 Worldcon host city in 2019. I wondered how many tickets in total Chengdu worldcon sold and whether foreign attendees counted for 300 since I rarely saw foreign attendees besides guests on the floor.
Guests, too, struggled with ticket and entrance issues. I had the expectation that I had to walk all the way from the roadblock to venue park’s gate (then a shuttle then another walk then venue) because I was just an attendee, I was wrong. Guest and stall owners also had shitty experiences, sometimes even worse. Rumors spread, concrete facts cross validated. But those do not belong to my reflections, I’ll stop there.
Who benefited from Worldcon? As I roamed through the floor in the venue, this questions kept jumping back to my mind. I had a hard time deciding which panel to go to since I had no information beside a title while the info desk said the handbook was not available (which was said to contain a summary of panel and panel host) although I was a member. I pondered over this question again when my luggage had to be examined thoroughly openly. I wondered why Liu Cixin’s books(mostly Threebody) and related products could take over nearly half of the merchandise while ‘Four Heavenly Kings(四大天王)’ was supposed to describe popularity twenty years ago. I left the biggest room where Liu Cixin would soon give a speech because I could no longer tolerate the high level, bureaucratic talkings which were arranged for the largest audience. I squeezed in a small room(50 people max) waiting for Hansong’s panel while many fans had nowhere to sit but standing all through the panel. I was amazed after learning that the simultaneous interpretations were English to Chinese only(from what I heard) and only foreign guests’ linguistic needs were taken care of.
Did I have a good time? Well, I met with fans and writers who share the same deep passion for science fiction and it was fascinating experiences. I learned lots of sci-fi magazines and databases where organizers put their best efforts to make it easier for Chinese fans to open their eyes. I will always cherish these memories. But, the difficulties that these people had to overcome truly blew my mind. Not a single conversation could end without any reasonable complaints. I could not take the stance for them but as I checked Wechat groups and Moments, or talked with friends, the situation was the same.
Even after the Hugo award ceremony, my anguish was not quenched. After hearing about how RiverFlow fell ill again, I was astonished at the fact (https://www.douban.com/people/173242010/status/4417060449/) that no one on committee actually cared about whether RiverFlow could live through the night, dumping him somewhere seemed a stop point they could answer to some leader. This was such a bureaucratic way of action that RiverFlow was not treated as a person but a ‘task’ to be completed. RiverFlow lives now thanks to timely help of a friend, but the alternative history could very likely be on the edge of losing him. However, it was not the end, surprise! As mentioned by ErsatzCulture, in an article by People's Daily Online (http://en.people.cn/n3/2023/1023/c90000-20087521.html), I quote, "In addition to the *two* winners, many other categories at this year's Hugo Awards also featured Chinese authors and artists." As an official account from China media, NOT recognizing RiverFlow and Ling Shizhen as winners is simply ridiculous. But why? Do they fear the fact that RiverFlow ended up in hospital right after getting the Hugo award because of bad air in a rushed venue would make them ‘lose face’? Are they concerned how the hotel arrangement would become a topic since the guests’ ‘classes’ splited too distinctly? Are the ‘not officially announced’ winners’ image difficult to ‘control’ compared to Hai Ya’s 996 diligent worker style? What had the two winners done to deserve this? Eventually, how many votes did the winners get?
The Chengdu Worldcon did not talk about votes. No voting status could be found even after a month. As far as I know, this has never happened before. Neither have I heard anyone on board requesting to reveal it. How funny.
By the way, Robert J. Sawyer seemed to be the only foreign Sci-Fi writer to be put under spotlight during whole time at the con. He held a really positive view of China and spoke highly of China in many occasions, talking about his many trips to China through out twenty years or so. But he seems alone there, are sci-fi writers like him hard to find? I wonder why.
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