Writing from Nanjing 02 | Tianrui Shuofu: A Signal Across Two Nanjings
Writing from Nanjing 02 | Tianrui Shuofu: A Signal Across Two Nanjings
Series card
Issue: 02 of 12
Relationship: Never a long-term resident; imagining Nanjing after field research
City coordinates: Muxuyuan Avenue / Xinjiekou / Xuanwu Lake
Keyword: Signal
In Issue 01, Ye Zhaoyan described Nanjing as the “stool” on which he had sat for decades, looking from daily experience into history. Tianrui Shuofu approaches from the opposite direction: a short-term visitor uses radio to connect 2019 and 2040 at the same coordinates, making field-researched detail the transmitter for an imagined future.[1][2][4]
A radio signal should weaken with distance. In We Live in Nanjing (《我们生活在南京》), it does something stranger: it crosses twenty-one years while barely moving in space. Bai Yang, a high-school student in 2019, reaches Banxia, a nineteen-year-old living in a devastated Nanjing in 2040. They occupy the same city—and, crucially, the same geographic point—but not the same present.[2][3]
That premise makes Nanjing more than scenery. The city becomes part of the novel’s apparatus: streets, homes, landmarks, and measurable distances allow two incompatible times to line up. The publisher’s account describes a high-school student contacting a young woman at the same location through radio; critic Bei Qiao calls the device “time slow delivery,” both a technological motor for the story and a narrative one.[2][3]
A visitor’s relationship with Nanjing
Public accounts describe Tianrui Shuofu as born in 1996 and as a writer from Jiujiang, Jiangxi.[1][2] A publisher account says he studied biology at an unnamed university in Harbin, began writing while at university, and identifies the book as his third full-length science-fiction novel.[2]
Those sources do not establish his birthplace, upbringing, exact university, ordinary employment history, long-term residence, or current residence. None should be inferred from his pen name, his fiction, or his visits. The documented connection is fieldwork. The publisher says he visited Nanjing twice, toured landmarks, and asked friends about local customs, accents, and food.[2] In a later interview, he called himself a non-Nanjing native and said that several research visits were still not enough to write the city fully: deeper life experience was necessary.[1]
That self-criticism matters. It keeps fieldwork from masquerading as belonging.
How the city enters the novel
The mechanism is coordinate matching. The modern city and the ruined future city are laid over one another. The interview places the story’s domestic center on Muxuyuan Avenue in the Meihuashanzhuang residential area and mentions Xinjiekou among the recognizable city references.[1] Bei Qiao’s essay explains that the novel uses real locations and real distances so that Bai Yang’s everyday city corresponds physically to Banxia’s ruins.[3]
The connection works in three ways:
- Across time: radio and “time slow delivery” join 2019 to 2040.[2][3]
- Across space: the same Nanjing coordinates hold everyday abundance in one time and post-catastrophe solitude in another.[1][3]
- Between writer and city: Ye Zhaoyan’s Nanjing grows from decades of lived familiarity; Tianrui’s takes shape through two visits, conversations, technical research, and an open acknowledgment of what he still does not know.[1][2][4]
The two writers are not competing over who can claim the city. They simply approach it from different distances. Ye’s “stool” supports a long view into history; Tianrui’s antenna asks whether exact local detail can make an impossible future feel emotionally near.[4] The publisher profile also names Liu Cixin and Jiang Nan as Tianrui’s two strongest literary influences, connecting his imagined Nanjing to the popular and science-fiction writing that shaped him.[2]
What makes this future believable is not only the apocalypse or the engineering plans. It is ordinary life under pressure: a student moving between school and family, a young survivor keeping a household together, and two voices slowly learning to trust a signal they cannot explain away. Bei Qiao observes that the details of daily life and the future ruins sharpen each other; the novel’s vast speculative scale stays tied to recognizable human habits.[3]
Where to begin
First choice: We Live in Nanjing (《我们生活在南京》). Begin with the radio contact, then follow the recurring city coordinates.
Advanced choice: 《死在火星上》. Reading it beside We Live in Nanjing offers a way to compare two survival stories built around isolation: one at planetary distance, the other inside a city divided by time.[2]
Nanjing coordinate card
Place: Muxuyuan Avenue, extending toward Xinjiekou and Xuanwu Lake
Time: 2019 ↔ 2040
Motif: A radio signal that makes one city answer another
Next issue
If fieldwork lets a visitor transmit an imagined future into Nanjing, what changes when a writer leaves the city and hears it return as memory—an echo rather than a signal?
Evidence and image note
The publication details, 2019/2040 premise, two Nanjing research trips, fieldwork method, and the writer’s stated reservations are supported by the sources below. The reviewed sources do not establish Tianrui Shuofu’s birthplace, exact university, long-term residence, or current residence. The cover is original ANJSO editorial artwork, rendered locally from geometric shapes and text; it uses no third-party photograph, portrait, book cover, illustration, or logo.
By Artificial Nanjinger. Drafted with AI assistance; factual review and publication require human approval by the American Nanjing Society.
Note on English Titles
No published English edition of 《我们生活在南京》 was located. This article uses the reader-friendly descriptive rendering We Live in Nanjing, which also appears on MyDramaList’s listing for the screen adaptation, without presenting it as the title of an official English edition.[5] 《死在火星上》 remains in Chinese because no published English-edition title was located.
Sources
- Chao News interview, “《我们生活在南京》，一场文本实验” (via Tencent News)
- CITIC Dafang, “频频获奖，这位95后科幻大神作家是如何炼成的” (publisher account hosted by Sohu)
- Bei Qiao, “网络科幻小说新形态的叙事实践——评天瑞说符《我们生活在南京》,” Research on Chinese Contemporary Literature 2024, no. 5
- ANJSO, “Writing from Nanjing 01 | Ye Zhaoyan: Writing from the Nanjing ‘Stool’”
- MyDramaList, “We Live in Nanjing”
Sources
License: © American Nanjing Society