Folding Beijing by Hao JingfangMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Folding Beijing makes no effort to obscure its theme of economic inequality taken to an extreme position. A entire city of millions of people, engineered to share space among three populations. The privileged First World has the lion's share of time and the lowest population density; the Third World is overcrowded with little time for anything but drudgery; with a Second World somewhere in the middle.
The protagonist Lao Dao visits all three worlds during the story. This novelette is short enough that there's no need to recap the plot in a review; almost as quick to just read it yourself! Besides, much more important than the plot is the attitudes of the people involved.
Those we meet in the Third World are either resigned to their place in life, or in Lao Dao's case, doing everything possible to give his child a chance at a better future. In the Second World, they aspire to advancement into the First World. And in the First World, they take privilege for granted, rarely if ever considering the plight of those who serve to support their lifestyle. Well, rarely except when making sure to keep the masses busy so they have no time to consider another way of life.
More than the story itself, what I really enjoyed about Folding Beijing is how it shines a light on the upper/middle/lower class structure of society. It's taken to an extreme, of course, but it's not difficult to map the motivations of the various characters onto the way we see people acting in our own society today. Read it for an opportunity to recognize how society can stratify; and hopefully it prompts us to consider alternatives.
