ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Lu Liu examines a 2012 science-fiction short story from a Hugo award-winning Chinese writer. Set in a futuristic Beijing that is divided into three segregated zones, Hao Jingfang’s “Folding Beijing” follows the journey of a waste worker named Lao Dao, from the lowest Third Space to the elite First Space. From Lao Dao’s perspective, the story reveals the irony of technologized development that selectively renders human labor invisible and reinforces structural inequality. This chapter examines how the story’s realistic and speculative style dramatizes and elicits actions to tackle challenges of sustainability in terms of decent work (SDG 8), infrastructure design and construction (SDG 9), access to resources (SDG 10), urban planning and community building (SDG 11), and non-discriminatory policy-making (SDG 16). Additionally, contextualizing the story in China’s social reality, the questions and assignments designed in this chapter serve as a starting point to interrogate how the abject condition of urban working classes is often overshadowed by explosive economic growth and stigmatized as low end.
