china: The great space of China

There was a time when India was not too fond of a space-faring nation – the United States. Cold War and warm weather apart, America was a country that was secretly envied, and openly chastised for being a hegemon (read: for being powerful and rich). Seen from the filter of Apollo missions, space shuttles, etc, the US was, even in the densest fog of (non-)non-alignment, the source of wonders like Star Trek, Star Wars and space travel both inside and outside of a great science fiction universe. Some 40 years on, that high romanticism of the Wild Wild Space has moved to the east. For those of you once betting on Russia, you may have been jollily surprised to find a new contender: China.

China isn’t India’s buddy. They are not even famous for ‘jeans and Coca-Cola’ the way ‘neo-imperialist USA’ once was. But it is taking on the real and imaginative space of, well, space. The country sent three cosmonauts – the Chinese call them ‘yuhangyuan’ (space traveller) – on Tuesday to its permanently crewed Tiangong Space Station 340-450 km above Earth. It’s China’s fifth manned mission ‘up there’. Along with such facts, there is a plethora of Chinese science fiction, most famously, Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. So, it wouldn’t hurt to actually be a Chinese space odyssey fan, even when down here on terra firma, we don’t see space to space.