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A review by mweis
Sinophagia: A Celebration of Chinese Horror by Xueting Christine Ni
4.0
*I received an eARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.*
I really enjoyed Sinopticon, a collection of Chinese science fiction collected by Xueting, and I have gotten more into horror over the last few years so I was thrilled to see there was a collection of Chinese horror. Like with many anthologies, there are hits and misses here, but overall I really enjoyed this! Throughout these 14 stories there is a range of horror subgenres and settings cover large chunks of the country. Rather than just focusing on cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there are stories set in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Hunan provinces and often if the story is set in a city, it's the fringe. Many of the entries are quite long, which I've come to expect from "short" Chinese fiction (when I taught short fiction, I had to put a page limit on my students because I had multiple students try to turn in short stories that were 50+ pages). Unfortunately one of the longest stories in the collection was the one I got along with the least and the one I'm most sad about disliking. Records of Xiangxi is an adventure horror in the vein of like Indiana Jones and it's set in southern Hunan province which is really close to where I used to live and it's tackling themes like the horrors of war and greed and playing with the idea of prejudice towards things that look "weird" or “deformed". There is so much about this novella that scream up my alley on paper but I could not get behind the writing style.
That being said, there were stories that I really loved here. The Waking Dream tackles the fears and pressures of the modern workforce with an interesting science fiction twist which seems to mirror a lot of the AI conversation happening in Western societies today. Have You Heard of Ancient Glory? was apparently pulled from a real story Zhou Dedong had seen reported on in 2019 and highlights the tight rope between changing burial practices due to rising land costs and ecological concerns and cultural traditions/beliefs about the afterlife. It also highlights the rising concern about home ownership and future prospects in China. The Ying Yang Pot takes on a superstition surrounding hotpot in Chongqing but make it a ghost/possession story. Forbidden Rooms is a suspenseful locked room thriller that tackles isolation, specifically due to rising economic pressures and the long hours of corporate culture.
I really enjoyed Sinopticon, a collection of Chinese science fiction collected by Xueting, and I have gotten more into horror over the last few years so I was thrilled to see there was a collection of Chinese horror. Like with many anthologies, there are hits and misses here, but overall I really enjoyed this! Throughout these 14 stories there is a range of horror subgenres and settings cover large chunks of the country. Rather than just focusing on cities like Beijing and Shanghai, there are stories set in Sichuan, Yunnan, and Hunan provinces and often if the story is set in a city, it's the fringe. Many of the entries are quite long, which I've come to expect from "short" Chinese fiction (when I taught short fiction, I had to put a page limit on my students because I had multiple students try to turn in short stories that were 50+ pages). Unfortunately one of the longest stories in the collection was the one I got along with the least and the one I'm most sad about disliking. Records of Xiangxi is an adventure horror in the vein of like Indiana Jones and it's set in southern Hunan province which is really close to where I used to live and it's tackling themes like the horrors of war and greed and playing with the idea of prejudice towards things that look "weird" or “deformed". There is so much about this novella that scream up my alley on paper but I could not get behind the writing style.
That being said, there were stories that I really loved here. The Waking Dream tackles the fears and pressures of the modern workforce with an interesting science fiction twist which seems to mirror a lot of the AI conversation happening in Western societies today. Have You Heard of Ancient Glory? was apparently pulled from a real story Zhou Dedong had seen reported on in 2019 and highlights the tight rope between changing burial practices due to rising land costs and ecological concerns and cultural traditions/beliefs about the afterlife. It also highlights the rising concern about home ownership and future prospects in China. The Ying Yang Pot takes on a superstition surrounding hotpot in Chongqing but make it a ghost/possession story. Forbidden Rooms is a suspenseful locked room thriller that tackles isolation, specifically due to rising economic pressures and the long hours of corporate culture.