The other cause for his fame was that he had created China’s first experimental community. Unlike the “return to nature” utopian groups in the West, his “Pastoral China” wasn’t located in the wilderness, but in the midst of one of its largest cities. The community had no property of its own. Everything needed for daily life, including food, came fr

Look at them, the bugs. Humans have used everything in their power to extinguish them: every kind of poison, aerial sprays, introducing and cultivating their natural predators, searching for and destroying their eggs, using genetic modification to sterilize them, burning with fire, drowning with water. Every family has bug spray, every desk has a f

do,” said the science consul. “We’ve all studied the first messages from Earth carefully. The section most worthy of attention is their history. Let’s observe the facts: Humans took more than a hundred thousand Earth years to progress from the Hunter-Gatherer Age to the Agricultural Age. To get from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age took a

A dazzling sunset swiftly turned to night, as though a pair of giant hands had pulled a black cloth over a world that had turned to ash.

Ye’s heart beat with effort, like a string on some musical instrument about to break.

this old woman, who had weathered so many storms and become as gentle as water,

I started the fire, but I couldn’t control how it burnt.

In the shooter hypothesis, a good marksman shoots at a target, creating a hole every ten centimeters. Now suppose the surface of the target is inhabited by intelligent, two-dimensional creatures. Their scientists, after observing the universe, discover a great law: “There exists a hole in the universe every ten centimeters.” They have mistaken the

“Do you know why I came here?” Evans continued. “The seeds of Pan-Species Communism had sprouted long ago in the ancient East.” “You’re thinking of Buddhism?” “Yes. The focus of Christianity is Man. Even though all the species were placed into Noah’s Ark, other species were never given the same status as humans. But Buddhism is focused on saving al