A young Chinese author just beat Stephen King in the prestigious Hugo Awards for science fiction.

一名年轻的中国作家刚击败了斯蒂芬·金，拿下了科幻小说久负盛名的雨果奖！

At this year’s World Science Fiction Convention in Missouri, 32-year-old author Hao Jingfang’s story Folding Beijing won the Hugo Award for “Best Novelette”—a prize for which Stephen King’s Obits had also been nominated.

今年密苏里州举办的世界科幻大会上，32岁作家郝景芳的小说《北京折叠》在斯蒂芬·金《Obits》同时提名的情况下，获“最佳中篇小说奖”。

In Folding Beijing, China’s capital is divided into three different physical layers for the elite, middle class and underclass. And although it’s sci-fi, the story hits close to home for some Beijingers.

在《北京折叠》中，中国的首都把城市空间分成了三层——精英、中产白领和底层劳工。

In this dystopian story, the three social classes cannot travel between layers, and rarely interact. They are further separated by time: Each class is awake at different times during the 48-hour-day, and the underclass of laborers is only allowed to be awake for eight hours at night.

在这个反乌托邦的故事中，三个社会阶层是不能逾越的，也互相少有影响。他们进一步被时间分隔开来：48小时周期中，每个阶层在不同时间段醒来，底层劳工的工人们只被允许在晚上醒来8小时。

The protagonist is waste worker Lao Dao, who struggles to pay for his adopted daughter’s education. To earn money on the side, he delivers secret letters between an illicit inter-class couple on the city’s first and second layers—a dangerous and illegal trip.

故事的主人公是垃圾工人老刀，为了给收养的女儿交学费勤勤恳恳。另外他还做着一份兼职——这份工作不仅危险而且违法——他为城市第一层和第二层违法越层交往的伴侣传送秘密信件……

Many on Chinese network suggest it only won the award for it depicted an extreme disparity in Beijing, which appealed to the western readers and made up for its poor writing and lack of science fiction settings.

中国很多网民暗示——这部小说获奖全因其描述了北京极端的不平等问题，这对西方读者的新引力不是一点两点——这本书本身文笔构架一般，也缺少所谓的科幻设定，全靠这点弥补嘛~