Modern China is So Crazy It Needs a New Literary Genre

The first thing I should do, of course, is explain what I mean by
“chaohuan,” which we are rendering in English as “ultra-unreal.” The
literal meaning of “chaohuan” is “surpassing the unreal” or “surpassing
the imaginary.” It is a word that a friend and I made up about a year
ago during a conversation about contemporary Chinese reality. Not long
after, I used the word in remarks I made at a conference in Hainan
province. The conference was organized by the Institute of Literature at
the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and recently the institute’s
journal, the influential Literary Review, published an article
that uses our coinage in its title. The word “ultra-unreal” is young;
it’s a newborn baby. I confidently submit, however, that it is going to
live a long, healthy life. China’s been pregnant with the word for at
least 30 years. Maybe 50 years. Maybe even 100 years.

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