A kaleidoscope of homes

A total of 28 performers participated in this year's gala, including not only big names but also rising writers, such as Teng Ye, Liang Ling and Su Wanwen.

To represent the theme of homecoming, they deconstruct "hometown" from many different angles such as natural conditions, social customs and history. The key images in the stories are a familiar mountain, building, street, food, decoration, legend, history, expression or craftsmanship from the hometowns.

For instance, in Liang's novel, the familiar image she represents is the Luojia Hill in Wuhan, Hubei province, where she spent her teenage years.

"In the woods of the hill are scattered research institutes of Wuhan University, looking very mysterious," she says.

As a result, on Lunar New Year's Eve, in one of the institutes, two students create an unstable wormhole, which is likely to devour the whole university if they fail to plug it with matter of at least 70 kilograms in mass. A lonely middle-aged divorced security guard surnamed Wang, whose wife and daughter have left him, jumps into it, sacrificing himself to save others.

"On Lunar New Year's Eve, not everyone can be at home. Many people have to work outside but they want to go back. They can go home in a sci-fi way. Physical laws are inviolable. They contain a beauty that humans can't challenge. So I try to combine the longing for home and the cold beauty," she says.

In the wormhole, Wang sees a multidimensional space, the past and the present. He sees his wife and daughter preparing the dinner and wants to join them. In the end, before he implodes, he eats the red-braised pork and drinks the liquor, and the pork and alcohol appear on his wife and daughter's table.

"Sci-fi is a very comprehensive genre. It can not only address things that are very far away. Subways, offices and Lunar New Year's dinners can also appear in it," she says.

Liang highlights the appeal.