- #1
The main character Jiang Miao has coworkers of various non-Chinese descent, like her work bestie who is of Japanese ancestry, and most of the side/mob characters are actually not Chinese or Asian based on their names and descriptions. The empire is portrayed as being quite diverse in terms of ethnicities. This is unusual for a Chinese interstellar novel and for a Chinese romance novel. However, it seems like it's all on the surface as none of these characters appear to retain or express much heritage or culture based on their ancestry beyond naming conventions, and I can't tell if that's a deliberate move by the author to showcase that the future is such a melting pot that everyone ascribes to one homogenous interstellar culture, or if it's a superficial attempt at token diversity. I guess the fact that I'm questioning if it's one or the other still means that the story in general is deeper than most.
The story goes out of its way to show that Jiang Miao has her choice of superior genetic matchups, which includes men of various ethnicities. On the surface that seems great (even if she of course ultimately chooses the Chinese guy) so you might be tempted to think that the story is showcasing diversity and how the future is racism-free!
But that kind of loses its meaning when the story revolves around being bred by the government to produce genetically superior children (of which the heroine approves and is excited to be a part of!), with pity and stigma attached to being born outside this program. Like, I can't praise a story for racial diversity when it's endorsing the idea that people with health problems, neurodivergence, or mental illness have less or no value because they contribute less or not at all to society, and are a burden because they suck up resources. (I'm not exaggerating. There are several casual references to and implications of this in the story, and then an explicit paragraph about it at one point. Again, scroll down to the boldprinted segment for a direct quote from chapter 49.)
[collapse]Details about the state-run genetic optimization program (and boy if that doesn't sound dystopian, although the story doesn't treat it as such) :SpoilerThe state-run genetic optimization program is an optional "privilege" afforded to those who fulfill certain requirements like an income threshold and I forget what else, probably education level and how elite your job is (which are of course both tied to income). So, like, you don't have to do it. But if you can, most people do, and those who do are regarded with envy and excitement by those who can't. Reproduction through the program is incentivized with major financial benefits from the government based on the child's ability to score well in school and progress through higher tiers of education—which the story and the MC regard as a good thing, and the story never hints at anything negative about this, and man, I had so many thoughts about how commonly ab*sed this system (and millions of children) must be, but the story never goes there and I'm not getting into it further here. I guess in the future, child ab*se and greed and s*upidity are mostly eliminated due to the increasing genetic superiority of humankind, I speculate not at all in the least bit sarcastically.
Since this is a Chinese story and an interstellar one at that, the military is of course glamorized and glorified. And in this particular story, gene-optimized children with at least one military parent are partly owned by the state—pardon me, I mean, they are required by the state to attend special junior high military school rather than normal junior high, and when they complete military training, actually enlisting in the military is technically* optional. Most, of course, choose to enlist in the military, since the military is put on a pedestal and is afforded the highest pay and prestige of all.
* The child is forced to sign a service agreement upon enrollment and if they fail to uphold that agreement upon graduation, they are harshly punished for it: "'If the obligation period is not fulfilled after graduation, there are not only economic penalties, but the citizen rating will also be significantly reduced.'" (Chapter 24)
But a child can choose not to attend military school in the first place! In which case, the child is given a huge fine for not attending, which they are obligated to pay off unless their parent/caregiver chooses to pay it for them. Yes, an underage child will carry the burden of state-enforced economic penalties unless a parent pays it off for them, and given the way parenthood is emotionally and psychologically desensitized, distant, and financially motivated in the future, I'm pretty sure most parents would just let their child be penalized because it's none of their business.
But but but! Fees/fines/economic penalties can be avoided based on the child's "scores" and "physique" at birth and the caregiver's observation during their growth, in which case the caregiver can basically send a petition to the military for an exception for the child to opt out of military school, in which case the fine is smaller... but they're still fined.
The fact that the government shapes (and controls) so much of its population's reproduction and children, and social attitudes toward both as well as the concept of family VS "independence" is a detail that is sort of tangentially brought up a couple of times later in the story and seems like it's building toward something that is both bigger and glaringly obvious. And that sort of veiled semi-criticism and analysis of a fictional government is very rare in Chinese web novels. (I'm thinking perhaps this is a Taiwanese novel OR perhaps it gets away with it because it is more subtle/less overt, and/or the world and government are not as explicitly Chinese-coded and maybe one of the other empires or whatever out there is more explicitly Chinese with traditional Chinese values and will probably be styled as superior... I'm hedging my bets on the latter.)
(I actually have a whole lot to say about the presentation of "filial piety and traditional family relationships VERSUS super 'independence', 'selfishness', and zero filial piety with the complete erasure of family' = a very thinly-veiled criticism of Western society and its negative influence on traditional Chinese values" but this freaking review-turned-critique-essay is long enough just about the eugenics aspect.)
[collapse]About the backstory/history leading to gender equality and the dissolution of family units and familial relationships in the future:SpoilerThere is some gruesomely heavy-handed backstory explaining the advent of artificial uteruses for male pregnancy, and it involves some kind of historical disaster that reduced that human population and/or female population and/or lowered fertility rates, I forget exactly because it was so cliché, but this meant that women became valued commodities ens*aved, r*ped, traded, and fought over, reduced to nothing but childbearing machines. Then there was some kind of revolution and blah blah blah, eventually artificial uteruses were created both out of necessity and as a means of restoring female autonomy and assuring absolute gender equality.
And that's why in the future, there are no more gender norms (supposedly) and tangentially the concept of "family" is a historical footnote that is regarded as an exotic oddity and social taboo, to the point that Jiang Miao works very hard to conceal her mindset and is ashamed/scared when others question her reaching out once a month during college and once or twice after graduating to her biological mother (who by then had pretty much cut off communication except for generic polite replies when the MC reached out), since Jiang Miao's attempting to maintain contact could be interpreted as unhealthy dependence and abnormal fixation upon a parental figure, meaning she is mentally unfit and may no longer be eligible for the gene optimization program or to hold her job.
And while I'd really love for Jiang Miao to realize how messed up that is, she instead reluctantly realizes that social norms and values are different in the future and the future is where she now lives, so her parents were simply friendly caretakers raising an infant into a productive member of society, for which they will receive government benefits based on her performance, and once she was an adult, they need no longer maintain contact as they should all be satisfied: the parents raised a good offspring, and the adult offspring is now fully independent and living their own separate life.
Considering how much of this story is both subtle and complex, the dramatically barbaric and yet still generic history involving the mass ens*avement of women for the sole purposes of reproduction comes across as a clunky, clumsy effort to justify male pregnancy via artificial uteruses. Just like the wholly unnecessary "over 25% of test tube babies were worthless because most of them had autism and the rest had depression or other mental health disorders so that's why reproduction is now solely carried out in the womb of a human, be it natural in female or artificial in male" (once again, scroll down to the boldprint for the exact quote I keep referencing), it is completely unnecessary to have this s*upid period of history as the reason for current gender equality and male pregnancy. It could have just as reasonably and easily been "there was a still-generic disaster that decimated the human population and/or fertility and so medical technology focused on means to deal with that, leading to the development of artificial uteruses and male pregnancy, and incidentally when men experienced what it's like to be pregnant, great strides were made in gender equality, leading to our modern utopian society."
I hate it when stories go for dramatic shock value to "justify" a development that didn't have to be dramatic or shocking. It comes across as cheapening actual violence against women by inventing a supposedly utopian future where women are "free" from being "forced" to have children while men now have the option to become pregnant, but it came at the cost of that grossly extreme yet glossed-over violence and justifying the culling of anyone with depression or other mental illness or neurodivergence. Okay, enough soapboxing about that, back to soapboxing about eugenics.
[collapse]About the heavily-emphasized supposed "gender equality" of the future and how "gender norms" are supposedly no longer a thing and how much of a superfail implosion that becomes later on, after the ML gives birth:SpoilerDespite the CP happily agreeing to remain ignorant about the baby's gender so they can be surprised at birth and Jiang Miao supposedly being fine with either gender, she is openly disappointed when Yan He gives birth to a boy. Yan He is upset by this and questions her about it, and she says: "'I just actually kind of wanted a daughter, to buy her little dresses, dress her up every day. Sigh, this lifestyle is gone now.'" (Chapter 59)
"Although gender equality had been achieved, and genetic optimization was reducing the differences between boys and girls, some things were inherent.
For example, most girls naturally liked dressing up and shopping, while most boys were quite impatient with that." (Chapter 59)
... look, I was trying hard to give her the benefit of the doubt that her 21st century prejudices were showing, but no, instead the author and story itself have to emphasize that stereotypical binary gender norms are genetically inherent. Wow. The story just undid 59 chapters' worth of its own progressive work in 2 sentences.
Then it goes on to not just shoot itself in the foot again but blow both legs off immediately in the next chapter, after Yan He accuses Jiang Miao of gender-based favoritism and says he ain't allowin' any of that with their child, and the story goes on to again emphasize strict gender stereotypes as genetic.
"Indeed, there was a trend of favoring girls over boys in the Gita Republic. This was mainly because caregivers found raising boys too exhausting!
Despite achieving equality and genetic enhancement, there were almost no differences between adult men and women except for a slight difference in physical strength. But when they were still children, the difference was still significant!
Most girls could really be quiet and well-behaved, while boys always caused chaos. By the time they reached seven or eight years old, it was simply a disaster." (Chapter 60)
The story goes on to say that the abandonment rate for boys is very high and many parents would just give up and dump custody on the government, forsaking those tempting financial benefits because they're fed up caring for too-energetic troublesome boys by the age of 7 or 8, and then abandonment rates spike again when the boys hit puberty.
"... [Jiang Miao] had reflected on this phenomenon of abandoning boys, which was completely opposite to her motherland in ancient Earth times.
After achieving equality, surname rights were no longer exclusively for males. Therefore, regardless of whether they were boys or girls, they could both fulfill the purpose of reproduction and continuation.
After men lost the exclusive right to surnames, when everyone was treated as independent individuals, the advantages such as delicacy, patience, gentleness, and early maturity that women possessed from childhood became more prominent, making them the preferred gender for caregivers." (Chapter 60)
Yep, you read that right. Those with two X chromosomes are from childhood naturally more delicate, patient, and gentle, with early maturity, compared to the crazy nasty exuberance and juvenile troublemaking that a Y chromosome presents.
But let me reassure you that gender equality and gender stereotypes are largely gone in the future! It's just that girls are naturally quieter, daintier, gentler, and easier to raise than boys, and so boys are frequently abandoned by their caregivers and the entire population has a preference for raising girls instead of boys. Somehow all this boy-abandonment stuff doesn't at all affect society or attitudes toward men and boys, or the men and boys themselves. But gender equality!!!!
[collapse]That is one of the major weaknesses of this novel: good ideas and the interesting subversion of tropes, but ultimately stepping backwards and undercutting its own messages by adding unnecessarily dramatic backstories and extremely off-putting details to try to justify/explain the way this particular future society came about. And claiming advancements in social awareness and gender equality only to turn right around and reinforce the very same stereotypes it's claiming to be subverting.I went into this story breezily, expecting it to be a typical interstellar romance consisting of largely insubstantial fluff, so I didn't think twice about the gene stuff mentioned in the summary or the initial run of chapters where it talks about an optional program to match partners based on genetic compatibility. That's a typical interstellar trope after all and when it's treated as a casual detail without any further explanation, my brain can remain blissfully shut off.But when the story continues to bring it up, emphasize it, and go into considerable detail building upon it, my brain reactivates and starts to devote more thought and analysis to it and the tone of its presentation, and you end up with this giant critique.There's an attitude of eugenics, inherent inferiority VS superiority being determined from birth based on genetics, and that sadly too-common-in-Chinese-novels casual prejudice, demonizing, and misunderstanding of autism and mental health. Basically, if you're born without gene optimization and so are "naturally" born of two "random" people, you're not exactly a second-class citizen, but it's far more "likely" you'll have physical and mental health problems and have a shorter lifespan and be less intelligent and psychologically stable and also ugly I mean not as attractive—which incidentally also means you're probably not going to advance as far or do as well in the compulsory education system which is the foundation of society, and of course you won't get as good a job or be as wealthy, so your standard of living will be much lower. And, incidentally, because you don't meet the elite requirements, you will not be able to participate in the gene optimization program.Most of this information is stated in a couple of paragraphs early on, and the rest of it is heavily implied by reference. After all, if the story says that our MC Jiang Miao is blessed with good looks, perfect health, high intelligence, and did extremely well in school and landed an excellent job due to the perfect gene compatibility of her parents, and previously the story spoke pityingly about "natural-born" people being inferior and kind of poor and not up to standard, it's not hard to draw conclusions by comparison.I will note that the story doesn't actually frequently compare natural vs genetically optimized citizens—as I recall, up to chapter 49, it's mentioned once or twice in the very early chapters and then not specifically brought up again. But the fact that the story brought it up at all, and so unfavorably, makes it hard to forget.And here's the thing: If that were only the common social attitude of the interstellar future in general, I could maybe get past it as long as Jiang Miao had private reservations about it, because obviously she disagrees with many of the social attitudes of the future since she's a reincarnator from our era. BUT unfortunately, despite Jiang Miao longing for family relationships and closeness like in our time, she's totally 100% on board with genetic culling, I mean, not that the story calls it that buuuuut, ahem. Which is to say she not only endorses and supports genetic superiority, she's an enthusiast about it based on her own personal experience of being the product of it.I really kind of lost it in chapter 49, where the story finally goes into detail about why humans still have to carry children to term in their bodies despite technology and medical science being advanced enough to do IVF in an artificial uterus implanted into an adult man, who is then able with monitoring, hormone injections, and supplements to carry a child to term just like a female. Until then I had been questioning why test tube babies weren't a thing."The children born from extracorporeal uterine incubation, totaling over a million over several decades, had more than two hundred thousand cases of autism, and about fifty thousand cases of depression, bipolar disorder, and similar conditions. Altogether, the rate exceeded twenty-five percent. This rate was simply unbearable. Especially for autism, with the highest incidence, patients could hardly contribute any value to society and required professional care." (Chapter 49) What the cinnamon toast f*ck is this sh*t. Look, I'm already bothered every time transmigration stories use the trope that "the original body had autism and was essentially an empty shell and not a 'real' person until the transmigrating soul took over", and I hate that the depictions of neurodivergence and mental illness (two different things) are treated as the same thing and treated as making someone inferior or less than human. Generally speaking, Asian attitudes and prejudices toward these things are not very understanding or positive, which is why depictions of such in Asian literature and media tend to be negative (when depicted at all) and frequently used as convenient plot devices.The thing is, because it's usually a throwaway line or two in those novels at the very beginning, I can usually be disgusted and off-put and then ignore it since it's never brought up again in the story and the rest of the story is fine.In a story like this where it's heavily detailed and an inherent part of the story and styling itself as based on "science" and "facts", I just can't overlook it or turn my brain off. Yes, there are studies about genetic components and therefore inheritance regarding autism and mental illness (which again are two different things), with often very different and very controversial conclusions as well as conclusions that are basically inconclusive, but this story is... man, I can't even get into how messed up that quoted paragraph is, in so many ways.Like, the fact that the author even went there says something. Why couldn't the story have just been that "extracorporeal uterine incubation had a miscarriage rate of over 25% in the second trimester" or something like that. After all, the story doesn't say why that 25%+ rate was a thing, it just says it was and so they stopped doing it. But no, instead the story has to insist that autism and mental illness are a burden upon society, especially those with autism, who have zero value since they can't contribute to society and also require "professional care". Never mind that autism is a spectrum and... Man, I don't even think I'm a SJW or particularly knowledgeable about autism and this story just... wow.Then you tie this info back with the emphasis, praise, positivity, and pursuit of genetic optimization and... Then you tie this to the fact that our heroine Jiang Miao enthusiastically endorses all this and... ... yeah.I do not have the feeling that this story is going to do a complete 180 as if this were a western novel, wherein Jiang Miao would gradually begin to realize with growing horror how the supposed utopia she lives in is actually a twisted dystopia, her beliefs and world "facts" have been manipulated by the government, and that her privileged life has been built upon the trampled lives of the less genetically optimized whom she used to pity for being less fortunate without truly understanding how she (and everyone else) was treating them.Instead, I think Jiang Miao is going to leave the empire for a different empire (at best, fleeing pursuit in some scifi adventure way, or perhaps a more low key having to circumscribe a lot of red tape and secure secret passage to smuggle herself out, or maybe just literally booking a one-way ticket) where the concept of family relationships and filial piety is still a thing, and live there happily as a family unit with her hot possibly ex-general and certainly new husband and their beautifully genetically optimized child.However, I don't know if I can stomach reading much further. I really do hate cilantro, you know?