Thank You Monica for the very kind introduction, and so I was а 2013, nine months here in

in the first phase here as a visiting fellow. Now it's three years after my research stay here,

and I'm happy that from my stay here I produced three papers which are all coming out. And this

talk I should have presented what I have done, but I think at some point if you are working with a

theme or with some material for so long you don't want to touch it anymore. So this is, this talk is

something new and it's originated from a science fiction story which I did not know where to put.

So it's about a female pilot of China. So I tried, I started from there and look up what could be

done with flying and I promised science fiction in the title of this talk and unfortunately I

will change it slightly to popular narrative of flying. That is basically how flying is

represented textually and visually in popular magazines during this period of time around the

turn of the 20th century. I hope I will not disappoint science fiction fans if you come

with the assumption that I will talk about science fiction. You might be slightly disappointed,

but on the other hand the more I research into science fiction the less comfortable I feel about

talking about early science fiction because as the literary genre the early period was really

fluid. If I want to present a science fiction text you might think it's not science fiction

because I think everybody has already assumption of how science fiction should look. So I decided

to shift it to popular narrative. China, so I'm going to talk about China at the turn of the 20th

century. So this period that China had experienced the fundamental transformations that have left

their legacy on many aspects of the Chinese life in terms of Greater China today. Confronted with

the rise of colonial powers, Chinese intellectual elites first saw modern science and technology

as instrument after debacle in the first Sino-Japanese war in 1894 to 1895. They reappraised

the science and technology, modern science and technology considering them as the cornerstone

of Western civilization and the modern world. The perception of science and technology in China

has been intertwined with the idea of progress translated as the Jin Hu or Jin Hua at the turn

of the 20th century. At that time these two terms were almost interchangeable. It was first introduced

into China by Japan by appropriating theories and hypothesis of the 19th century positivist

science, in particular the social interpretation of Charles Darwin's origin of species. The most

notable example is Yan Fu's publication of his translation of Thomas Huxley's evolution and

ethics in 1898, that is five years after the original was published. So Yan wrote a preface

himself to his translation. In his preface Yan linked the biological theories of, actually biological

hypothesis of evolution, national selection, natural selection and the survival of the fittest to the

fate of the nation. The introduction of the idea of progress into China at this time has two

interrelated far-reaching implications. First, as a new taxonomy of knowledge arose that

privileges positivist science and the modern technology over China's own knowledge about the

world. And the second, the presumption of the truthfulness of positivist science justified

appropriation of scientific hypothesis or theories in social and cultural fields. A linear historical

view, for example, had been shaped through intellectual elites argumentative writings and

the popular narrative in which progress was turned into a natural process and a historical

imperative. In this way the idea of progress contains the possibility of predicting or expecting

a better future which is more often than not predicted on scientific and technological

improvement. The dissemination of new ideas was possible because a nascent mass market for print

culture arose at the same time. Its emergence in term was the result of new print technologies,

growing urbanization, expanding enrollment in school and increased the woman's literacy at the

time. New mass media forms such as newspaper, magazine and pictorial brought the ideas of

intellectual elites into a broader cultural circulation by, this is a quote from Andrew

Jones, by reproducing, recycling and refashioning them through not just textual but also visual

representations. Talking about the future. The fascination about the future was shown in fictional

narratives claiming themselves to be stories about the future. The predictably better

technological progress of the future has thus replaced the past to legitimize political,

social and the cultural changes. Let's take a look at some of the stories about the future.