Table of Contents:

Setting the Scene — What is China? — Privilege & Ennui

Jules Verne’s 1879 novel Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China is known by several different names in the English-speaking world, most popularly as Tribulations of a Chinaman in China, or Tribulations of a Chinese Gentleman. This first title we can disregard for the obvious reason of containing a term for Chinese people that is no longer appropriate; the second we must disregard for a slightly more curious reason. At first glance, it may seem apt; this is, in fact, a story about a Chinese gentleman, and the tribulations that he faces. However, what is most important about this novel, and what is mistakenly omitted here from the French original, is that this Chinese Gentleman is in China.

Now, this may seem a bizarre point to dwell on, but we must remember that this is a novel by a French author written for a European audience. When we think of a Chinese man in the late 19th century anywhere other than China, or at least in any European-dominated country such as France, England, the US, or Canada, we would think of a man with many tribulations indeed. This would be a man outside of his home, residing in a place foreign and hostile to his very being, subject to racist attitudes and a racist system of law. That’s not what this book is about.

What Jules Verne more had in mind with this book was exploring the culture of China from the perspective of a Chinese character, and by doing so to focus more on the similarities between a Chinese gentleman and a European gentleman, than the differences inherent in their stations elsewhere.

Thus, Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China is, in fact, not a redundant title. It is an extremely appropriate title, while at the same time, being a hilarious title.

Jules Verne is known primarily as an author of children’s adventures stories. You may know him as the author of Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, From the Earth to the Moon, and Journey to the Centre of the Earth. This reputation as a children’s author is not entirely unfounded; his books are, in fact, adventures, and they are enjoyable by children. However, this reputation is primarily based on the abridged versions that were popularized after his death. When we take a closer look at the complete novels that are generally available today, we might find a little bit more depth there than we may have expected.

Clearly, Jules Verne had a lot of fun writing his books. This is evident by the sheer volume of novels that he put out during his life, but also by the fanciful plots, exhilarating action and humorous narration. But at the same time, Verne took his writing seriously, and this is evidenced by the fact that it still around to this day. He was a skilled and empathetic writer, and while his works don’t fit the mould of serious writing that we may be used to, that doesn’t make them necessarily frivolous. In my eyes, Verne is more akin to a playwright than a novelist — in fact, most of the success he found during his life was from the long-running stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days. As a playwright, his emphasis therefore is on larger-than-life, yet still immediately relatable characters, thrust into extreme situations where their innate qualities shine most evidently.

Another striking aspect of Verne’s works is his research, despite being limited to the information available in French at the time that he wrote. He didn’t speak any languages other than French, and he didn’t have access to the type of travel that even the average middle-class citizen today might take for granted. He had to employ his imagination, as well as his understanding of people in general, in order to depict the worlds he sets his stories in.

As a person who has only read about China in books, but has read a lot about China in books, I have to say that Jules Verne, another person who only read about China in books, but read a lot about China in books, does a remarkable job here. But more than the factual accuracy, what strikes me most about Tribulations is that it very rarely feels mean-spirited or overly exoticizing. It depicts China as a place full of people that face many of the same difficulties, and experience many of the same emotions, as people anywhere. The events of the novel are over-the-top, but not as a means of ridicule: all of Verne’s novels are over-the-top, whether they take place in the United States, France, or anywhere across the entire globe. In fact, the most ridiculous aspect of this book, which I will get into later, concerns Americans.

This is not to say, however, that this book is free of blemishes. It is, in all respects, a product of its time and place as much as the imagination of its author. It is up to the reader to determine for themselves in what spirit they believe this book was written. I can offer but one perspective. I believe the book to be an honest attempt to explore an unfamiliar world and present it to its contemporary readers. Honesty, however, does not preclude certain biases. In fact, it can positively relish in them.

No answer to this question can deny Tribulation’s status as, at least, a curious historical artifact. The world, no matter how small it may feel today, is, and always has been, a very large place, and despite our best efforts, understanding those on the opposite side of it is never simple. The historical relationship between Europe and Eastern Asia is long and ever-fascinating, yet it’s fair to describe the 19th century as its most cruel and fraught period. In the aftermath of the Opium Wars, and in the midst of China’s “century of humiliation,” Jules Verne chose to write this book. What he meant by doing so, we can only guess.

But the novel is not interesting only for its setting. The book requires an exotic setting to facilitate certain absurd aspects of the plot, some of which have nothing to do with China at all. Jules Verne can not help but be the imaginative man that he is, and so we are introduced to institutions and technologies that exist nowhere in the world, not even the Celestial Empire. Verne, in his trademark fashion, explains all of this in such a matter-of-fact way that the ludicrosity is understated. He does not revel in it; he simply submerges us in it.

All this is in service of a unique and yet universal sort of story. It is the story of a rich man, full of ennui, who has lost the joy in his life, and no longer wants to live. It is a story of how he regains this will to live. I wouldn’t call the themes deep, necessarily, but they’re certainly present, and the book, in all its rush and excitement, never loses sight of them. The book is fun, and it’s an adventure. But I wouldn’t say it’s empty calories; it’s not like eating a sugary cake. It’s more like eating a nice sandwich. A sandwich tastes great, but it’s not junk. It’s satisfying food. This sandwich in particular has a couple ingredients that maybe you didn’t expect to find in a sandwich. By the end, you’re full, and you’ve learned something about what you can put inside of sandwiches.

I would like to, in this essay, explore what it is that makes Tribulations such an interesting and engaging novel. I was first drawn to the book by its audacious title, but was pleasantly surprised to find this book grow to be one of the novels I think about most often throughout my daily life. As this is a book I am sure very few of my listeners have ever read or even heard of, I consider it a great honour to introduce to you Jules Verne’s Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China.

SETTING THE SCENE

I mentioned before when discussing the title of the novel how important it is that the novel takes place in China, and not anywhere else, and this is entirely true; however, in another sense, the fact that this story takes place in China is sometimes entirely inconsequential. This is true of many stories; one look at cinematic Shakespeare adaptations makes this clear. Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood” is an adaptation of Macbeth that takes place in feudal Japan. "The Banquet" is a Chinese film that re-imagines Hamlet in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period of China. And then there’s "Haider", which re-imagines that same story amidst the Kashmir conflicts of 1995. The plot of a story, especially a story that is moralistic in nature, is often independent of the setting in which it takes place. Certain emotions, character traits, and relationships are nigh universal. You’ll find them anywhere.

However, if the setting was unimportant, why would these adaptations change it at all? If it’s all the same whether the play takes place in Denmark, Scotland, China, or India, then why not just leave it where it is? The reason is a function of the audience. A story that takes place somewhere else, somewhere far away, gives the reader or viewer a very different feeling than a story that takes place in their hometown. Stories in exotic locations are exciting in their strangeness and their surprise, even if perhaps the surprise at the end is that we aren’t so different after all. By moving the location to the audience’s home, you are allowing them to more freely reckon with the emotional contents of the story, without being distracted by unfamiliar scenery and customs. Chinese audiences know what the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period is like; they learned about it in school. They might not be as familiar with late-medieval Denmark. If they’re spending their time thinking about late-medieval Denmark, they’re not thinking about Hamlet’s inner struggles, or Ophelia’s descent into madness.

Conversely, by doing the opposite; that is, by setting a story in a far-away location, you can distract the reader and hide a lack of emotional depth. A lack of emotional depth is by no means a bad thing for a story, as long as it has other aspects that make it engaging. Jules Verne is not a master of emotional depth by any means, and I imagine he’d be the first to admit it. Thus, we see already one reason why he sets so many of his stories outside of France, or even Europe. He’s relying on novelty to excite the audience. This is not a fault, but instead a recognition of his strengths. By setting his stories in unfamiliar locations, he can better utilize his imaginative qualities, incorporating possible future technologies and constructing plots that border on the absurd. It’s a lot easier for readers to accept such things when the story takes place in what may as well be a fantasy land.

Thus, in this novel, we find ourselves in China. The question, “Why China specifically?” is not really much of a question because the answer is simply, “Why not?” Verne set books in Mexico, India, South Africa, the US, England, and even outer space. China is a geographical point on the globe. Thus, it is a potential setting for a Jules Verne novel.

Now, it’s worth noting that Verne originally wanted to call the book The Voluntary Assassinee and set it in the United States. Lampooning the United States is big business, and we can see Verne’s mastery of it in From the Earth to the Moon. However, possibly because of the concern about setting a story about suicide in a Christian country, he quickly decided to move the story to China. This perhaps explains why a ridiculous caricature of American Business still remains a major factor in the novel’s plot.

The book begins with some classic bait-and-switch humour, the effectiveness of which is perhaps undermined somewhat by the book’s abruptly literal title. We are invited to witness a dinner party conversation, in which the main character and his friends discuss the proper way of living. One says, “It must be admitted that life has some good in it,” to which another replies, “And some bad also.”

After dropping a few oh-so-subtle hints, the narrator directly asks the audience:

“Where did this conversation take place? Was it an European dining-room in Paris, London, Vienna or St. Petersburg? Were these six guests assembled together in a restaurant in the Old or New World? And who were they who, without having drunk to excess, were discussing these questions in the midst of a feast? They were not Frenchmen, you may rest assured, because they were not talking politics.”

After a little more of this sort of tomfoolery, it is revealed that we are, in fact, in the Celestial Empire, and that these men who so resemble the reader in all but the most superficial of customs are in fact Chinese gentlemen, albeit modern ones that, to a certain extent, live in a “Europeanized” sort of world.

The host of this dinner party, and the main character of our novel is Kin-Fo, a rich man in his early-thirties who has grown weary of his luxurious life and has come to take it for granted. The only consolation he has is his betrothal to a beautiful young woman from Peking named Le-ou, but even this prospect does little to raise his spirits.

His friend, the philosopher Wang, diagnoses his problem thusly: that Kin-Fo can never be truly happy until he comes to understands what misfortune is, and appreciate the contrast. He toasts Kin-Fo: “I drink to the near interposition of some protective divinity, who, in order to make him happy, will require him to pass through the trial of misfortune.”

We, in the business, call this foreshadowing.

Kin-Fo soon meets his misfortune, when he receives a telegram from San Francisco informing him that his bank has fallen through, and all his money is gone. This money was, interestingly enough, inherited from his father, whose business was repatriating the bodies of Chinese labourers who died in the New World so they could be buried in their family’s burial grounds. It’s no surprise, when we consider the amount of labour being exported from China due to lack of economic opportunity, and the conditions in which these people were made to work in the US and Canada, that this would be a lucrative business indeed.

Kin-Fo, who wasn’t too keen on life to begin with, decides that without the wealth necessary to maintain his lifestyle, as well as support his bride-to-be, life is simply not worth living. He plans to commit suicide. But first, he must take out an insurance policy.

The insurance firm he visits is an American one, implanted into the heart of Shanghai and run with the absurd whimsy one might expect from an American in a Jules Verne novel. This firm caters toward the ultra-rich, and provides a variety of policies and protections. This includes insurance against suicide, although of course with a high premium. Kin-Fo takes out a policy whose primary beneficiary is his betrothed, Le-Ou, with some left aside for his philosopher friend, Wang.

But Kin-Fo does not find suicide quite as easy as the narrator leads us to expect. After choosing the spot for his death — The Pavilion of Long Life, ironically enough — he picks his poison, mixes it with some opium to allow it to go down more smoothly, and settles down to end his life. But he notices, at the last moment, that even as he is about to sleep his final sleep, he still feels no strong emotion, only the constant gentle ennui that he is so familiar with. He stops himself, and decides that he must feel some strong passion at least once before he dies.

The next morning, he goes to see his philosopher friend, Wang. Wang was formerly a soldier involved in the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s, when a man who proclaimed himself the brother of Jesus Christ led thousands of Han Chinese against the Qing government, controlled by Manchu people from the north. The book presents a curiously pro-Taiping perspective, with both Wang and Kin-Fo holding anti-government views based on the foreignness of the Qing Dynasty’s rulers, who are described by the narrator as “Tartars.” What is curious about this is that both English and French soldiers were involved on the side of the Qing at the end of the Taiping Rebelleion, although perhaps this was not necessarily a policy decision as much as the consequence of the rebellion reaching cities such as Shanghai, where there were large European populations.

Wang was taken in by Kin-Fo’s father after the rebellion, who was sympathetic to the cause but not to the point of showing it, for fear he would be killed. Wang then became Kin-Fo’s philosophical mentor, and it is as a mentor, friend, and ruthless warrior that Kin-Fo turns to Wang on that fateful day. Having realized the impossibility of mustering the strength to take his own life, Kin-Fo decides to write a contract that specifies that Wang is allowed to kill him. He can do this, of course, because we are in China, and therefore anything can happen. The contract stipulates that he must be killed at some point before June 25, which is when his insurance policy expires. He wishes to know nothing of the exact time or manner of the death, because he feels this way the whole thing will be much more exciting.

Little does Kin-Fo realize that this American insurance company he has become involved with does not insure against suicide simply out of blissful naivete, and they don’t charge the premiums they do for nothing. A duo of goofball bodyguards named Craig and Fry are deployed to watch over Kin-Fo and ensure that no harm comes to him, either from his own hand or anyone else’s. Craig and Fry have a tendency to finish each other’s sentences, and that is about the extent of their characterization.

Lo and behold, a week later Kin-Fo finds out that he is not ruined after all, and that the letter telling him the bank had failed was based on misinformation. He goes to tell Wang that the contract is no longer necessary, but lo and behold, Wang has disappeared. All attempts to contact Wang and nullify the contract fail, and Wang is nowhere to be found. Kin-Fo, unable to bear sitting and waiting for Wang to come for him, decides to travel around in the hopes of reaching the date of June 25th before Wang can get to him, or conversely, in hopes of finding Wang and explaining the new circumstances.

And thus our situation is complete: a previously disillusioned man clinging for a life he recently regained, a pair of comedic yet competent bodyguards, a distant lover, a careless but loyal servant, a lurking assassin, and a journey across an unfamiliar land.

WHAT IS CHINA?

I’d like to give credit for much of the information in this section to a paper I found titled "The Tribulations of a Chinese in China: Verne and the Celestial Empire", by William Butcher, which appeared in the Chinese publication, Journal of Foreign Languages.

The question that immediately struck me when I first began this novel was, “How does Verne know any of this?” Not that Europeans knew nothing of Asia in the 19th century, but this information was specialized and often only known by those with firsthand experience or those keenly interested to know. There were not many French people aside from merchants and soldiers who had visited China, and while the objects of Chinese manufacture were certainly popular, actual knowledge of Chinese people and how they lived was fairly limited.

Verne, while writing the novel, wrote to his publisher to say that he is writing the book “with twenty volumes arranged all around him,” and that he has “plunged into the Celestial Empire to the very tip of my tail.” This is clear throughout the novel, as we are presented with details and information that are often wholly irrelevant, and are there simply to add a bit of flavour. You get the sense throughout all of his novels that Verne is the kind of person who doesn’t like to withhold anything that he knows, and that if he has any further information on the topic, you are going to hear about it. What’s hilarious at times is the juxtaposition between this meandering sort of digressionary fact-sharing, and the streamlined, brisk pace of his narratives. These two contradictory modes end up complementing and getting in each other’s way in turn, which is part of what makes Verne’s work so unique.

China, in this book, is both a real place with a real history, and a fantastical world in which anything can happen. The first is the result of Verne’s research; the second is the result of Verne’s whimsy. He wants to tell you about China; he also wants to write a novel in the only way he knows how.

All places in the world have their fair share of absurdity that is most obvious to those who live nowhere near them. Verne treats China in much the same way as he treats the United States in From the Earth to the Moon. He discovers a few stereotypical traits and elevates them to ridiculous degrees. But there is not a total lack of respect in these elevations; you get the sense that he is not lampooning out of malice but simply out of good fun, and that there is a level of respect for whatever it is that seems most ridiculous. In From the Earth to the Moon, it is the never-say-die character of American industry, combined with their intent commitment to their hobbies, that is both a source of ridicule and the very thing that allows them them to achieve technological feats that would be impossible elsewhere.

So, what is it about China that makes the story of Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China possible? It’s obvious that we are working within stereotypes and limited information, but let’s take a look at what we’ve got here.

The passivity with which Kin-Fo accepts his fate as a ruined man, and his lack of care for death, is presented explicitly in the book as a characteristically Chinese trait. Philosophical resignation, rather than a drive to labour one’s way to success, is what seems to mark the difference between East and West. It is easy to see how Verne came to such a conclusion; the introduction of Buddhist ideas to popular interest in Europe had been carried by such melancholic individuals as Arthur Schopenhauer, and the general understanding of Buddhism was that it clashed intrinsically with any joy for life or motivational drive. Other factors, such as the maintenance of household shrines for deceased ancestors, and the openness with which coffins were bought and displayed in households, might have indicated to Verne that life was not held in as much esteem in China as it was in Europe.

In this vein, we can look at the character of Wang as representing the archetype of the Chinese philosopher. Unlike European philosophers of the contemporary era, whose works had veered into logically complex quasi-theological arguments about the nature of being, the philosophy of Wang is much more in line with how we might use the word in everyday situations: a way of thinking that underpins the search for a good life. Wang understands what a good life is, and how to achieve it. In this way, he might be better described as a sage rather than a philosopher. His advice is simple and to the point. He appreciates material pleasures, such as a good meal or a comfy bed, but not to the point of obsession, and realizes that his appreciation is based on an understanding of what it is like to lack such pleasures. This is exactly what a Western audience would expect from someone we are told is a Chinese scholar.

We see another representation of the Chinese national character in the relationship between Kin-Fo and his servant, Soun. We are told that servants in China are fiercely loyal, and yet at the same time, harshly critical toward their masters and occasionally antagonistic toward them. It is this bizarre mixture of loyalty and careless antagonism that makes up Soun, and this absurdity that allows him to provide comic relief.

The names in the novel, by the way, are the result of Verne deciding to avoid, quote, “Those diabolical Chinese names which I don’t want to bore our readership with.” Anyone with experience reading the reviews of foreign-language novels on sites such as Goodreads will immediately understand how Verne came to this view of his readership: a preponderance of non-English names is often viewed as a fault by English-speaking audiences, and this problem is compounded when it is difficult to immediately intuit how these names are supposed to be pronounced. Similarly, anyone with a non-English name residing in an English-speaking part of the world will know that, even if the transliteration of their name into English characters is absolutely foolproof, there are many people for whom even such proofing is inadequate.

(Obviously, this is not exclusive to English speakers or white people at all. Everyone has trouble with foreign names; if you go anywhere far away with any sort of name, you’ll find people who can’t pronounce it. We all speak different languages. Different languages have different sounds, and if you grow up speaking a language which does not contain a particular sound, it’s not going to be easy to just suddenly learn it out of the blue.)

But while it’s not always easy, it is respectful to try to make an attempt, even if you find that you can’t do it properly, even after the hundredth time. So we can fault Verne here for simply giving up, and providing his characters — or more likely allowing his publisher to provide his characters — with vaguely Chinese-sounding names that wouldn’t trouble the audience’s tongue too much. It’s lazy, in the end, and it is a shame that they didn’t bother finding more names like Wang, or Lee, which are both accurate and simple to pronounce.

This kind of thing is part of what makes the book’s setting so difficult to grapple with. Most of the time, it seems to show a respectful curiosity; at other times, it shows wilful ignorance or a reliance on stereotypes. It’s hard for me, a 21st-century person, to understand exactly where the line exists between a simple lack of available information and a lack of care. You definitely couldn’t write a book like this nowadays. That’s not because of PC or woke culture or something, but just because you can no longer say you didn’t know better. There are a million avenues by which you can learn about things, even things as far away as China.

Verne knew about as much about China as it seems he possibly could given the circumstances, and in some ways, it wasn’t quite enough to paint an accurate picture. The picture he painted is skewed and weird, but in a certain way, that’s part of the charm. We don’t read such a book to find out what China is actually like; we read this book to find out what a French person in the 1870s thought China was like. And the answer is that he basically thought it was like China, but a little bit different.

There are certainly people nowadays with access to much more information about China, who have much less accurate and much less sympathetic views toward the country and its people. Maybe the information one has doesn’t matter as much as one’s attitude toward this information. Is one trying to oversimplify in order to harshly criticize a country and its people? Or is one trying to reckon with the vast multitudes that exist in any society, and within that multitude, glean some sort of idea that might help us understand it? I would argue that Verne is more often trying to do the latter than the former, and that’s why this book doesn’t feel as horribly antiquated as it otherwise might.

PRIVILEGE & ENNUI

It’s fairly unremarkable to state that being rich, and particularly being born rich, can be somewhat boring. With the world at one’s fingertips, it’s difficult to decide what exactly is worth doing. We can perhaps gain an understanding of Kin-fo by comparing him to another famous literary "hero," Pierre Bezukhov from War & Peace.

Like Pierre, Kin-Fo has no family, and his wealth is the result of inheritance rather than industriousness. He finds life dull and uneventful, and not worth even the slight bit of effort it requires from him. Kin-Fo, unlike Pierre, doesn’t drink to excess or hang around with bears; in fact, it’s unclear to us exactly what Kin-Fo does. As far as we can tell, he just sort of sits around and berates his servants.

Both characters find themselves embarking on a journey of discovery: discovering the value of life. Both of them suffer, during this journey, previously unknown privations, and both are threatened with execution only to be spared at the last second.

However, these two remarkably similar stories are told in two remarkably dissimilar ways, and leave us with very different impressions. While Pierre’s suffering is the result of living during a time when such suffering abounds, and is heaped upon him by no one in particular, Kin-Fo’s suffering is revealed to be the direct result of a scheme.

You will remember that Wang disappeared with Kin-Fo’s contract, and thus Kin-Fo heads off on a journey with the dual purpose of either finding Wang or avoiding him. In Peking, Kin-Fo coincidentally runs into Wang, and during the pursuit Wang ends up jumping into a river and floating away, seemingly dead.

Kin-Fo is initially as relieved as he is saddened by his friend’s death, until he receives a letter from his dead friend. It tells that Wang has transferred the contract to a former Taiping comrade of his, a ruthless killer by the name Lao-Shen, who, having no personal connection with Kin-Fo, will not face the moral dilemma that Wang did, and thus will have no qualms carrying out the assassination.

Eventually, after much ballyhooing, including a trip on a boat full of coffins and a journey across the desert, it is revealed in the book’s abrupt climax that every event of the novel, from the initial letter informing Kin-Fo of his ruin, to his eventual capture by Lao-Shen, was in fact an elaborate plot concocted by Wang, who did not die, in order to teach Kin-Fo the value of life. After being carted back to Peking, Kin-Fo marries Le-Ou, and the world lives happily ever after.

Now, this is a fun and exciting twist for the end of an adventure, but it obviously devalues somewhat the impact of the story. Elaborate schemes are interesting to watch and hear about, but no elaborate scheme will ever have the same emotional resonance as blind fate. Pierre is blustered by the winds of inhuman forces, his fate a combination of his own folly and a world that doesn’t care about him. Kin-Fo, on the other hand, has been taught an elaborate lesson by a teacher. The artifice of the whole thing makes us wonder if anybody really learned a lesson at all.

For Verne, this lesson and this theme is not particularly important. Tribulations of a Chinese Man in China is much more a book about a place than a book about a person. By reading the book, what we’re really learning about is what it’s like to be in some other place, and at the same time, having a little fun.

Tribulations is a small piece of a much grander oeuvre, much as China is a medium-sized piece of a much larger globe. Jules Verne sends us all over the world, providing us with snapshots from each place, like flipping through an atlas or an encyclopedia. What we are learning is not the specific intricacies of any particular place, but more generally, the fact that there are a lot of places out there. We probably won’t go to most of these places, but we can still get a little taste. It’s fun, and maybe it’ll broaden our view of the world a little bit.

The book is lightly entertaining and lightly informative, and the narrative journey is primarily to keep our attention moving along. This book follows a tradition of adventure stories, stories of discovery, and stories of invention. What Jules Verne is providing is novelty, and I don’t mean this as an insult. From the exotic scenery to the fantastical inventions, Jules Verne excites our imagination by showing us what might be possible in the world. He revels in a sort of childlike wonder about what’s out there, tempered with a mature understanding that not everything that’s out there is necessarily good. We see hints of the darkness of the human world, but they remain in the background.

Thus, the shallowness of Kin-Fo’s tale is not really to the detriment of the novel. This isn’t a novel about suffering, and it’s not really a novel about learning to enjoy one’s life either. That’s just the plot. It’s a story that Jules Verne came up with, and it’s a story that is handled competently, if not with much emotional resonance. At the very least, the themes in the novel are consistently present and not explicitly contradicted, which is more than you can say about some novels.

Jules Verne is an exciting author because he knows what he’s doing, and he simply settles down and does it. He hints at deeper ideas as a form of storytelling, but he doesn’t consider it his job to explore them that deeply. What he does do is encourage the reader to do their own legwork. If you read this book and you’re excited by the strange customs it describes, you might pick up a book about China and see what it’s actually all about. You might, instead, be interested by the several futuristic inventions that are peppered here and there, and start to wonder what life would be like if they truly existed. Or, you might start thinking about whether life as a rich person is really that good of a life to have.

Perhaps you won’t think about any of this, and you’ll just be pulled along for a couple hundred pages and then throw the book on the shelf. If that’s the case, then Jules Verne still succeeded, because authors, at the very minimum, have a desire to be read and enjoyed. Something about the book may stick with you and come up in conversation a few years later, and you might not even know where it came from. Maybe several decades later you’ll find yourself talking to someone and China will come up, and you'll have this weird feeling that you’ve been there, or seen it before — you can’t quite place it, but there’s some spark there, and that spark is at the heart of this medium we call literature.