Chan Koonchung 陳冠中 (born 1952) is a Chinese science-fiction writer who has previously lived in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the United States. He currently lives in Beijing. He is the founder of Green Power (綠色力量), Green Garden Organic Farm (綠田園有機農場) and the Hong Kong Film Directors Association (香港電影導演會) among other organizations, and is currently on the international board of directors of Greenpeace. Previously, he worked as a reporter for the Hong Kong tabloid, The Star. In 1976 he co-founded City Magazine (號外) with Qiu Shiwen and Deng Xiaoyu and Hu Junyi. In the 1990s he worked as an overseas publisher for the mainland literary journal Dushu (读书), published by the China Publishing Group (中国出版集团) and Life, Reading, and Innovation Bookstore (生活读书新知三联书店). In 1991 he played the role of Professor Liu Yuebai in Yan Hao and Xu Ke's adaptation of A Cheng's 1984 novel, The Chess Master. His dystopian novel The Fat Years (2009) was published in English by Doubleday in 2011. [1]
In his recent book, The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver (2014), the Tibetan driver and lover of a Chinese businesswoman falls in love with her daughter. It is a satirical metaphor of the unbalanced relations between China and Tibet.
The author's other book, 盛世, is a political fable that has become the reality. I like it well enough even though there isn't much of plot. This book, 建豐二年:新中國烏有史, is an alternative history about what could happen if Chinese Communism Party lost to Chinese Nationalist Party in 1949. Again there is not much of plot, except the chapter about a mother and son. The author spends most of the pages describing the alternative political landscape. It reads like an alternative history instead of a fiction of alternative history. The Great Chinese Famine and The Culture Revolution never happened. How about that?
The book stopped at 1979, on the suspended note that this alternative China may or may not eventually become a modern democratic country.