so Red Moon is basically about KSR's trip to China... cool

"As their Twenty-Fifth Party Congress approached, it looked like their current president, Shanzhai Yifan, was trying to pass along his supposedly distinguished mantle (he had even given himself the lingxiu leader designation in his second term)"

100 pages in, it's not getting better... 2050s China still has hukou system and Cyberspace Administration, people in Shekou worry about 朝阳群众 and still use apps? The white protagonist also obsesses over maybe seeing half a breast of his local female guide for like 4 pages

"A thousand years of Chinese history condensed in a single view.
Fred said, "Is this normal? Do all Chinese cities have parks and lakes like this?"

"You know me, Master. I am always for weiwen. Maintenance of stability. All the old virtues. [...] Harmonious society. Scientific outlook on development. All the best old ways."
"It's really Daoism," Ta Shu said.
"Confucius too. Or really it's Neo-Confucian. Like Deng Xiaoping."

don't know if I can take other 250 pages of Chinese characters speaking to each other like this

"baizuo, white leftists that means, meaning people like you from the West telling us what to do"

for KSR China "is the future" in the sense that he can just write up basic summaries of That's Beijing & Sixth Tone while occasionally reminding readers that the story is set in 2050

"I'm more than a princeling," she told him. "I'm Sun Yat-sen. I'm Mao on the Long March."

protagonist finally has "the first pulse or two of a inappropriate erection" on p. 298

"The cloud thinks you're the leader. Your cousin and Ah Q were saying that you are the Maitreya, that you're the next Dalai Lama."

ok this was hands down the worst sci-fi book I ever read and a great case in point for letting Chinese sci-fi to local authors. Can't believe KSR had 400 pages to think about Chinese colonization of the moon in 2050 and all he could come up with is Western regime change fantasies