Literature can be read in many ways. What can be read from Folding Beijing, a story by Chinese writer Hao Jingfang, which won a prize at this year's World Science Fiction Convention in Missouri?

In that sci-fi story, the Chinese capital city is divided into three physical layers (those for the elite, middle class and underclass), separated by space and by time.

An administrative official can easily tell that this must be a dangerous world because people belonging to different layers of the folded city rarely interact, and once they do, they engage in illicit goings-on.