When Entropy Meets Empathy: A Cross-Cultural Ethical Reading of Xuemo’s Fiction | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 10)

When Entropy Meets Empathy: A Cross-Cultural Ethical Reading of Xuemo’s Fiction | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 10)

At 8 p.m. Beijing time on May 24, 2026, the tenth session of “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” was held online. Fifteen scholars, writers, and translators from more than ten countries, including China, the United Kingdom, Italy, Norway, Canada, the United States, and Mexico, joined a discussion titled “From Entropy to Empathy: A Reader-Response Study of Xuemo’s Fiction.”

Organized by the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation, the two-hour forum drew nearly 200 online participants.

An Interdisciplinary Reading of Xuemo’s Fiction

At the beginning of the forum, moderator Yanjin Chen introduced the two principal speakers: Xuemo, a contemporary Chinese writer and cultural scholar, and Dr. Ronald Torrance, a lecturer at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology who holds a doctorate in contemporary Chinese literature from the University of Strathclyde.

Xuemo has published more than 80 works of fiction and cultural commentary. His books have been translated into nearly 30 languages, with nearly 60 foreign-language editions in circulation. They have received honors including the Independent Press Award and the NYC Big Book Award.

Torrance’s research concerns modern and contemporary Chinese literature and its circulation across national borders. Drawing on the physical concept of entropy and the principles of reader-response criticism, he examined how Xuemo’s narratives move from disorder and suffering toward empathy and ethical reflection.

His argument followed three related ideas: entropy, empathy, and ethics.

Entropy as a Literary Concept

In thermodynamics, entropy describes the growth of disorder, the dissipation of energy, and the irreversibility of physical processes. Torrance applied the term to fiction marked by emotional fragmentation, uncertainty, unresolved suffering, and forms of stability that never last.

He also drew on reader-response theory, which holds that meaning arises through the encounter between a reader and a text rather than residing entirely within the text itself.

Xuemo’s fiction, Torrance argued, does not allow readers to remain detached observers. Its immersive narratives require them to spend time within the conditions endured by the characters.

Four Features of Xuemo’s “Entropic” Narratives

Torrance identified four ways in which entropy appears in Xuemo’s fiction.

1. Suffering as an Environment

In many works of fiction, suffering arrives as an exceptional or dramatic event. In Xuemo’s writing, it forms the lasting background of ordinary life.

His characters live for long periods with poverty, exhausting labor, silence, and emotional isolation. Readers, in turn, are asked to remain within that atmosphere rather than pass quickly through it.

2. Landscape as Psychology

The deserts of western China are more than geographical settings. They also reflect the characters’ states of mind.

Barren landscapes suggest emotional depletion, while uncertain journeys expose the vulnerability of human existence. Episodes involving encircling wild dogs or dangerous desert crossings maintain a pressure that is psychological as well as physical.

3. A Refusal of Conventional Form

Xuemo’s slow narrative pace extends the reader’s experience of suffering. His stories resist happy endings and heroic reversals. Death and impermanence recur, leaving emotions unresolved after the book has ended.

4. Love Without Resolution

In Eternal Love, love remains bound to illness, separation, and vulnerability. The novel offers no easy consolation. Readers must live with the characters’ regrets and with hopes whose fulfillment remains uncertain.

From Entropy to Empathy

Torrance summarized his argument in one sentence: “Entropy is not the destination but the entrance to empathy.”

Readers may begin with confusion, discomfort, or instability. As they continue, however, they accompany the characters through suffering. Identification with an individual character can then give way to ethical questions about suffering more generally.

Can people retain their kindness under extreme pressure? Does endurance have meaning? Can moral life survive when the world around it has broken down?

Xuemo’s fiction does not provide fixed answers or press readers toward a prescribed emotional response. Its uncertainty requires them to take part in making meaning. They do not simply witness another person’s story; they bring their own experience into the text.

Torrance described this as a movement from experiencing suffering to understanding compassion.

He argued that such writing speaks to the spiritual unease of an age dominated by fragments of information. Literature need not solve the problems of the world. By presenting them honestly, however, it can help readers form a more serious connection with other people and with the conditions they share.

Xuemo agreed with much of this reading and related it to his experience of life in western China.

“Life itself is a process of increasing entropy, moving from purity toward disorder,” he said. “Literature should not preach cultural lessons or claim to solve problems. It should present them honestly.”

He compared his fiction to Laozi’s Eight Trigrams Furnace in Journey to the West. Readers enter the text as the Monkey King enters the furnace. Their encounter with the characters tempers them until they emerge with “fiery eyes and golden pupils,” able to see more clearly. In Xuemo’s account, empathy can lead readers from experiencing suffering toward transcending it.

He also said that his writing had changed in recent years. His early ambition was to record the life of western China. He now thinks of writing more simply as a form of companionship.

“Writing is no longer a record,” he said. “It means staying with readers and guarding an inner light amid disorder.”

Scholars Discuss Literature Across Cultures

The participating scholars brought expertise from several related fields. Riccardo Moratto, Distinguished Professor at Tongji University, has long worked to bring Chinese literature to international readers. Shouhui Zhao of the University of Bergen specializes in Chinese-language education abroad, while Radina Plamenova Dimitrova of the National Autonomous University of Mexico studies and translates Chinese literature for Spanish-speaking readers. Norwegian scholar Bjoern Aage C. Blix focuses on the reception of Chinese culture across languages and national borders.

During the question-and-answer session, Lingxiao Wu, a doctoral candidate at Peking University, asked about the autobiographical elements in Xuemo’s work.

Xuemo replied that the writing he had done after the age of 60 had largely shed its regional labels.

“At the end of life,” he said, “what remains is the sincere companionship between one person and another.”

Asked how entropy becomes empathy, Torrance drew a distinction between empathy and compassion. Empathy begins when readers enter imaginatively into a character’s feelings. Compassion goes further, turning that identification into an ethical concern for the suffering shared by human beings.

The movement between the two, he said, allows Xuemo’s fiction to connect personal experience with values that are not confined to one culture.

Young writers Yixin Chen and Jianxin Chen approached the question from the writer’s point of view.

“Writing is itself a way of resisting entropy,” they said. “Xuemo writes about the most genuine warmth within disorder, the strength we are all seeking not to be overwhelmed by suffering.”

The Courage to Show Vulnerability

At the end of the forum, Xuemo told a story about a new puppy in his home. The dog often rolls onto its back and exposes its belly, showing complete trust.

Xuemo compared that gesture to what he values most in literature: the courage to reveal what is vulnerable.

“We do not have to pursue greatness or success,” he said. “If we can entrust our hearts to one another sincerely, the world is already good enough.”

Chen described the event itself as an exercise in empathy. Scholars set aside disciplinary barriers, writers gave up the authority of the lectern, and readers ceased to be spectators. Through literature, they entered a conversation in which intellectual judgment and emotional attention could meet.

A two-volume Routledge collection devoted to Xuemo’s work is scheduled for publication at the end of 2026.