From Nüwa’s Creation to the Age of AI: Scholars Discuss the Remaking of Human Civilization | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 13)

From Nüwa’s Creation to the Age of AI: Scholars Discuss the Remaking of Human Civilization | “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” (Episode 13)

On June 14, 2026, the World Literature Union and the Xuemo Foundation held the 13th session of the online forum “Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars.” Centered on the theme “Literature, Women, and Paths for Civilization in the Age of AI,” the event brought together scholars from China, Italy, Norway, Canada, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the United States.

Through scholarly presentations and interdisciplinary discussion, the forum examined how literature and traditionally feminine values might inform humanity’s response to technological and social change. Yanjin Chen, author of The Xuemo Code, served as academic moderator.

Chen introduced more than 20 participating guests. The principal discussants were Min Liu, Associate Professor and Deputy Dean of the School of Foreign Languages at Baoji University of Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Jin Huang, Assistant Professor at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Both engaged Xuemo in extended discussions of his work.

Other participants included Riccardo Moratto, Distinguished Professor at Tongji University; Professor Renzhong Wang of McGill University; Professor Radina Plamenova Dimitrova of the National Autonomous University of Mexico; and more than a dozen sinologists, translators, and early-career scholars. Nearly 240 people from academic, cultural, and general readership communities attended online.

At the beginning of the forum, Xuemo reflected on the development of the series.

“Every dialogue produces a spark of thought,” he said. “The accumulated discussions from the first 12 sessions are already substantial enough to form a volume. We plan to publish the proceedings not only in Chinese but also in English, so that these conversations across national borders can become part of humanity’s shared intellectual heritage.”

At a time of instability and rapid change, he added, the simple act of gathering to think seriously about literature and the inner life had itself become rare and valuable.

Min Liu: Rethinking Feminism, From a Struggle for Rights to an Inner Revolution

Associate Professor Min Liu approached Xuemo’s writing through its relationship with major currents of Western feminist thought. Her discussion centered on two related ideas: moving beyond Western theoretical assumptions and redirecting attention toward the inner life.

Redefining Women’s Liberation

Liu argued that in The Path Forward, Xuemo recasts Simone de Beauvoir’s well-known proposition that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Xuemo’s formulation, “A woman is first a human being and only then a woman,” places shared humanity before gender identity.

Liu asked why women who have achieved professional success and social standing may nevertheless continue to suffer inwardly.

Xuemo replied that such suffering often arises from looking outside oneself for security and validation. This outward search may be driven by fears of loss, aging, rejection, or being unloved. In his view, genuine liberation does not lie simply in acquiring the courage to struggle against men. It begins when a woman assumes responsibility for her own fate, reclaims her inner life, and learns to find stability within rather than continually seeking fulfillment from others.

Emotional Attachment as a Form of Confinement

Liu also addressed one of the more controversial arguments in the book: Xuemo’s treatment of romantic attachment. She suggested that he does not reject love itself but questions an exclusive attachment to narrowly personal forms of love.

Xuemo distinguished between love contained in a “small bottle” and love as expansive as the sea. A woman may command authority in her professional life, he observed, yet become emotionally dependent in an intimate relationship. The deeper tragedy occurs when she entrusts her entire sense of worth to the approval and affection of a man.

The alternative, he argued, is to enlarge the scope of love. Drawing on figures ranging from Joan of Arc to Mother Teresa, the discussion considered how devotion to one person might be transformed into compassion for the wider world. Liu described this as a spiritual passage from the private realm into the public sphere.

Feminine Energy in the Age of AI

Liu then turned to the effects of artificial intelligence on women. Xuemo suggested that AI may replace many forms of knowledge-based and logical work, qualities traditionally associated in Chinese thought with yang. What it cannot replace, he argued, are spiritual discernment, maternal care, and other qualities associated with yin.

He illustrated the point with the image of “a slender hand leading a Tibetan mastiff.” If AI is the powerful animal rushing forward, the answer is not to confront it with even greater force. Human beings must instead guide it through wisdom, care, and restraint, bringing a measure of warmth to technological power.

Gender Relations as a Dance for Two

Liu asked how women might oppose injustice without deepening conflict between the sexes.

Xuemo questioned the need to begin from a fixed position. A rigid position, he said, can become a boundary drawn around oneself and reinforce binary opposition. Chinese philosophical traditions, by contrast, have often sought to loosen rigid judgment and reconcile apparent opposites.

Harmony does not require the absence of disagreement. Xuemo compared it to a dance for two: one partner advances as the other steps back, each responding to and complementing the other. The larger purpose, he argued, should be the development of human society as a whole.

Jin Huang: Reading “Beauty” Through Reality, Fate, and Death

Dr. Jin Huang approached Xuemo’s short story “Beauty” through the psychology of literary creation and the difficulties of cross-cultural interpretation. Her questions focused on the sources of the story, the meaning of its title, and the symbolic significance of its tragic conclusion.

The Paradox of Truth and Fiction

Huang first asked whether “Beauty” had been based on an actual person or invented as a work of fiction.

Xuemo said that the story was drawn entirely from life. Yet after it was published, the woman on whom the central character was based denied that the events had occurred, fearing that they might affect her present marriage.

“The city took away not only the most beautiful young women from the countryside,” Xuemo remarked, “but also their dignity and their memories.”

Why Call the Story “Beauty”?

According to Xuemo, the title refers not only to Yue’er’s physical appearance but also to her determination to preserve her dignity.

As long as a woman still takes care with her appearance and wishes to remain beautiful, he said, she retains a measure of hope in the world. Neglect of the self may signal an inward collapse. Even when gravely ill, Yue’er remains attentive to her appearance. Her concern for beauty becomes one of her final acts of resistance against fate.

Who Is Responsible for Yue’er’s Tragedy?

Huang asked whether Yue’er’s fate should be attributed primarily to social conditions or to her own decisions.

Xuemo acknowledged the effects of inequality between city and countryside, which he described as part of the social cost of a changing era. Yet he placed particular emphasis on the choices Yue’er made. Her central mistake, he argued, was to entrust her fate to a man. Through the force of her imagination, she transformed an ordinary man into an idealized lover.

Here, Xuemo regarded imagination as a creative power used against the person who possesses it. “The first step in a woman’s awakening,” he said, “is to understand that she need not depend on anyone. She creates her own world.”

Death and the Symbolism of the Desert

The discussion of Yue’er’s death formed the most explicitly philosophical part of the exchange. At the end of the story, she enters the desert and sets herself on fire.

Xuemo explained that the episode had a basis in local custom. In parts of western China, an unmarried person who died young was traditionally cremated so that the spirit would not remain homeless. Yue’er’s death also evokes the phoenix rising from its ashes. She refuses to allow illness and physical deterioration to destroy the beauty she seeks to preserve within herself.

Xuemo also described the state of mind in which he wrote the story. He said that he experienced neither affection nor aversion and entered what he called a state of “egolessness.” He did not feel that he was consciously constructing a narrative. Instead, he compared himself to the sea receiving a falling stone and allowing the ripples to form of their own accord.

In his view, a great writer should not be confined by an emphatic personal style, since style can itself become a limitation. The writer should instead return, as Tolstoy did, to a larger and more elemental wholeness.

What If Mengzi Had Fallen Ill Instead?

Huang proposed a counterfactual question: What would have happened if Mengzi, rather than Yue’er, had become seriously ill?

Xuemo replied that Yue’er would never have abandoned him. She would have cared for her husband as she would a child and remained with him until the end of his life.

“The women of western China possess a capacity for complete acceptance,” he said. “Whatever Heaven gives them, they accept.”

For Xuemo, this combination of forbearance and resilience represents one of the most moving expressions of humanity in his fiction.

Literature, Maternal Values, and the Future of Civilization

Xuemo concluded the forum with the observation that “great men possess a feminine heart.”

Maternal generosity, attentiveness, and empathy, he argued, are among civilization’s most valuable inheritances. However far technology advances, the desire to make the world more humane will remain essential.

“Xuemo in Dialogue with International Scholars” has now held 13 sessions. Future discussions will continue to examine the relationship between literature and humanity’s shared future while seeking to bring contemporary Chinese writing and thought into sustained international conversation.