SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: June 23, 2022] Yuanyuan’s Bubbles
This is the fourth of sixteen graphic novels based on Cixin’s Liu’s stories. This story, originally called 圆圆的肥皂泡, is the most straightforward one yet.
It is full of hope and shows that play is just as important as other scholarly pursuits.
When Yuanyuan was born, the one thing that made her happy was bubbles. Her mother was a scientist and rather serious. While her father often chided her mother for being too straight-faced. But her mother had serious work to do.
Their city–Silk Road City was having severe drought. If nothing could be done about it, the whole city would have to be abandoned. Yuanyuan’s mother’s idea was to drop ice bombs with plants in them from a plane. The project worked–the water helped to keep the seedlings alive.
However, in a rather dramatic early moment, the plane went down and Yuanyuan’s mother was killed. Yuanyuan’s father was affected by the death of his wife and insisted that Yuanyuan grow up to be just like her mother–serious and thoughtful. But Yuanyuan had other ideas. She was still obsessed with bubbles.
Even her teachers noticed her attitude. But her grades were excellent. Indeed, one of her teachers explained to Yuanyuan’s father that “in this new era, being a little more relaxed and carefree isn’t a weakness.”
Her father still wants her to take things more seriously, but in the meantime, Yuanyuan has discovered a formula for creating the largest bubble in the world–it’s breaks the world record!
Yuanyuan becomes very successful–her formulas for creating elasticity in bubbles is greatly in demand. Ultimately, her father asks her for a loan to help keep part of their old city alive. But she says she cannot. She is using her funds for her next project–a bubble that can envelope a city.
That’s actually not what she intended, but the bubble does settle onto the city, forcing everyone to figure out how to survive with their oxygen being cut off. Everyone is furious at Yuanyuan, but she only sees the possibilities–what is she made bubbles that could carry water from he sea to their desiccated city?
No one thinks she can do it. People make fun of her. Even her father is disappointed in her. But she won’t give up.
As with most of these graphic novels, I feel like the story suffers a but from being truncated (I assume it was truncated a lot). And yet the general tone and tenets of the story come through clearly. And it’s very cool. It was translated by Nicholas Blackburn Smith and then written for this book by Valérie Mangin.
The story was illustrated by Steven Dupré and he does a great job creating the images of the bubbles.
