New Fujian
| Star | HD 215812 | G6 V | 104.5 LY from Sol in Aquarius (Pisces Austrinus Sector). |
| Planet | IV | ||
| Diameter | 8 112 km | 0.64 D♁ | |
| Gravity | 6.0 m/s² | 0.61 g♁ | |
| Day | 22.6 hours | ||
| Year | 664.3 local days | 1.69 a♁ | |
| Atmosphere | 0.98 bar | Oxygen | 0.24 bar |
| Scale height | 14.2 km | ||
| Oceans | 80% water | Tidal range | 0.14 m |
| Climate | 29 °C (warm) | Obliquity | 15° |
| Illuminance | 97 klx | 90% as bright as Earth | |
| Spaceport | scale 3 | orbital facilities | |
| Escape speed | 7.0 km/s | ||
| Low orbit | 250 km | Period | 94 minutes |
| Population | 1.05 billion | Density | 25 /km² |
| purpose-specific arcologies | |||
| Households | age-graded triune line marriages | ||
| Social unit | local interest and hobby groups | ||
| Social quirks | • Metamorphosis through six life stages • Combat sports • Virtual privacy is respected |
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| Values | • Contented “real happiness • Progress through the life stages |
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| Taboos | • Idleness, carelessness • Self-indulgent sesnsuality • Non-compliance with life-cycle norms |
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| Economy | local state capitalism | ||
| Development | 6.5 | (biofab age) | |
| Inequality | low | Gini | 23% |
| Currency | fen | 𝔣 1 = | SVU 0.02 (PPP) |
| ₢ 0.0168 (exchange) |
| Government | gerontocratic bureaucracy |
| Head of state | Chairman of the Council of Abbots |
| Chief exec | Committee of the Grand Secretariat |
| Capital | Minyue |
| Legal quirks | • Trial by jury of monks. • Death penalty for murder, rape, and arson. • Mindwipe for statutory rape or any third felony. • Felons flogged, miscreants caned. • Adultery a felony, “illicit relations” a misdemeanour. • Powered vehicles are strictly licensed. |
HD 215812 V is a small planet with a rich endowment of volatiles, sluggish volcanism, and subdued relief. Insolation is modest, but the thick atmosphere retains heat strongly. Efficient transport of energy by the deep atmosphere and broad oceans moderates the heat of the tropics; nevertheless a broad equatorial belt is habitable only with aggressive air-conditioning. The population is concentrated polewards of latitude 30°, about half the land area being left to the wilds.
The world is moderately poor in valuable ores and rich soils; agriculture depends on wide use of fertilisers, and is largely devoted to producing bulky commodities such as food. The colony supports itself with industry and by asteroid mining: New Fujian is highly developed for a colony in the outer Periphery, and is the industrial powerhouse of its Sector. New Fujian has orbital industries, and builds spacecraft by importing critical components from the Core. Areas on New Fujian have serious problems with industrial pollution.
The inhabited parts of New Fujian are thickly set with with industrial arcologies that are sharply demarcated from the surrounding plantations and farms. Each such module is owned by a “pioneering trust” and governed by a monastery of retired and celibate monks. The monks hire workers, create capital, and provide free infrastructure, health care, education, and government services to their employees. Nominally retired, they work unpaid in government or judicial office, as educators, etc. The members of rich monasteries live lives of ease and comfort, and the only practical way to advance to wealth and power is to be accepted as a monk by a rich and prestigious monastery.
New Fujian is no doctrinaire theocracy, but it is pervaded by influences from Epicureanism, Positive Psychology, and late Modern Buddhism, through the teachings of Bing Mourn, a philosopher. New Fujianese suppose that an ethical life consists of achieving contented happiness by practising six key virtues: courage, kindness, justice, temperance, wisdom, and transcendence; sensual pleasures ought to be satisfied, neither denied nor indulged.
The people on New Fujian use designer hormones, body modification, cosmetic surgery, physical training, cosmetics, grooming, and costume to put themselves through a series of metamorphoses defining six stages of life, as opportunities arise to take on the corresponding social and economic roles:
• A háizi is an unmodified child to age six local years (10 standard years). Háizi live with their parents and attend day school. They are often nude.
• An instar is a pupil in boarding school, going through a modified adolescence over four (local) years. Sexual development is postponed to the end. Puberty at the same age in boys and girls makes men and women on New Fujian are alike in height. Instars use atrichants to remove and suppress their hair, and wear sleeveless tunics with pleated skirts.
• An imago is an apprentice or student in vocational training, aged at least ten local years. After a sudden puberty, imagos cultivate flowing locks and a lithe “adolescent” physique. They dress flamboyantly, often making a display of their arms and torsos; many wear ornamental daggers. Each imago must live as an au pair servant with a married couple, as dìzǐ apprentice to the head of the household.
• A zhùhù is a journeyman worker, living as junior spouse to an older zhǔrén. Zhùhùs develop a strong adult physique, and wear their scalp hair short but grow axillary hair. They dress elegantly, though still displaying their arms.
• A zhǔrén is a master or foreman, or at least a leading hand, living as senior spouse to a zhùhù and shīfu to a dìzǐ of the same sex as themselves. Zhǔréns develop a more massive “mature” physique, grow beards and moustaches, wear their hair to shoulder length, and dress magnificently.
• A héshang is a monk, at least thirty local years old, living in a monastery and working unpaid in education or government. They bald themselves completely except for eyelashes and perhaps eyebrows, and develop a lean and wiry condition. Their gonads atrophy and their breasts and genitals shrink. Héshangs wear black robes, which they embellish with yellow when acting in a government capacity, red to denote judicial capacity, or blue in the role of an educator.
A household on New Fujian properly consists of a zhǔrén householder of any sex, a zhùhù junior spouse of any sex, an imago of the same sex as the zhǔrén as dìzǐ, and any children of either spouse who are still háizi. It typically occupies an apartment that is either rented or part of the zhǔrén’s remuneration. Instars live in dormitories in the monasteries. Héshangs live in private suites.
When a zhǔrén dies or transitions to héshang, their zhùhù may, if qualified, advance to zhǔrén. To do that they must have a suitable job and marry a zhùhù, and may take on a dìzǐ. In the last thirty years it has become usual for such new zhǔréns to marry their former spouse’s former dìzǐ, who advances to zhùhù. New Fujian is developing a form of three-member line marriage, the dìzǐ becoming in effect a third spouse. The current generation find that their imago-hoods are getting extended to six or even seven local years, being padded with internships in which they do what used to be zhùhù work.
New Fujianese observe a convention of virtual privacy: they politely ignore incidental nudity, conversations that don’t concern them, and anything else that others would have preferred to do in private, at least so long as there is a token effort at privacy. The nudity taboo is weak anyway: háizis, instars, and héshangs aren’t considered naked when unclothed, and people in the sexual stages of life dress rather to display proper status symbols than to preserve decency. Despite this the sexual mores are restrictive. Most sex outside marriage is technically illegal, though “courting behaviour” by unmarried zhǔréns and couples with no dìzǐ is tacitly condoned.
Perhaps because advanced medical technology makes it possible to repair the damage, full-contact combat sports, including fights with knives and swords, are popular in New Fujian. Extremely informal bouts, amounting in effect to duels, are condoned so long as no-one is killed. Scheduled competitions are a popular spectator sport, and gambling on them is very common. Imagos’ and younger zhùhùs’ bouts are sometimes eroticised.
On New Fujian the peace is kept by uniformed monitors who are of zhùhù age, while crimes are investigated by plain-clothed detectives recruited from experienced monitors. Monitors are armed with a shock baton and cone pistol; they wear stab-resistant body armour.
Attractions
At Musilmanyi Canyon on the tropical continent of Goh hundreds of kilometres of sealed and air-conditioned transparent conduits allow tourists to walk through tropical forests, waterfalls, and spectacular gorge and karst terrain, even under a tropical lake—all without danger or even discomfort from the sauna-like heat and humidity. The complex is shared among seventeen hotels with a range of accommodations.
Aoqin and Aoshun are two cities, in the southern and northern hemispheres respectively, renowned for their hotels and tourist entertainments: casinos, stage shows, prize fights, sophisticated rides, indoor ice and snow sports, and surreptitious sexual licence.
Moubeel Surgical Centre is a teaching hospital and research facility famous for developing nièpán , the drug that produces the form and temperament of the New Fujianese héshang. It is renowned for the best plastic surgery and modified development in Pisces Austrinus, and attracts teachers from the Core, students from all over the sector, and patients who are prepared to pay very high fees.
Wangwat College is the monastery where Bing Mourn developed and taught their philosophy. Built on a picturesque coastal site and now edified with grand and sublime architecture, it is a place of pilgrimage. Subsisting substantially on donations and bequests, it conducts little industry and houses few employees. Folk of global prestige retire to Wangwat.
A CG-animated streaming comedy
Over the course of five “seasons” each of twelve “episodes” The Life and Times of Pík Roon see its protagonist career ever upwards from victim of school bullying to respected abbot, without ever doing a day of honest work or quite losing the sympathy of the audience. Pík advances through the stages and up the ranks by framing his bully, blackmailing a dishonest examiner, turning tricks, throwing rigged semi-pro knife fights, being kept as a catamite, identity theft, marrying his sister, prolific adultery, outwitting frauds and card cheats, turning out to be much better than his challenger expected in a fatal duel, bribing a promotion board, trading corrupt favours, forging employment records, abandoning confederates, and once by taking a cone pistol to a knife fight. Audiences accepted Pík because he was never malicious and everyone he crossed was even more corrupt than he. His Life and Times escaped condemnation because the authorities mistook it for a raunchy comedy. It is very funny, but the satire is trenchant.
Imperial presence
The Imperial Navy has an orbital dockyard circling New Fujian, called Visakhapatnam. Also, the Eichberger Trust has a civilian orbital dock there. Starships are assembled and repaired using bulk components from the colony and sophisticated fittings shipped from the Core. There is an Imperial orbital port that handles thousands of container movements and sometimes over 10,000 interstellar passenger arrivals per day. This leads to extensive dealings between colonials and the Empire, which cause exposures that require the attention of about 100 ILEA investigators led by a superintendent.
Besides warships in for repairs and overhaul, there are also three cruisers on station, and squadrons of orbital monitors for global defence and cutters to supervise the colony’s activities in space. This is all under the command of the Flag Officer Commanding (Visakhapatnam), a rear admiral.
In addition to a battalion of marines in garrison and the fleet elements in the ships and orbital port, New Fujian is the site of an Imperial Marines training base where recruits are trained in light gravity, hot climates, and littoral environments. At any time usually 250 recruits are present.
The Imperial resident holds the rank of envoy plenipotentiary