Han Song, one of China’s most renowned science fiction writers, might have envisioned Rio de Janeiro hosting the Olympics before anyone did.

In his 1998 novel “In the Days of the Future World,” Han and co-author Zhang Dan predicted that the Brazilian city would one day host the Olympic Games.

That the Brazilian metropolis got to host the games this year, and not in 2060, as in the book, is perhaps beside the point. What is remarkable, however, is that Han, also a veteran journalist with the state-owned news agency Xinhua, got to travel to Rio over this past weekend to witness for himself the real Rio 2016 Games, and draw comparisons with his novel.

“The city is more beautiful than I imagined, more artistic — except for the slums,” Han said in an interview with Sixth Tone, conducted largely via messaging app WeChat. It is Han’s second visit to the South American city since his book came out almost two decades ago.

Han’s sci-fi novel tells the tale of a fresh-faced Chinese footballer, Tang Long, who is teleported from a soccer training camp in Brazil in the 1990s to the future, when Rio plays host for the world’s largest sporting event: the Olympic Games.

Neither Han or his co-author had ever visited Brazil before they wrote the novel. As this was also back in the days when internet access was limited, they had to dive deep into their imaginations to sculpt a futuristic Rio, as well as its inhabitants.

In some respects, Han and Zhang’s Rio is still far beyond the present. For example, when Tang Long lands in the Rio of 2060, he finds the city streets supplanted by a weblike array of skyways ferrying flying cars. Instead of going outside, people dispatch avatars to run errands, while they — and their real bodies — stay safely in their homes.

One similarity between the Rio Olympics, both the real and imagined, is fears over security. Last Wednesday a bus carrying journalists who were accompanying the Chinese men’s basketball team  gunfire near Rio’s airport, and several athletes have reported thefts and robberies. “In the Days of the Future World” contains echoes of such events. When in the book Olympics athletes visit a power station in outer space built by China, Brazil, and India, the Chinese team is attacked by a group of cloned human terrorists.

In the novel, Han’s impression of the Cariocas — as Rio natives are sometimes called — is part cliche, part amusing. When authorities of the future want to erect a nuclear power station, residents take to the streets, Brazilian style, to protest: “There are no police, shields, or tear gas. People are sitting, eating, drinking, singing, dancing in banana patches and next to the railways. Some are standing on top of cars giving speeches.” Meanwhile, women dance to samba music in swimsuits as those around them sing: “We want beach. We want to sunbathe. We want to samba. But we say ‘No’ to nuclear pollution.”

Some future scenarios hold clear appeal for Chinese readers. The geopolitical background against which the imagined Rio games takes place is different from today’s. By 2060 American hegemony is a thing of the past, and China has risen to become the world’s preeminent superpower. The ancient Chinese board game of Go is the most popular sport at the games, and China’s soccer team has developed so much over the decades that it has achieved a level of prowess, even securing the gold medal — a far cry from today’s national team, which ranks 81st in the world. China’s commercial dominance of the world is also a point of emphasis, with a Chinese beverage company as the biggest sponsor of the games.

Though his novel has nationalistic overtones, Han is better known for his gloomy, philosophical, dystopian style.

In one of his early works, “My Homeland Does Not Dream,” Han paints a dark picture of China as it strives to meet overly ambitious manufacturing targets —drugging citizens so they can continue to work even as they sleep. That novel’s protagonist eventually kills himself. In another of his books, “2066: Red Star Over America,” Han wrote about the destruction of the Twin Towers one year before the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

During the more than two decades Han has spent working in media, he has risen at dawn to pursue his creative writing, often taking anecdotes from his reporting and transforming them into sci-fi vignettes.

His latest, somewhat serendipitous reporting assignment to Brazil for Xinhua allowed Han to explore the gap between the imagined Rio games of his book and the actual ones of today, as well as to reflect on the contrast between China’s past and present aspirations.

Han told Sixth Tone the people he met during his Brazil visit weren’t quite so light on their feet as the carousing anti-nuclear campaigners he wrote about, but he warmed to them nonetheless. “They were passionate, friendly, and open. They seemed to be very happy, and they were friendly to the Chinese,” he said. 

Other fictitious elements of the book have yet to become fact. During his assignment in Rio, Han saw evidence to suggest that China is still on track to become the world’s superpower, at least on some fronts. “China has the biggest media presence in Rio, and we have the most volunteers,” Han said. “But still in the hotel rooms, we get the BBC and CNN — there are no Chinese channels.”

Then there’s the medal tally. In Han’s book, China was the undisputed leader of the games, winning far more gold medals than any other country. As of Tuesday, China was in second place with 13 medals, behind America’s 19.

(Header image: A scene from the Rio Olympics Opening Ceremony, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 5, 2016. Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)