[5][6] Chi's mostly widely read work is his short novel (or categorized as a novella), The Membranes (膜, 1996,[7] 2011[8]), a cyberpunk science fiction.

It is known for its attention to the queer desire, the transgender subjectivity, the human-android boundaries, and the prophecy of the 21st century suffering from the climate change.

With the popularization of the English translation by Ari Heinrich, a fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, published by the Columbia University Press in 2021,[9] the reviewers in various countries in the 21st century often comment that The Membranes, being a work from the 1990s Taiwan, is "ahead of its time" and might attract the fans of Liu Cixin's 2008 novel Three Body Problem.

[10] According to the Columbia University Press, Ari Heinrich's translation is endorsed by Kim Stanley Robinson, the author of The Ministry for the Future, and Susan Stryker, a pioneer in transgender studies.

The confusion is owing to a tradition of the literary prize hosted by The United Daily News (UDN), one of the most widely read newspapers in Taiwan.

[23] Among the booktok videos done by the TikTok influencers in English and Italian, the novel is among the most often featured East Asian science fiction titles.