photo courtesy of Tineke de Lange
Born 17 May, 1961 in Nanjing. Han Dong’s parents were banished to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution, taking him with them. When the Cultural Revolution ended, he studied philosophy at Shandong University, graduating in 1982. He subsequently taught philosophy in colleges in Xi’an and Nanjing, finally relinquishing teaching in 1993 and going free-lance as a writer.
Han Dong began writing in 1980, and has been a major player on the modern Chinese literary scene since the 1990s. He is well-known as one of China’s most important avant-garde poets, and is becoming increasingly influential as an essayist, short story writer and novelist.
Fiction in English translation:
《扎根》 Banished!, 2003. His first novel, Banished! won a prestigious independent prize in China and a PEN Translation Award, and was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008. Translated by Nicky Harman, University of Hawai’i Press, 2008.
《知青变形记》Metamorphosis of an Educated Youth, 2010. Sample translation (not entire work) appears - accompanied by an introductory essay - under the title Screwed in Asian Cha literary magazine and also here, on Paper Republic.
Poetry in English translation:
A Chinese-English anthology of Han Dong's poetry, A Phone Call from Dalian is published by Zephyr Press, 2012
Other novels in Chinese:
Me and You 《我和你》, 2006; A Small Town Hero Strides Forth 《小城好汉-英特迈往》, 2008;
Other work in Chinese:
Poetry collection
* Dad’s Looking Down On Me From The Sky 《爸爸在天上看我》
Essay collection
* Dynamics Of Love 《爱情力学》 Short story collections
* Our Bodies 《我们的身体》
* My Plato 《我的柏拉图》
* Bright Scars 《明亮的疤痕》
* In The Western Sky 《西天上》
About Han Dong:
Maghiel Van Crevel, Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money, Brill (Netherlands), 2008, with two chapters devoted to Han Dong. Numerous other works on contemporary Chinese poetry discuss his work and influence.
By Han Dong on Chinese literature (English):
One 3,000 years and 2 lots of 30 years, lecture given at Edinburgh University, April 2009.
Related:
As mentioned previously I've been
organizing some literary events for the
Get It Louder festival, the first of
which was last Tuesday. Originally meant to be a head-to-head between
the writer Han Dong and Li Jingze,
editor-in-chief of People's Literature magazine, it lost some of its
drama when Li Jingze pulled out at the last minute due to an
unforeseen and rather dramatic workplace incident.
Han Dong and I did it ourselves, recapping and extending onstage the
conversation we'd had at dinner the night before, though without the
assistance of red wine. I asked him to start with his involvement in
the Rupture
movement, and to talk about how artists' relationships with the
critical establishment and publishing industry had changed over the
past decade, from an era when writers felt the need to burn their
bridges lest they be gentled over to the dark side, to today's
situation, where it's much easier to maintain one's independence.
Talking about the government's push to disseminate Chinese culture
abroad, Han Dong said he remained deeply leery of any "assistance"
that came with strings attached—I asked if there was any kind of
government assistance that he felt was fairly innocuous, and he said
he doubted it. The problem inside China is that everything is still
based on human relations: no help is given without strings attached,
no work is published without a debt owed, and you can't get anywhere
without being part of some kind of clique. The writer's career depends so much on his/her navigation of a social environment, and rarely is the work
allowed to stand on its own merits.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 24, 12:07a.m.
- Five Spice Street
By Can Xue
Translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping
Yale University Press, 2009
- Banished
By Han Dong
Translated by Nicky Harman
University of Hawaii Press, 2009
Reviewed by Aamer Hussein, Pakistani short story writer and critic
More…
By Nicky Harman, January 1, 9:52a.m.
On Thursday 23 April we organised East meets West: Authors Talking to Authors - the most ambitious of our events in London. For the film of the event, click here. We brought together four authors, three based in the UK and one Chinese author – Han Dong, and to talk about writing, in a bookshop in Central London (Oxfam Bookshop, 91 Marylebone High Street, for you Londoners). It was to be a cross-cultural sort of discussion and we were aiming at a general audience, the sort of person who loves books but hasn't any specialist knowledge of 'world literature'.
From left: Aamer Hussein, Xinran, Richard Lea
More…
By Nicky Harman, April 26, 5:34a.m.
So here we are in London. After a couple of days of recovery (and sightseeing!) our first event involving Han Dong took place yesterday, at the Young Vic. The event was a part of the two day Free the Word program put on by International PEN, and featured seven or eight poets and writers from around the world reading for five to ten minutes each. There were homages to Harold Pinter and Adrian Mitchell, tales of detention, homelessness, and the unfriendly welcome that awaits immigrants at the British Home Office.
I'll just make two observations:
Of all the authors (who came from Cameroon, Iraq, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Mexico, among other places), only Han Dong had interpretation. The rest weren't all up to BBC broadcast standards, but they spoke English. I found this interesting – I'm not sure whether it says more about China, about the rest of the world, or about the PEN event. Chinese writers who speak fluent English are rare (nonexistant?). Most of the other foreign writers had written about their experiences as immigrants to the UK.
Chinese writers get dissident status just by virtue of being both Chinese, and writers. Every one of the readers that day read something against the establishment – tales of police brutality, protest, living down and out – except Han Dong. He read about the dusk, and visiting a prostitute, and the sound of glasses clinking. Whatever may be anti-establishment about Han Dong (and I believe there's plenty) is not immediately obvious in his poetry, at least not the way it was obvious in the other readings. And yet he was happily welcomed into the company, a brother in suffering. I wonder if they were confused by what they got.
I don't think he quite identified, at any rate. I just now asked him, "Han Dong, do you think you're an oppressed writer?"
"Who?" he asked. (He was absorbed in a copy of We All Sing Revolutionary Songs [革命歌曲大家唱], which he'd found, against all odds, in the home of our London host. He'd also had two Guinesses.)
"You, of course!"
"Me? Who would oppress me?" He had been put in a particularly good mood by My Home is on the Songhua River (我的家在东北松花江上) and didn't seem to recall his burdens.
By Eric Abrahamsen, April 20, 5:32p.m.
As we've mentioned before, Paper Republic received an Arts Council, England, grant in 2008 to enable us to develop the website and promote Chinese literature in translation. As part of this work, we'll be visiting the UK next month for the London Book Fair, taking a Chinese author, Han Dong, and organising a variety of literary events in April. Anyone who can come is most welcome. We will be blogging the visit, so keep an eye on the website. Also, we’ll film or transcribe major discussions and upload them.
Here is our provisional timetable - please check the Paper Republic website before turning up at any of these events, in case there have been last-minute changes.
-
Sunday 19 April 2009 – London: International PEN literary festival, Free the Word
Han Dong will read some of his work at the Literary Lunch.
-
Monday-Wednesday 20-22 April 2009 – London: London Book Fair
Eric Abrahamsen and Nicky Harman will be at the London Book Fair, participating in seminars and meeting publishers with an interest in publishing translated Chinese literature.
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Thursday 23 April 2009 – London: East meets West: Authors Talking to Authors, featuring Han Dong, Xinran, Aamer Hussein, Kate Pullinger, and Richard Lea of the Guardian newspaper.
Venue: Oxfam shop, 91 Marylebone High St, London, W1U 4RB. Tel:
020 74873570. Please call in advance to book a place. 7pm.
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Friday 24 April 2009 – London: Book launch of Banished! Nicky Harman’s translation of Han Dong’s novel, at Probsthains Bookshop, 41 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3PE.
Tel: 020 7636 1096 Time: 6-8pm. RSVP to Nicky Harman n.harmanic@gmail.com OR Michael Sheringham (msheringham@hotmail.com).
-
Tuesday 28 April, Edinburgh, Scotland: New Words, New Roads: Chinese literature in the world - a lecture by the poet and novelist Han Dong, followed by a panel discussion with translators of contemporary Chinese work. Presented by The Scottish Centre for Chinese Studies and LLC Graduate School: Translation Studies. Venue: Lecture Theatre, Hugh Robson Building. Time: 5.15 - 6.30pm.
By Nicky Harman, March 23, 8:31p.m.
Han Dong's book 《扎根》 (published in 2009 as Banished!, was long-listed for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize.
There were a number of things which convinced me I wanted to translate Banished! I liked the fact you can read the novel at different levels. He describes village life carefully, sometimes lovingly, but there is an underlying sense of political tension. There is humor, often scatological, but the depiction towards the end of the book of Tao, the frustrated writer, is bitter and painful. The language is occasionally lyrical but usually appears quite plain; then again, there are parts which are enigmatic to say the least, especially when they come from the unnamed ‘I’ voice. The emotional relationships are understated, but there is real warmth in the adults’ protectiveness of the child, young Tao, and the latter’s feelings for his father. I hope that this excerpt at least gives a flavor of some of these qualities.
More…
By Nicky Harman, August 1, 10:01a.m.
Has it been a year already? The long list for the 2008 Man Asia Literary Prize has been announced; only three of the twenty titles are Chinese. In our corner:
- Banished!, by Han Dong, translated by our very own Nicky Harman!
- Leave Me Alone, Chengdu (成都，今夜请将我遗忘), by Murong Xuecun.
- Brothers, by Yu Hua.
The qualification rules for the competition state that the books need to be submitted in English manuscript, but the English version must not have been published yet. Banished! and Brothers have publication dates, but I hadn't heard that anyone was translating Leave Me Alone, Chengdu. Murong Xuecun's appearance on the list is interesting – he was one of the early internet authors, writing vaguely adolescent stories of youth and urban anomie, but he's taken on a steadily more 'serious' tone. I haven't read Chengdu, but I head it's pretty good. Anyway, if anyone knows who translated either Brothers or Chengdu, leave a comment! The shortlist arrives September 1st, the final winner to be announced at the end of September.
Via Three Percent.
Update: Murong Xuecun's book was translated by Harvey Thomlinson, and there's a lengthy excerpt online here.
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 26, 1:24a.m.
Translating Scat – how do you choose the ‘right’ register in English?
Is a taste for ‘scat’ humour cultural? (Sorry, no pun intended!) Reading Cindy Carter’s recent piece Studies in Scat: Excerpts from Yu Hua, Zhu Wen and Li Er about the Chinese scatological sense of humour started me thinking.
What to do if your editor doesn’t like all this talk of crap? My translation of Han Dong’s 扎根, which will appear in English as Banished!, is at the copy-editing stage. The copy editor has put a lot of careful work into correcting my ‘infelicities’ (lovely word!) of expression for which I am extremely grateful, but we have one major disagreement. It’s – you’ve guessed it – the language used to translate those ‘toilet functions’!
More…
By Nicky Harman, May 9, 1p.m.
[Note: the research I mention here was used for an article titled Broken in Words Without Borders]
I’ve been doing some background reading on the Duanlie (断裂, ‘Broken’ or ‘Split’) literary movement, something Zhu Wen instigated in 1998. It was an important, if low-profile, attempt to voice dissatisfaction with the literary establishment (academia, the Writers Association, the literary journals), and to remind authors that they were not alone in their frustrations. Over the course of several years and a series of Duanlie publications (put out by the Shaanxi Normal University Press), the movement did much to foster independence and diversity among the newer generations of Chinese writers.
Duanlie started as a list of questions which Zhu Wen, Han Dong and a few others mailed around to 70 Chinese writers, 55 of whom responded. They were leading questions, questions meant to snap writers out of their diffidence and goad them into defiance, a call for a vote of no-confidence in modern Chinese literature. Through the good graces of Lü Zheng I was able to get my hands on a copy of a book called Duanlie, published in 2000, which contains a series of interviews with the authors most closely associated with the movement: Wei Hui, Chen Wei (one of the writers responsible for the Heilan website), Huang Fan, Gu Qian, Li Xiaoshan, Wu Chen, Zhao Gang, Liu Ligan, Zhu Zhu, Lu Yang, Chu Chen, Han Dong and Zhu Wen. The book also contains the thirteen original questions, which I’ll translate below. I’m leaving the answers out: there are many, and they are predictable.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, April 27, 2:02a.m.
I went to attend the press conference for Han Dong’s new book, 小城好汉之英特迈往 (xiǎochénghǎohàn zhī yīngtèmàiwǎng, The Legendary Exploits of a Small Town Bravo) at the Sanlian Bookstore last Saturday. I haven’t been to many book release events outside of China and don’t have much to judge by, but I think the local model is strange – the publisher ropes together big-name writer friends of the author, and gets them to speak in praise of the book in question. It’s neither a plain press release, nor a meaty discussion of the book, and the event is typically precisely as interesting as the personalities of the writers attending. The only thing that kept me awake during the launch of Li Rui’s 人间, for example, was Yan Lianke and his sense of humor.
This event was similar – Han Dong’s posse included Mou Sen (牟森, an avant-garde theater director), Zhu Wen, Yin Lichuan, and Yan Jingming (阎晶明, a literary critic). For all the ambiguity of the event itself, it was an entertaining crowd. First of all, Han Dong was at a total loss as to what to say. The man has been writing poetry and fiction for twenty years, and this was his first public appearance in support of one of his books – that ought to provide some idea of the literary marketplace here. But Zhu Wen was funny, both Mou Sen and Yan Yingming had thoughtful reactions to the book, and if Yin Lichuan had little to say she at least appeared sincere.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, March 10, 7:57p.m.
