Yan Lianke is quite the interview subject! Australian paper The Age just ran a very long piece on Yan, which gives a wider window on his early development and attitudes towards writing than previous articles. He also mentions his current work in progress, possibly to be published next year:
The work in progress is an unflattering fable, "funny and ridiculous", about China's contemporary intellectuals, who Yan believes have been co-opted by the Government. "They lack the courage to face up to the real situation," he says.
Asked what the real situation is, he replies promptly: "Chaos. China is in chaos, politically, economically, medically, morally and some people are the beneficiaries of this chaos, including intellectuals. Those at the grassroots, the masses, are the ones suffering, but in facing this kind of situation Chinese intellectuals can't see clearly."
In the past, Yan says, there were great pressures on writers and it was understandable to some degree that people didn't dare speak out. But now, he says, there is no excuse. "Now it is a self-imposed censorship, so the situation is more tragic."
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 29, 6:54p.m.
Before we get started here, a disclaimer: we didn’t start this site to snipe at existing translations, or hint haughtily that we could have done better ourselves, had only the gods of publishing smiled on us, rather than some other. Sour grapes have we none. And yet, the pain of seeing a favorite book or author to which justice has not been done… O, how the fingers itch to make amends! And so some of us have put together our own versions of the first chapter of Wang Xiaobo’s 黄金时代, not because Wang in Love and Bondage was so terrible, or our translations so much superior – think of them rather as fond tangents sprung from a work we found adept enough for inspiration, but not satisfaction. We offer them in the spirit of giving. They are also short, so as not to bore.
That spring, the team leader said I’d blinded his dog’s left eye, and now she looked at you cock-headed, like a ballet dancer. Since then he’d been making life difficult for me.
This download has been removed.
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 28, 8:38a.m.
A few days ago the Man Asian Literary Prize (aka the Asian Booker) announced the long list for its 2007 prize. Amid a large number of Indian candidates were a few familiar names: Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, Xu Xi’s manuscript Habit of a Foreign Sky, Guo Xiaolu’s 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, and Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem. Fleeting Light by Taiwanese writer Egoyan Zheng is also up there.
Five out of twenty-three: not a terrible showing for China, though clearly we’re not cranking them out like the Indians are (apparently two-thirds of submissions came from South Asia). It’s a happy day for Howard Goldblatt as well – the English versions of Wolf Totem and Life and Death are Wearing Me Out are both his handiwork.
The three-judge panel will select a five-book short list in October, and announce the winner November 10th in Hong Kong.
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 24, 10:43p.m.
There's a lengthy interview with Howard Goldblatt posted on Full Tilt, a "journal of East-Asian poetry, translation and the arts" put out by the English Department of the National Central University in Taiwan. It's the longest interview with Goldblatt I've seen.
No, the thing that's really killing translation in our field is literalism. Too many translators are afraid of the text, especially when they're first starting out. And I understand that, because I was too. They're all afraid of the text. You need to overcome your fear of the text, put some distance between you and it.
Good advice! (via danwei)
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 23, 5:53p.m.
If you live in Beijing, you can catch a radio piece on Paper Republic, featuring Cindy Carter and yours truly, on China Radio International tomorrow. That's Thursday the 12th, both at 8.30am and 4.30pm, on 91.5FM. Or, if you're not local, you ought to be able to find it on their website. Thanks Weiwei!
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 12, 2:45a.m.
A very interesting article in the Washington Post today brings up the damage censorship does to Chinese art, mostly via the example of Yan Lianke and his novels. The bulk of the article is given over to the mechanisms of censorship, and how Yan waters down his work to make it publishable, though I was excited to read this paragraph:
Yan's little compromise illustrates one of the most tragic aspects of the Communist Party censorship that is imposed on journalism and art in China. In many ways, the country's 1.3 billion people are being deprived of the full bloom of their culture, with thousands of artists like Yan forced to calculate how much they can get away with rather than cutting loose with their talent unfettered.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 10, 6:47p.m.
From left to right: our gracious host, Feng Tang, Lao Xiao of CCTV, and Lao Luo, once a famous English teacher, not sure what he does these days.
And here is Wang Xiaoshan – blogger, long-suffering journalist, and good man in disguise – author Xu Xing, and Ai Dan (?), who everyone assumed I had heard of, though I hadn't.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 3, 12:16a.m.
