*The following is the translation of a blog post by Li Yinhe (李银河), widow of the writer Wang Xiaobo (王小波).
Some publishers came to talk about a manuscript, and left me one of their own books as a sample of their work. The writer's name is Feng Tang, both of which characters you can find in the Hundred Names [a compendium of the most common surnames in China]. My guess is that his father was surnamed Feng and his mother surnamed Tang; I've met other people who got their names that way. The title of the book is You Live and Live and Then You're Old (活着活着就老了), which caught my eye. I looked through it and it's excellent, I couldn't put it down once I'd started, and read it all the way through in a day and a half.
Apart from a few later pieces about Beijing and Hong Kong that weren't that good, and apart from a few places where the same phrases were used repeatedly in different essays (was the writer too busy to read the whole thing through before publication?), and apart from some harsh evaluations of Wang Xiaobo, the book was very, very good.
In it he mentioned laughing out loud twice while reading Wang Xiaobo's books. Reading someone's books and laughing however many times: I'll borrow this phrase, and say that I laughed out loud seven or eight times while reading his book. I developed asthma after I came back to China in 1988, and though it got better it never entirely went away: I have an athsma attack every time I have a laughing fit; listening to crosstalk is a risky business for me. This book nearly did me in; there were eight times I almost had an attack. If I ever have the opportunity to meet this person I'll have a bone to pick with him.
In the book he divides writers into those who "spit out" one book, those who "spit out" two books, and those who "spit out" many books. His use of the word "spit" hit me like a thunderclap: I had once imagined that real literature might be in my future, but the word "spit" dispelled my fantasy for good. I asked myself if I really had anything I needed to spit out, and concluded that I should just stick to my sociology, and enjoy life in my spare time.
They say that the media is in the hands of the generation born in the 1970s. Of the people mentioned in Feng Tang's book, I've read the writing of Luo Yonghao [whose Bullog blog site was recently shut down] and He Caitou; they must be approaching 40 now. They're 20 years younger than us, a whole generation. They've already become the pillars of modern China's intellectual world; we should have respect for our juniors.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 30, 5:18a.m.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 10, 5:33p.m.
The following is a translation of this blog post, which came down the feed reader a day or so ago.
Soon after President Hu, at a very formal meeting, said the words "do not waver, do not slacken, do not mess around" (不动摇不懈怠不折腾), this phrase started to get popular. It was a bit of a shocker to hear something so slangy as "mess around" (折腾, zhéteng) come out of the mouth of a solemn, venerable personage like the General Secretary, and soon everyone was saying it.
But then some official media with nothing better to do started writing reports ("Translating 'Zheteng' from Hu Jintao's Report Stumps International Media") about how the proper English translation of 'zheteng' was "stumping language mavens in both the domestic and foreign media".
They underestimate us! A little phrase like this doesn't need a language maven to figure out, it's a piece of cake. According to the rule of 'crude for crude, elegant for elegant', I can think of a few translations: "no fooling around", "no messing around" or, if you want to get crude, "no fxxcking around" (these are all verb phrases). The translators aren't translating it, and everyone's talking around it, simply to keep from embarrassing President Hu. They're keeping it as "bu zheteng" because they have no other choice.
What's hilarious is that some retards in the Chinese media have written puff pieces saying that the Chinese 'bu zheteng' might even become a catchphrase in English. They shouldn't get their hopes up; the answer would be "No thanks. We've got plenty of words of our own, quit messing with our language." The way I see it, compared to 'bu zhengteng', some other suggestions from netizens' like 'not to huqiunong' (the Shaanxi version) or 'don't xiaqiunao' (Shandong version) have a better chance of making it into English.
Anyway, I suspect Hu Jintao was straying from the script when he said this, it doesn't sound like the sort of a thing a scriptwriter would come up with. Now everyone's elated that a Party boss could talk this way, they though they were off the hook as well. But in olden times they used to say you have to both listen to a man's words and observe his actions – I for one remain deeply skeptical. If a political party that makes a rule of "messing around" were to suddenly straighten up and fly right, they'd have no clue where to even start. Besides, before long they're going to roll out another movement, either "compulsory" or "optional"; they may say they're not "messing around", but it sure looks like it to me.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 7, 8:13a.m.
The One Way Street Bookstore is putting on a talk with A Cheng this weekend at its Wanda Plaza location. A Cheng is renowned as a free spirit and a bit of a contrarian; I've run into him a few times, though, and he's usually just seemed crotchety and confused. Still, he's a Personality, and the event ought to be interesting.
Update: The Bi-Cultural Freak went to this event, and wrote a bit about it, plus pictures. We hereby steal one of her pictures, though stealing with permission takes most of the fun out, doesn't it.
Her write-up is in Chinese, but here's a translation (of her transcription) of A Cheng's ramblings:
Art arises from witchcraft. It has no religious faith; it's good at dispelling all that. It dispells stress. Errenzhuan [a kind of two-person song and storytelling routine from northeastern China] is a kind of witchcraft. In ancient times witchcraft was a primary form of performance. There were all types and kinds. Many artists suffer now. It used to be that if you were a painter you just painted… Now it's about politics, publication… You work all day, then struggle all night. Errenzhuan: it's a soporific; the northeast; jumping rope. One person says: I'll make your Granny appear, the other: okay, no problem.
And it really sounds like his grandmother's voice. All the bystanders get involved. I worked in a labor team in the northeast when I was young, it snowed starting in September, so what could you do but listen to errenzhuan? Errenzhuan's got these robes, and they squat and waddle around – that's all witchcraft. And it makes you laugh out loud, it can make you laugh at anything, like that Zhao Benshan [a comedy actor from the northeast] – it's a soporific. Art. It has a hold on everything, on every craft.
[The Chinese word for art, 艺术, is made up of two characters which roughly mean "art" and "craft". 术 by itself, however, is closer to "magic", here "witchcraft".]
As I said: a little crotchety, a little confused.
PS: Can someone weigh in authoritatively on the A Cheng vs Ah Cheng vs Ah-Cheng issue? My fingers type something different every time.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 2, 7:20p.m.
Two big grant deadlines are coming up:
-
The NEA Literature Fellowship Translation Project grant is due January 9 (sorry, we should have said something earlier), and can net you either $12,500 or $25,000, so get online and apply!
-
The American PEN deadline is January 16, and you can also apply online.
Go forth and get funded!
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 2, 9:55a.m.
