Our News, Your News
By Helen Wang, November 29, '12
Data compiled from the entry 2012第七届中国作家富豪榜 on www.baidu.com.
Chinese Writers’ Rich List 2012
1. Zheng Yuanjie 郑渊洁 (2011 – no.3 // 2010 – no.3 // 2009 – no.1 // 2008 – no.2)
2. Mo Yan 莫言
3. Yang Hongying 杨红樱 (2011 – no.4 // 2010 – no.1 // 2009 – no.3 // 2008 – no.3)
4. Guo Jingming 郭敬明 (2011 – no.1 // 2010 - no.1 // 2009 - no.2 // 2008 - no.1)
5. Jiang Nan 江南 (2011 – no.6)
6. Yu Dan 于丹 (2011 – no.25 // 2008 – no.7)
7. Han Han 韩寒 (2011 – no.9 // 2010 – no.8 // 2009 – no.8 // 2008 – no.18)
8. An Dongni 按东尼
9. Nan Pai San Shu 南派三叔 (2011 – no.2 // 2010 – no.14)
10. Dang Nian Ming Yue 当年明月 (2011 – no.7 // 2010 – no.4 // 2009 – no.4 // 2008 – no.15)
More…
"China: One in 1.3 billion ..... Surprising, and rather wonderful."
Leon Comber's rendering of the Pao stories offers a hero more interested than Dee in repairing the social fabric torn by crime. In particular, he delights in finding new mates for those bereft by crime (in accordance with the principle from the Chinese classic of Mencius that "Three things are unfilial, and of these the worst is to have no offspring.")
The overlapping world of literary critics and cultural commentators is still arguing about Mo Yan 莫言 and his Nobel Prize.
Merry Laughter and Angry Curses, by Juan Wang, reveals how the late-Qing-era tabloid press became the voice of the people. As periodical publishing reached a fever pitch, tabloids had free rein to criticize officials, mock the elite, and scandalize readers, giving the public knowledge about previously unspeakable and unprintable ideas. In the name of the people, tabloid writers produced a massive amount of anti-establishment literature, whose distinctive humour and satirical style were both potent and popular. This book shows the tabloid community to be both a producer of meanings and a participant in the social and cultural dialogue that would shake the foundations of imperial China and lead to the 1911 Republican Revolution.
Drawing, thinking, speaking and ministering — Bai Hua explores language as a multi-dimensional medium in which image and voices mold words and synergies into portraits and encounters. Unlike traditional pastoral poets and landscape artists, Bai Hua does not depict thriving or romantic representations of the landscape. The literal world within and without, here run the undercurrents of poetry. There is neither pastoral contentment nor dramatic exile in Bai Hua’s work. — from the Introduction by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Cosima Bruno’s new book asks us to consider a deceptively simple question: what is the relationship between a poem and its translation? In the course of Between the Lines: Yang Lian’s Poetry through Translation (Brill, 2012), Bruno helps us imagine what an answer to that question might look like while guiding us through the sounds and spaces of contemporary Chinese poet Yang Lian.
Writes The Guardian:
The choice of the Chinese writer Mo Yan as the winner of this year's Nobel prize for literature is "a slap in the face for all those working for democracy and human rights", according to the author Herta Müller, who won the Nobel in 2009.
Cyber Monday - For 24 hours (12 am to midnight, HST) on Monday, November 26, 2012, order online and receive 40% off every title currently available and in stock at our website.
Francois Laplantine's new book Une autre Chine: Gens de Pékin, observateurs et passeurs des temps, was published in May 2012. Looking beyond the distorted and simplified view of China that is presented by the Chinese and Western media, he examines everyday life in Beijing, Chinese literature and film to reveal the cultural wealth of contemporary China. He discusses the writers Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Chi Li, Liu Qingbang, Xu Xing (and sees links to Shen Congwen); and notes that the Sixth Generation of film directors (Jia Zhangke, Wang Chao, Liu Jie and Zhu Wen) have broken away from the "flamboyant lyricism" of directors like Zhang Yimou to show scenes of ordinary life, in a process devoid of frills, to film life as it is - in naked reality.
Congratulations, Shouhuo!
The discontent lies in Mo Yan’s language. Open any page, and one is treated to a jumble of words that juxtaposes rural vernacular, clichéd socialist rhetoric, and literary affectation. It is broken, profane, appalling, and artificial; it is shockingly banal. The language of Mo Yan is repetitive, predictable, coarse, and mostly devoid of aesthetic value. The English translations of Mo Yan’s novels, especially by the excellent Howard Goldblatt, are in fact superior to the original in their aesthetic unity and sureness. The blurb for The Republic of Wine from Washington Post says: “Goldblatt’s translation renders Mo Yan’s shimmering poetry and brutal realism as work akin to that of Gorky and Solzhenitsyn.” But in fact, only the “brutal realism” is Mo Yan’s; the “shimmering poetry” comes from a brilliant translator’s work.
By Helen Wang, November 24, '12
Are there any copies of Sheng Keyi's Northern Girls or Wang Xiaofang's The Civil Servant's Notebook on sale in the UK? Christmas is coming and I was thinking these might make good presents, but it's not easy to get copies of them in the UK. I contacted Penguin China, and it appears they have been launched in the Asia Pacific territory, and the best way is to try and get ebook editions on Penguin.com.au, or to place orders in Australia, or ask a friend to bring them in the luggage. Is anyone in the UK selling these titles?
The latest piece by Bertrand Mialaret featuring Wang Xiaofang's The Civil Servant's Notebook (tr. Eric Abrahamsen), and tracing the development of this genre from The Scholars written in the 18th century.
Just the other day I took questions from students in Professor Lucas Klein’s Stylistics & Translation class at HK City U. Given that I’ve translated two Chinese novels written by female authors, what did I think about men translating women’s writing, particularly works narrated by a woman in the first person?
I wonder: did anyone put the same query to Shanghai Normal University Professor Zheng Kelu (郑克鲁) when he embarked on his translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist classic, Le Deuxième Sexe (第二性)?
[中国文学海外传播研究中心负责人] 姚建彬坦言，翻译的困难不在于选择哪些作家、哪些作品，而在于怎样把我们选定的作家作品翻译出去，用英语世界的人认可的高水准的语言传达中国文学的真实面貌。他说：“《今日中国文学》编辑部达成了共识，尽可能聘请母语为英语，且对传播中国文化、译介中国文学有热情和经验的高水平翻译家参与我们的工作。而高水平的译者通常意味着要支付高额的报酬。。。”
Comrades: Please raise your hand if you feel that you have been overpaid -- or even adequately remunerated -- for your latest Chinese-to-English literary translation.
Renditions 77 & 78 (Spring & Autumn 2012), Guest Editor: Mingwei Song.
This issue showcases representative work of Chinese science fiction from the late Qing and the contemporary. As a popular genre, science fiction has energized modern Chinese literature by evoking a whole array of sensations ranging from the grotesque to the sublime, from the Utopian to the apocalyptic, and from the human to the post-human. It mingles nationalism with fantasy, envelopes politics in scientific discourse, and delivers sharp social criticism with an acute awareness of probabilities and possibilities. Science fiction today both echoes and complicates the late Qing writers' vision of China's future and the transformation of our species and universe, and this special issue aims to contextualize a comparative reading of some important Sci fi writings from these two epochs and the similar expectations and anxieties they bring to Chinese readers.
Issues of the 1970s-1990s.
For anthology Flash Fiction International forthcoming from distinguished publisher W.W. Norton, NY. The editors are looking for:
1.Recent very short stories from any country, in English translation, word limit 750 (1-3 pages). We usually reprint works that have already been published (send us a copy) but will also consider original, unpublished manuscripts.
Zhang Xinxin writes about publishing her graphic novel Pai Hua Zi and the Clever Girl as an ibook. (in Chinese)
We are delighted to welcome a new member to the Dissertation Reviews family. Lucas Klein will be the editor of our Chinese Literature series, set to launch fully in early 2013. If you are interested in reviewing for the new series, or having your dissertation reviewed, please contact chineselit@dissertationreviews.org.
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 21, '12
Unless I'm very mistaken, which has been known to happen, the New Yorker's publication of "Bull", excerpted from Mo Yan's forthcoming novel POW! and translated by Howard Golblatt, marks their first foray into translated fiction from a mainland Chinese author. Publishing Mo Yan now may not quite be the bold move it would have been a few months ago, but still it's a landmark moment. Congratulations to Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt, and the New Yorker!
Read a short interview with Howard on the NY-er blog.
This volume features three novellas originally written in Chinese by the Qinghai author Jing Shi, with an introduction by Keith Dede. (Asian Highlands Perspectives 20)
A unique new fund open to submissions from all UK-based publishers. PEN Translates! will fund up to 75% of translation costs for selected projects. When a publisher’s annual turnover is less than £100,000 we will consider supporting up to 100% of translation costs.
Although Old Wu was only the gatekeeper of the large Daoist temple in Huamatou village, his powers had recently increased – as had his irritability. Sometimes he simply kept the door closed for a whole day, and wouldn’t let anyone into the temple. Would-be worshippers peered in through the crack in the door, and only saw him and his big golden dog Root....
About The Civil Servant's Notebook by Wang Xiaofang, translated by Eric Abrahamsen.
By Helen Wang, November 17, '12
Twitter @cfbcuk
Founded by Nicky Harman in 2010, welcoming everyone interested in Chinese fiction in English.
Meets every 6-8 weeks in London - next meeting will be on 16 January 2013.
A Border man’s translation of 8th-century Chinese poetry into Scots has impressed 2012 Stephen Spender Prize judges. The national competition challenges people to translate a poem from any modern or classical language into English. ...
Brian, a former Galashiels Academy pupil, Selkirk museum curator and presenter on BBC Radio Tweed, is what Borderers would call “a man o’ pairts”. The 63-year old is hailed as the foremost translator from Chinese in his generation, and the only currently-publishing Chinese-Scots translator in the world.
By Nicky Harman, November 16, '12
Check out the goings-on at the Crossing Border festival, in The Hague and Antwerp, till Monday 17th Nov, where Yan Ge and Phil Hand are among the guest writers and translators. Guest authors write daily blogs (Chronicles) which the translators translate. The rest of the fest begins this evening.
Chinese publishers operated 459 overseas branches and companies in 2011, according to the GAPP, and the number may have risen since those statistics were compiled.
On recent developments in publishing, international collaborations, etc.
Zhang Wei (main) has warned he will withhold publishing of his latest novel From the Juvenile to the Youth in foreign languages if translations are "unworthy."
Acclaimed author Zhang Wei launched the Chinese edition of his autobiographical novel From the Juvenile to the Youth (2012) on Monday ahead of the release of the novel's foreign language versions. Over the next two years, 26 novels by Zhang - who won the 2011 Mao Dun Literature Prize for his decade-long, 10-volume work On the Plateau - are expected to be published in several languages, marking another milestone in Chinese literature's foray overseas.
The novels will be published by Publish On Demand Global (PODG), an American private publishing house.
China Lion Film will release "Back to 1942," the latest pic by China's top helmer Feng Xiaogang, in North America on Nov. 30 as a day-and-date release with its Chinese mainland bow, the distrib said.
Pic is based on Liu Zhengyun's bestseller "Remembering 1942" and tells the grim tale of a famine that ravaged central Henan province while Nationalists and Japanese troops fought during WWII.
Life is nothing but a circus. Such is the message of Yan Lianke's absurdist "Lenin's Kisses," a tale of political lunacy and greed set in modern-day China. In this sprawling novel, an ambitious county official forms a traveling freak-show of the disabled. His aim is to raise enough money to buy Vladimir Lenin's embalmed corpse from Russia to display in China.
Xi Chuan has been famous in China (and not just in China) since the 1980s. Until this year, however, there have been no book-length English translations of his poetry. So reading this new career survey from New Directions and translator Lucas Klein, Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems, feels like discovering a strange and exhilarating new region of world poetry. Some notes on what one finds there:
Ming Erotic Novellas: Genre, Consumption, and Religiosity in Cultural Practice, by Richard G. Wang, 2011.
"...Through introducing contemporary readers to works that were influential bestsellers in their day and virtually forgotten now, this book makes illuminating contributions to discussions of the erotic in literature, print culture and consumption of the book, and the religious dimensions of Ming fiction..." ── Rania Huntington, University of Wisconsin-Madison
A Cheerleader for Mao's Cultural Revolution:
Han Suyin hid the truth about China's regime. She was not the last.
By Helen Wang, November 8, '12
(via H-Asia) New Journal: Asian Literature and Translation (ALT): A Journal of Religion and Culture. ISSN: 2051-5863
Asian Literature and Translation (ALT) is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal established by the Centre for the History of Religion in Asia (CHRA), Cardiff University. The main objective of the journal is to publish research papers, translations, and reviews in the field of Asian religious literature (construed in the widest sense) in a form that makes them quickly and easily accessible to the international academic community, to professionals in related fields, such as theatre and storytelling, and to the general public.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 7, '12
...you get Liu Cixin's science fiction masterpiece, The Three Body Trilogy. This afternoon was the translators' signing ceremony/press conference for the trilogy, where Ken Liu (present in spirit only), Joel Martinsen and I signed up to translate volumes one, two and three, respectively. Expect volume one to be announced at next year's BEA.
So who's publishing it? That's complicated.
More…
Another newslink: cuhk.edu.hk
It features interviews with Chinese poet Yu Xiang, and co-editor of Jintian series from Zephyr Press, Christopher Mattison (a Russian translator himself), as well as translations of classical Chinese poets Du Mu, Ouyang Xiu and Yao Sui (trans. David Lunde).
Indeed, reading Sinclair's novel, with its narrative in the hands of a Chinese female, I had to keep reminding myself it was a 50ish Kiwi bloke pulling the strings.
It's happened all over the world, and it's happening in China, too. As the country's middle class swells in number -- and its people discover the pleasures and disappointments of a life spent pursuing material comfort -- there has come the emergence of a distinct counter-culture. In Chinese, they are the wenyi qingnian (文艺青年), or wenqing for short, literally meaning "cultured youth." It's China's closest equivalent to the alternately beloved and reviled English word, "hipster."
ATol: Northern Girls depicts a male-dominated society. To what extent does that represent China today? To what extent are the situations of characters Qian Xiaohong and Li Sijang consequences of their gender and to what extent are they consequences of their class, their rural origins and lack of education?
The playwright and poet, born in Nigeria in 1934, will stay for a week. He will give three speeches in Beijing and tour Shanghai and Suzhou briefly after an invitation by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Renmin University. Soyinka said at a speech at CASS that he has a strong interest in China's culture. "I'm greedy when it comes to new experiences," he said. ... During the visit, Soyinka will also meet Chinese writers such as Yan Lianke, Xu Zechen and Zhang Yueran.
So, a mere 10 months into the year, I’ve finally updated the Translation Database and just posted a new version of the spreadsheet for 2011 and posted the first version of the spreadsheet for 2012.
...
There are a few changes in the most translated languages rankings . . . Here’s the list from 2011:
French (63)
Spanish (50)
German (39)
Japanese (23)
Italian (20)
Russian (19)
Swedish (19)
Arabic (15)
Norwegian (14)
Chinese (12)
And 2012:
French (57)
German (50)
Spanish (45)
Italian (32)
Arabic (25)
Swedish (23)
Russian (17)
Portuguese (15)
Japanese (13)
Chinese (11)
In work that could not be published in their native country, the authors here testify to the conditions both during the Cultural Revolution and now. We open with Liao Yiwu's impassioned acceptance speech for the Peace Prize for the German Book Trade, just awarded in mid October. Yang Xianhui exposes the hideous truth of the Great Famine, and Xie Peng and Duncan Jepson contribute a graphic portrait of gluttony. Chenxin Jiang interviews censored authors Yan Lianke and Chan Koon-chung. In fiction, Chen Xiwo depicts scheming poets, and Sheng Keyi describes a paradise turned dark. Activist Cui Weiping urges individual action. And in two memoirs of the Cultural Revolution, the late Ji Xianlin recalls his torture and imprisonment, and Zhang Yihe records a clandestine meeting between the top two Rightists.
The Japanese title is "Shanghai: Katatsumuri no Ie" ("Snail House") by Liu Liu. It is a comedy depicting the roller-coaster life of a young couple striving to leave their tiny "snail shell" of a house to buy a bigger home during a time of soaring real estate prices. A TV adaptation became a smash hit in China in 2009.
Translated into Japanese by Akiko Aoki. With Diaoyu/Sekankyu in the background, the author hopes to promote better understanding between the peoples of Japan and China.
By Xinkai Huang, Southwest Jiaotong University
Discusses a selection of fantasy stories from QIDIAN (the most popular Chinese fantasy literature website and
fan community) and the interactions between the writers and readers.
Marilyn Chin has been inventing a literature of Pacific Rim cultural assimilation, resistance, and hybridization throughout a distinguished career as one of the leading authors of her generation, but perhaps never more so than in her genre-bending first novel, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (2009). Always a prolific experimenter, Chin here constructs a new kind of pastiche fiction, a feminist magical realism built from both ancient Chinese erotic ghost tales and contemporary Asian and American (manga, kung fu) character concepts, spun through narrative modes ranging from Buddhist tales and Zen texts to other Chinese folktales, animal fables, and revenge tales—all within an overarching picaresque.
The density of his poetry aside, the other trial facing me and any reader at this time is that we have no serviceable nomenclature for what Xi Chuan is doing, particularly his work of the past ten years or so. He is engaged in an unprecedented project to recast literary expression in contemporary China. And we do not know, cannot now know, whether the results of his project eventually will be the idiosyncratic work of one man, or whether he is setting a path, one possible path, for other poets to follow. Xi Chuan exists at a special time in Chinese literary history when form has finally matured in modern Chinese poetry, when the anxiety of influence can be tempered by several generations of earlier modern poets who bore the major brunt of being compared with the illustrious tradition of classical Chinese poetry and when experiments with Western poetic structures have by and large been cast aside.
Novelists and poets, however, are not heroes in this sense, and they receive awards according to the cultural prestige they accrue based on their creative contributions to literature and culture. The Newman Prize (which Mo Yan won) and the Neustadt Prize (for which Mo Yan was nominated in 1998) are awarded, like the Nobel Prize in Literature, on an artistic basis that does not diminish peace prizes but complements them by way of further clarifying the work of our cultural heroes. Such a distinction is essential and should be vigorously protected. In such troubled times, we must remember the value writers have—the value of inventing new language to keep pace with the rapidly transforming world around us. We are not so different from the provincial characters that populate Mo Yan’s novels in our struggle to gain traction to offset the cataclysmic global forces that swirl around us. But who among us can make the unseen seen and bring the inarticulate force of pain, loss, and paralysis into blisteringly lively prose?
While noting Mo's "wide-ranging, earthy writing [on] even such sensitive matters as forced abortions," theInternational Herald Tribune hinted at Mo's being an apologist-intellectual like Ezra Pound or Jean-Paul Sartre: "was he, even then, under a kind of spell?" The paper quoted Gao Xingjian, the 2000 literature laureate whose dissident stature and French citizenship made him ineligible for recognition as a "Chinese" winner back home: writers need "'total independence' to create [...] 'eternal'" literature. "What is the relation between officials and literature?" Gao asks. "Nothing... They have nothing to do with literature, especially with literature [...] Where can officials and literature be connected? Nowhere. ... And if they are, then it's merely official literature, and that's a really laughable thing. So literature shouldn't be organized by officials."
Just don't tell that to Tang dynasty wordsmiths Li Bai and Du Fu, or the historian Sima Qian, painter-poet-calligraphers Su Dongpo and Ouyang Xiu, 11th-century public-interest crusader Bao Zheng, or prominent 2nd-century BC anti-corruption activist Qu Yuan. And definitely don't tell noted itinerant philosopher Confucius.
On January 26, translator and China scholar Perry Link joined the Center, the Asia Society, and the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco for a discussion on imprisoned Chinese activist and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo’s No Enemies, No Hatred, a collection of his political essays and poetry.
By Helen Wang, October 29, '12
The Blue Sky (Der blaue Himmel) by Galsan Tschinag is Ann Morgan's choice (see her blog, 27 Oct). It's from Mongolia rather than China, but about life in the Altai mountains.
Ann Morgan has set herself the Herculean task of reading a book/story from each of 196 countries within 12 months. Her deadline is 31 December 2012. It's a great blog - so interesting. But what will she recommend for China?!
More…
It is one thing to try to translate the meaning of a text from a language as different from English as Chinese. Trying to capture the sound of a poem in translation is something else entirely. In a presentation that is part lecture, part performance, Jonathan Stalling will demonstrate different ways to hear the problem of sound in translation and explore some of his solutions. In a series of “experiments,” Stalling will discuss, chant, and recite Chinese poetry in Chinese, English, and in both at the same time.
With the publication of China in Ten Words, the puzzle over Yu Hua’s surrealism comes largely undone. Here, in ten very realist chapters, which he calls fiction but in fact is memoir, self-analysis, and cultural analysis of China, Yu shows how childhood trauma has shaped his worldview and how the excesses of late Maoism are still very much at work in the undergirding of Chinese life today. It no longer seems plausible to guess that his early inspirations came from foreign writers, or sprang from mere self-promotion. Surrealism then, as realism now, was just his way of writing what shock feels like.
2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian will be in Boston in January 2013 to present at two sessions of the 128th Modern Literature Association Convention, and to launch his forthcoming book Aesthetics and Creation that will be published as part of the Cambria Sinophone World Series.
(via MCLC)
Chinese writer Mo Yan's Nobel Prize in literature has led to Mo-mania sweeping the nation, but as publishers rush to reprint the laureate's works, confusion reigns over the copyright status of his books.
Published by Editions Fei. Jacques Pimpaneau will be at the launch.
This autobiographical work describes the author's life growing up on the northeast Tibetan Plateau, in a farming community in Zorgay (Mdzod dge) County, Rnga ba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province.
The original English text and a Swedish translation are provided.
The event, the only international awards for Chinese-language sci-fi writers, was organized by the World Chinese Science Fiction Association (WCSFA) based in Chengdu, the capital of southwest Sichuan province.
Xingyun Awards cover works from all over the world since the birth of sci-fi in China 200 years ago. The awards were first set up in 2010 and are held annually.
By Michelle Deeter, October 28, '12
I'm sure you've heard of the Chinese government blocking access to the
English and Chinese websites of the New York Times earlier today. The
New York Times published an article about the riches that Premier
Wen's family has gained since he has been in office. The English
version of the article can be found
here
and the Chinese version can be found here. In
this case, the Chinese translation does not list the translator's
name, perhaps because the translator asked to be anonymous. Typically
the translator is credited at the bottom of each NY Times article.
I am curious if others have translated "sensitive" content before, and
what kind of experience they had. Have you ever translated something
that you thought might be blocked or censored if published in China?
Have you translated something that you would not put on your resume,
because it might affect job prospects or have some other negative
impact? Have you ever asked to not be credited for your translation?
Nestled deep within the Balou mountains, by and large spared from the government’s watchful eye, the people of Liven enjoy harmonious days filled with enough food and leisure to be fully content. But when their crops are obliterated by the unseasonal snowstorm, and with it their livelihood, a county official arrives with a lucrative scheme both to raise money for the district and boost his career. He convinces the village to start a traveling performance troupe showcasing their talents, which are unlike anything he has ever witnessed. The majority of the 197 villagers are disabled, and their skill sets include ...
But many Chinese novels that have won top prizes and been well received in China face delays in getting published abroad due to a lack of good translators.
Take the example of the novel Shou Huo (The Joy of Living) by Yan Lianke. Although copyright contracts for it were signed with publishers from Japan, France, Italy and the United Kingdom in late 2004, to date none of the four translated novels have been published, as no competent translators are available.
China reads crime fiction from other countries, but why does it remain an underdeveloped genre at home?
In 2010, Frank Dikötter produced "Mao's Great Famine," an authoritative account of the catastrophe, written with a bravura seldom seen in Western writing on modern China. Impassioned and outraged, Mr. Dikötter detailed the destruction, the suffering and the cruelty or hubris of China's leaders. Sorting through forgotten and hidden documents with great intellectual honesty, Mr. Dikötter ended his journey pointing his finger directly at Mao, who notoriously said, as he called for higher grain deliveries from the countryside at the height of the famine: "It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill."
For the general reader, "Mao's Great Famine" is unlikely to be bettered. "Tombstone" is something quite different, a condensed, yet magisterial 600-page edition of a densely detailed, two-volume Chinese-language account by Yang Jisheng, a retired Chinese journalist and Communist Party member.
[Jonathan Stalling, editor of Chinese Literature Today, responds to Didi Kirsten Tatlow’s “In 3 Awards, 3 Ways of Seeing China,” linked from this blog two days ago.]
“Can great lasting literature find a reader in America?” I think so, do you?
“Literature is not a boxing match, though sometimes it can appear that way given the polarizing passions it can generate.” So begins yesterday morning’s Times “View from Asia,” a piece by the reporter Didi Kristen Tatlow entitled “In 3 Awards, 3 Ways of Seeing China.” This is the second and more balanced piece she has published in the Times in a week...
By Helen Wang, October 25, '12
Just read Xiaolu Guo's story Then the Game Begins in which two lovers drive round and round the ringroads in Beijing. It reminded me of another story in which two close friends drive round and round the ringroads - Shi Kang's story, Sunshine in Winter. Until now I've always associated cars on the Beijing ringroads with traffic jams and stress, but maybe the ringroads are associated with long hours of intimacy and late at night? Do they feature in lots of stories?
