By Helen Wang, September 30, '12
Paper given at the Crafts of World Literature Conference, Oxford, 28-30 September 2012.
http://craftsofworldliterature.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/cwl-final-programme.pdf
Will appear in a few days. Translated by Eric Abrahamsen.
Lenin’s Kisses by Yan Lianke, trans. from the Chinese by Carlos Rojas (Grove) - Both a blistering satire and a bruising saga, this epic novel by Yan (Dream of Ding Village) examines the grinding forces of communism and capitalism, and the volatile zones where the two intersect.
By Canaan Morse, September 28, '12
The Beijing installment of the British Council's "Poetry in Public Spaces" series will be kicking off at Sculpting in Time tomorrow afternoon, with a joint reading and conversation between Robin Robertson, poet from Scotland, and Chinese poet Xi Chuan.
Publisher and poet Robin Robertson is the author of the prize-winning collections The Wrecking Light (2010), Swithering (Picador 2006, Forward Prize), Slow Air (2002), and A Painted Field (1997). The poem "At Roane Head," which is included in The Wrecking Light and which won Robertson the Forward Prize for best individual poem, I link to here:
Xi Chuan (honestly, who here doesn't know Xi Chuan already?) is quickly becoming one of China's best-known poets. He has five collections of poetry published in his native tongue (like Robertson, Xi Chuan's first collection, A Fictional Geneology, was published in 1997) as well as the English collection Notes on the Mosquito, translated by Lucas Klein and published by New Directions. His work has been widely anthologized in a variety of languages, and we even had the chance to publish a few of his pieces in the trial issue of Pathlight.
Date and Time: Saturday, September 29th, 2:00-4:00
Location: Sculpting in Time Cafe, 2nd floor of Sanlian Bookstore
22 Meishuguan East St. (美术馆东街), Dongcheng District
Yours truly will be moderating and trying not to make a fool of himself. Come on out!
Call for papers by MCLC - special issue to be guest edited by Anup Grewal and Tie Xiao. Deadline: January 15, 2013
For most of the twentieth century, the imagery of both actual and imagined masses in action was central to evoking political discontent, power, and even subjectivity in different representational forms. Such imagery appears to be largely missing in contemporary China: either actively disappeared or relegated to crowds harnessed for state rituals, stirred up by entertainment, or yoked to a historical past in official politics and culture; and appearing as oblique and sometimes nostalgic imagination in the wider cultural realm.
Collection of papers edited by Paolo Santangelo.
Smiling, laughing, facial expressions - and how to read them.
Juvenile [Young Adult] fiction about this era tends to reflect either the traumas adolescents faced during that period or the guilt of those who perpetrated violent acts.
Authors mentioned include: Su Tong, Wang Shuo, Liu Heng, Ai Weiwei.
Essay by Mark Bender
Today, around 200 million Chinese people read digital publications, and serving the market is a wide range of mostly Chinese companies with a similarly wide range of e-readers, formats and platforms. With an as yet incomplete regulatory environment, the market resembles a formless, chaotic mass with endemic copyright infringement. Yet as the various competitors strive to produce the one device and one platform that will outshine the rest, the digital publishing market in China has a lot of business and publishing potential, even if its not currently clear when the market will sort itself out properly.
Ever since the 1970s, I have known that the Chinese people are the freest and most democratic people in the world. Each year at my elementary school in Shanghai, the teachers mentioned this fact repeatedly in ethics and politics classes. Our textbooks, feigning innocence, asked us if freedom and democracy in capitalist countries could really be what they proclaimed it to be. Then there would be all kinds of strange logic and unsourced examples, but because I always counted silently to myself in those classes instead of paying attention, the government's project was basically wasted on me. By secondary school and college, my mind was unusually hard to brainwash.
Translated by Joel Martinsen.
Paola Zamperini, associate professor of Chinese literature and director of Chinese studies at Amherst College, will present “Moving Fashions: Wearing Gender in Late Imperial China.” Zamperini’s book, “Lost Bodies: Prostitution and Masculinity in Late Qing Fiction” (Brill University Press, 2010), addresses the way fictional characters handle passion, sexuality and love. Her talk begins at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, in UNC Asheville’s Karpen Hall, Laurel Forum.
Feature on Han Dong, and his translated by Nicky Harman into English.
Article in The New York Review of Books.
Podcast: Podcast. With music by Cha cha, AM444, and 新裤子, plus an essay by Eliot Weinberger and poems and readings by Bei Dao and a poem by Octavio Paz with translations by Weinberger.
The author of a study of Chinese poetry translation, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei, he is the current translator of the poetry of Bei Dao, and the editor of The New Directions Anthology of Classical Chinese Poetry and a forthcoming series from the Chinese University Press of Hong Kong.
Young Babylon, Lu Nei’s first book, was published in 2007. It has been described by book reviewers as a Chinese Catcher in the Rye. It’s a wry, slightly detached story narrated by the teenage Lu Xiaolu, who aims to work his way up from factory worker to cadre, just so that he can spend all day in an office drinking tea and reading the paper. The book is an off-beat view into the lives and aspirations (or lack thereof) of this 1970s generation.
Chinese and English versions available to read and discuss on the And Other Stories website.
By Helen Wang, September 20, '12
I know of at least three published this year...
By Helen Wang, September 20, '12
Chinese Aspirations in the 1980s Workshop, at the Australian Centre on China in the World, the Australian National University, 18-19 February 2013.
Article by Andrea Lingenfelter
It might come as a surprise to some that one who has devoted years to the study and translation of women writers such as Zhai Yongming 翟永明, Mian Mian 棉棉, and Li Pik-wah 李碧华 (Li Bihua, or Lilian Lee) would not have spent a lot of time thinking about the expression of gender in writing. But let's break it down. What is gendering? And if I don't give gendering per se conscious thought as I work, what does guide my practice as a translator?
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 20, '12
A few weeks ago we had a lively argument/discussion on a mailing list about the proper translation of the term 文艺青年 (wényì qīngnián, literally "arts and culture youth", or "arts and letters youth") – a common term for a certain cohort of under-30 Chinese identifiable by their ability to recite Haizi poetry from memory, their starry-eyed idealism, and their ownership of a digital SLR. They've now sort of become the cultural and lexicological heirs of the "educated youth" (知情) of yore.
Feature about the miner-turned-writer, Liu Qingbang.
"The most frequent motifs of literature, such as the relationships between men and nature, men and death, and men and women, are brought into full play in the dark and grave underground," he says. For instance, the struggle of human nature is fully demonstrated in his Lao She Literature Prize-winning novella Sacred Wood, whose film adaptation Blind Shaft won the Silver Bear at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival.
A Chinese court ordered Internet search giant Baidu Inc. to compensate three writers for a fraction of the amount they were seeking for failing to protect copyrighted material in a widely watched trial featuring two of the country’s most popular authors.
The case, which included hugely popular blogger Han Han and novelist Hao Qun, better known by his pen name Murong Xuecun, was widely watched. But the outcome means it is likely to have little impact on the way copyright cases are handled, highlighting the struggles of both artists and Internet companies to control the rampant exchange of pirated content on the web in China.
By Helen Wang, September 18, '12
This is the title of Chapter 7 in Diasporic Representations: Reading Chinese American Women's Fiction by Pin-Chia Feng, published by LIT Verlag Münster, 2010.
Diasporic Representations examines the stratification of various diasporic subjectivities through a close reading of fiction by Chinese American women writers of different social and class backgrounds. Deploying a strategy of “attentive reading,” Feng engages intersecting issues of historicity, spatiality, and bodily imagination from diasporic and feminist perspectives to illuminate the dynamics of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in Chinese American novels in this transnational age.
By Helen Wang, September 18, '12
By Rachel Leng
Abstract: Throughout the twentieth century, homosexuality has been and remains a highly sensitive and controversial topic in China where homosexual people were actively persecuted under Communist rule. It was not until the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s that Comrade Literature (同志文学 tongzhi wenxue), an indigenous genre characterized by fictions of homosexuality, came into existence in China.
By Helen Wang, September 18, '12
Event sponsored by The British Council and the Oxford English Dictionary,
on Thursday 27 September, 18.30-20.30 at The Royal Society, 6 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG.
The event will consider issues such as:
Does ‘standard English’ exist in today’s globalised society?
Who regulates the language – lexicographers, the education system, the media – or the public?
Is the language being dumbed down? And does this matter?
Should we be worried about the state of English today?
At the press conference for the release of the Cross-Strait Common Vocabulary Dictionary Taiwan edition in August, Taiwan leader Ma Ying-jeou said he did not completely understand a speech given by mainland writer and blogger Han Han, when Han visited Taiwan this year. Though both the Chinese mainland and Taiwan speak Chinese, particular phrases and words, even when composed of similar characters, have different meanings. This thus prompted the creation of the aptly titled cross-Straits dictionary.
Literary critic Meng Fanhua says compared with their counterparts in other areas, Henan writers are more closely concerned with the profound transformation of our social lives.
Literary critic Yan Jingming agrees, adding that Henan writers live in the most "Chinese" areas, lead the most "Chinese" life, speak the most "Chinese" language and write with the most "Chinese" characteristics.
Features Zhou Daxin, Li Peifu, Liu Zhenyun, Yan Lianke, Li Er, Qiao Ye and Liang Hong.
Yun Ling, the only survivor of the camp, meets again in Cameron Highlands ( a mountain resort in Malaysia where they grow tea), friends of her parents and their Japanese neighbour, a former gardener of the Imperial Court. Ling Yun asked him to create a garden in memory of her sister who was fascinated by these works of art. Aritomo refuses but agrees to take Yun Ling as an apprentice for her to lay out a garden in the future.
Successive episodes, flashbacks highly controlled between the Japanese camp and Cameron Highlands and Aritomo and finally the recent period (around 1986) where Yun Ling, Judge of the Supreme Court, is taking early retirement. She wants to write her story and that of her sister before a neurological disease does deprive her of her memory and ability, after the death of Aritomo to restore the garden “Evening Mists” to its former magnificence.
By the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, 2012.
Translated by Denis Mair.
It was from the bronze of her complexion
That I first discovered the color of the land around me
That I first discovered the pale yellow tears of the sun
That I first discovered the teeth marks of seasonal winds
That I first discovered the timeless quiet of a glen
Colonial Modernities and Chinese Science Fiction
by Isaacson, Nathaniel Kenneth, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, 2011, 316 pages; 3493491
In Chapter 4, I present a close reading of Wu Jianren's (1866–1910) New Story of the Stone (1905), arguing that the novel aggregates nearly all of the key metaphors of late Qing science fiction. Building upon this mode of reading, Chapter 5 examines a number of original works of late Qing science fiction, including Huangjiang Diaosou's (b.?) Tales of the Moon Colony (1902), Xu Nianci's (1874–1908) New Tales of Mr. Braggadocio (1904), Bihe Guanzhuren's (1871–1919) The New Era (1908), and others, arguing that Chinese authors were vexed by the difficulties of turning the rhetorical knives of colonial discourse against their colonial wielders. Chapter 6 follows my analysis of late Qing science fiction is followed by an examination of the changing role of SF through the May fourth period, reading Lao She's (1899–1966) City of Cats (1932), in light of the 1920s reassessment of Chinese tradition and Western science.
Within and without bounds: Media and the journalist in the fiction of Chinese writer Sun Haoyuan, by Chen Chengnan, M.A., UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, 2012, 57 pages; 1513758.
Abstract: This paper examines the image of the journalist in a series of novels by the Chinese journalist-turned-novelist Sun Haoyuan. The author uses journalistic characters as vehicles to critique the practice of journalism in China in four novels: Mafia Game: The Live Broadcast (2009); Mafia Game: Media Violence (2010); Mafia Game: The Hypodermic - Syringe Theory (2010); and Hush Money (2011). In these novels, Sun Haoyuan critiques the function of journalism in society, the responsibility of the journalist in Chinese society, and the misuse of power by journalists and editors alike. After reviewing the social and political factors that influence China's journalism and media industry, the study presents the portrait of the fictional male journalist, female journalist and investigative journalist image through an analysis of the protagonist's life and struggle in the profession. Sun Haoyuan's observation is critical to an understanding of journalism in China, and his fictional journalists reflect and help shape the public's image of journalism as a profession.
On Oct. 4, David Derwei Wang will discuss the writings of Liang Qichao, a Chinese journalist, novelist and activist. Wang’s talk is titled “The Future of New China: Revolution in Fiction.” Wang, who has written, translated or edited more than 20 books, including “The Monster That is History: History, Violence, and Fictional Writing in Twentieth-Century China,” is the Edward C. Henderson professor of Chinese Literature at Harvard.
By Helen Wang, September 16, '12
Following Brigitte Duzan’s comment today, take a look at some of the excellent French websites on Chinese literature...
Position: Research Assistant, Research Centre for Translation
Closing Date: October 8, 2012
Post Specification: Applicants should have (i) a Master’s degree in Chinese Studies or Translation; and (ii) native speaker’s command of English. Preference will be given to candidates with experience in literary translation. Short samples of creative writing/literary translation should be included in the application. The appointee will work as Assistant Editor of Renditions, an international journal of translations of Chinese literature into English. Appointment will initially be made on contract basis for one year commencing as soon as possible, renewable subject to mutual agreement.
One peaceful evening, in the centre of the palace beside the enormous lion-shaped fountain, the venerable Baathaloysh was completely engrossed in his reading of an ancient book with no name, which he had begun early that morning. On the first page of the book, all of the characters who appeared were only one year old; they were not scattered throughout every part of the world, but comprised one unified world: one-year old kings, one-year old courtiers, one-year old knights, one-year old merchants…
The editors of New Voices in Translation Studies are looking for article submissions and abstracts of recently completed and defended doctoral theses for publication in the next issue (May 2013). Please refer to the style guidelines which can be accessed via www.iatis.org and send articles and/or abstracts to newvoices@dcu.ie.
Novelist and short story author Li Er 李洱 graduated from East China Normal University in Shanghai and currently works at the National Museum of Modern Chinese Literature. He has published five short story collections, two novels, and approximately fifty novellas and short stories. His most well known works include Colouratura (Hua Qiang 花腔) and Cherry On a Pomegranate Tree (8Shiliushu Shang Jie Yingtao 石榴树上结樱桃). Hua Qiang*, widely considered one of the most influential novels of the post-Mao era, has garnered much attention in Germany and Korea in translation, and is one of the most exciting forthcoming titles in the CLT Book Series.
Through the work of translators and Sinologists and now with the help of technology, Chinese publishers are beginning to reach a global audience, Liu Binjie, director of the General Administration of Press and Publication, said on Wednesday.
"Translators' works are key, but the ongoing trend of digitalization of publishing presents a rare chance for Chinese books to go further, though big challenges remain," Liu said on the first day of the Beijing International Book Fair on Wednesday.
Makinson says there are three strands to growing Penguin's business in China: the sale of imported books, selling Chinese language rights for existing books to local publishers and coming up with its own ideas for books that might be a hit in China such as the Li Na autobiography. ... "If you look at what we translate out of Mandarin compared to what we translate out of French, German or Spanish, we are translating a lot more Chinese work," he says.
In China, where competition is cutthroat and workplaces are characterized by opaque politics, complicated relationships and twisted love affairs, an entire literary genre has emerged on how to navigate a job-scape that is more like law of the jungle and survival of the fittest.
In 2009, Lu Qi, an author of martial arts novels, published his first book on a slightly different type of combat sport: office politics in China.
Literature is undoubtedly the best media to showcase what is happening across China. It is interesting to note that interest about China in the past was mostly restricted to history and political disputes. Popular literature translations were largely confined to the classics and the translated works catered to a small audience. That has changed now and overseas readers are now more than hungry to read about the present and their areas of interest have extended to all walks of contemporary life.
He Jiahong bustles into his book-filled office at Renmin University sprightly but relaxed, dressed down in sportswear for the summer break. The 59-year-old law professor is charmingly apologetic for being just a few minutes late. He has been held up organizing a trip to Australia, where he will lead a delegation of Chinese legal scholars on a university tour.
Dictionaries are not democratic. Crowdsourcing has its appeal, but without professional lexicographers these reference works will lose the authority we want them for...
13 September 2012 Web Archives and Chinese Literature
The following is a guest post by Professor Michel Hockx, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, who explains the difference between doing research on internet literature from doing research on printed literature, and how web archives help.
Join a moderated discussion with the crime professor as he talks about the fight against graft activities, the miscarriages of justice which have plagued the country, and his exciting legal career. He Jiahong’s bestselling book Blood Crimes has been translated into several languages and was recently published in English as Hanging Devils, which will be on sale at this unique literary event.
September 17 (Monday), 3-4:30pm, Embassy of the Czech Republic. 2 Ritan Lu, Jianguomenwai, email fcccadmin@gmail.com
China's No. 1 best-selling novel is about four university graduates in a cold-blooded, dog-eat-dog world of luxury brands and spiritual emptiness. Yao Minji looks at reading trends.
The No. 1 best-selling fiction in the first six months of the year is a young adult novel, "Lin Jie, Jue Ji" ("Critical"), by 29-year-old Shanghai-based writer Guo Jingming. It is the third installment of the trilogy that made him famous. He is controversial because of his ruthless, superficial and "empty" characters.
White Deer Plain, a newly launched movie based on Chen Zhongshi's novel of the same name (白鹿原, 陈忠实著), has aroused controversy both as a book and as a film. The novel tells the tale of two families, Bai and Lu, living through the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the beginning of the Republic and the rise of Communism in Shaanxi Province. It won the Mao Dun Literary Prize in 1997, but as documented in an article today (删改性写), not before the sensitive political content and sex scenes were appropriately trimmed. . .
Excerpt: Qiu Miaojin’s Notes of a Crocodile
Qiu Miaojin—one of the first openly lesbian writers in ’90s post-martial-law Taiwan—committed suicide at the age of 26. What follows is an excerpt from her “survival manual” for a younger generation. With an introduction by translator Bonnie Huie.
Video-documentary on Gao Xingjian from the IKGF Gao Xingjian Conference (24-27 October 2011).
What does the concept of freedom mean to Gao? How are questions of fate and freedom addressed in his prose and drama? Where do the quest for freedom and the self and the aspiration to reconnect with one's fate lead the protagonist?
The Deal: Come see a great play by a Tony Award–winning playwright and benefit the Center for the Art of Translation. Our friends at Berkeley Rep are donating a portion of the ticket proceeds to the Center for the Thursday, September 27 performance of Chinglish, a play about translation and hilarious miscommunication. The Play David Henry Hwang won three Obies and the Tony Award for Best Play with popular scripts like M. Butterfly and FOB. Now he’s back with a canny comedy of cross-cultural errors. In Chinglish, an American businessman heads to Asia to score a lucrative contract for his family’s firm—but the deal isn’t the only thing getting lost in translation when he collides with a Communist minister, a bumbling consultant and a suspiciously sexy bureaucrat. Two-time Obie-winner Leigh Silverman returns to Berkeley Rep to stage the twists in a terrific play she took to Broadway. Love is on the line, and laughter fills the ledger in Chinglish.
Durham Book Festival is delighted to welcome acclaimed Chinese author Chun Sue. Variously described as brutalist or edgy, Chun Sue was born in 1983. Her books include Beijing Doll and Light Year’s American Dreams. She will answer questions from aspiring writers and talk about her experiences as a writer in China. Suitable for ages 14 plus. Supported by the British Council in collaboration with the Chinese organising committee as part of the China Market Focus 2012 cultural programme at The London Book Fair Tuesday 30 October, 11am (1 hr) Durham University's Oriental Museum, Elvet Hill, Durham DH1 3TH, Tel: 0191 334 5694, www.dur.ac.uk/oriental.museum Tickets: £2.50 http://www.durhambookfestival.com/home.html
POEMS FROM THE CHANGING ROOM 更衣室
A BILINGUAL POETRY READING AT JAMES COHAN GALLERY
ZHAI YONGMING 翟永明 WITH AWARD-WINNING TRANSLATIONS BY ANDREA LINGENFELTER
SATURDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER AT 6PM
James Cohan Gallery: Yueyang Road 170, Building 1, Lane 1 near Yongjia Road | 岳阳路170弄1号楼1楼，近永嘉路
By Helen Wang, September 11, '12
Have you tried this? http://iwl.me/
Copy and paste something you've written or translated, then press the Analyse button, and it will suggest an author you write like. I don't know how this works (or how accurate it is), but it's quite good fun.
