Our News, Your News
By Alice Xin Liu, April 25, '12
The second issue of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing, themed “The London Book Fair,” is now downloadable as Epub (most devices including Apple) and Mobi (Kindle devices) by following this link!
The kind of writing that is coming out of China right now include chick-lit, family-orientated dramas, tales of escape from the rural to the urban, of grievous policies in the countryside, science fiction, and historical epics. It’s possible that we cover all of those topics in the new issue.
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By Helen Wang, April 24, '12
http://cadensa.bl.uk/cgi-bin/webcat
While looking for podcasts and recordings, I asked at the British Library. The curator/librarian provided the following info:
To browse the British Library Sound and Moving Image Catalogue, got the website, select advanced search, and check out the language and type menus.
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Some poets write about the problems of language and indeterminacy; some write about society and culture; some write about gender. Zhai Yongming, China’s pre-eminent contemporary woman poet whose work has finally been published in book form in English, is unique in her ability to combine all three dimensions—the interpretive function, social change, and being a woman—into one relentlessly strong poetic expression.
‘A visually stunning spectacle.’ Boston Metro on the show
China at the heart of the 20th century. A nation transformed beyond recognition. Through the eyes of one fiercely courageous family, Wild Swans takes us on a journey from the early days of Communist hope and struggle, through the chaos and confusion of Mao's Cultural Revolution to the birth of a superpower. An astonishing human story, Wild Swans has sold 13 million copies in 36 languages, making it the best-selling non-fiction book in British publishing history. This first ever stage version brings together Jung Chang with playwright Alexandra Wood, director Sacha Wares, designer Miriam Buether and Beijing video artist Wang GongXin.
"Big Deals, ‘Seismic’ Change at LBF 2012 - It’s a Wrap", by Andrew Albanese and Rachel Deahl, Publishers' Weekly, Apr 23, 2012:
Legendary literary agent Camen Balcells, meanwhile, struck A MILLION-DOLLAR DEAL with publisher Thinkingdom for Chinese rights to Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude....
For complete coverage, including copies of our three Show Daily editions, visit PW’s London Book Fair landing page at www.publishersweekly.com/lbf
“Billed as a rare event offering insights into the literary landscape of modern China, Wednesday’s panel discussion with Ma Jian, Li Er, and Geling Yan provided a packed cafe with a chance to see three great figures discuss their writings in a relaxed environment. In listening to Ma Jian’s personal tale of visiting his comatose brother and missing the Tiananmen Square protests, or Geling Yan’s depiction of what she termed a “beautiful suicide,” we the audience were entertained by accomplished storytellers....
Articles, interviews and full colour illustrations - in a new book featuring Yang Lian (poet), Romesh Gunesekera (author), Denis Brown (calligrapher), Qu Lei Lei (visual artist), Rohan de Saram (musician), Zeng Laide (calligrapher) and Wang Tao (writing on calligraphy). Edited by Helen Wang.
Read about Day 1
Read about Day 2
Read about Day 3
Read Nicky Harman's translation of Throwing out the Baby by Xu Zechen
Sunday, April 22, 2012, Espionage and mystery in modern-day China, review by Mark Schreiber of Don't Cry, Tai Lake, by Qiu Xiaolong. St. Martin's Minotaur, 2012, 272 pp., $24.99 (hardcover)
A new book from Kunming-based Pedro Ceinos Arcones on this Yunnan people renowned for their Dongba pictographs, Baisha mural paintings and Dongjing music.
By Helen Wang, April 21, '12
From MCLC mailing list (MCLC@lists.service.ohio-state.edu) https://lists.service.ohio-state.edu/mailman/listinfo/mclc
Chinese highlights: An extensive interview with Hsia Yü and the other editors of Xianzai Shi (Poetry Now)--Yung Man-Han, Ling Yü, Hung Hung and Tseng Shumei on their latest issue, conducted by Dylan Suher and Rachel Hui-Yu Tang--accompanied by an immersive slideshow of erasurist poetry from the journal; an excerpt of Alai's King Gesar via new contributing editors Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin; and a new translation of a poem by Li Li, via Eleanor Goodman. There's also Sim Yee Chiang's and Sayuri Okamoto's new translation of a short story by Kou Reishi (黄霊芝), who has the distinction of being the last living Japanese-language writer in Taiwan.
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Chinese Under Globalization: Emerging Trends in Language Use in China, ed. by Jin Liu and Hongyin Tao, World Scientific (Singapore; London), 2012. ISBN: 978-981-4350-69-3
Contents:
--Synchronic Variation or Diachronic Change: A Sociolinguistic Study of Chinese Internet Language (Liwei Gao)
--The Metaphorical World of Chinese Online Entertainment News (Chong Han)
--The Use of Chinese Dialects on the Internet: Youth Language and Local Youth Identity in Urban China (Jin Liu)
--'My Turf, I Decide;: Linguistic Circulation in the Emergence of a Chinese Youth Culture (Qing Zhang and Chen-Chun E)
--Chinese Via English: A Case Study of 'Lettered-Words' As a Way of Integration into Global Communication (Ksenia Kozha)
--Learning English to Promote Chinese : A Study of Li Yang's Crazy English (Amber R Woodward)
--More than Errors and Embarrassment: New Approaches to Chinglish (Oliver Radtke)
--Writing Cantonese as Everyday Lifestyle in Guangzhou (Canton City) (Jing Yan)
--Negotiating Linguistic Identities Under Globalization: Language Use in Contemporary China (Jin Liu and Hongyin Tao)
By Helen Wang, April 21, '12
Interview with Yan Geling
Interview with Mo Yan
The darkness of 2011 continued. My latest work, “Four Books” — a novel that directly confronts the Chinese people’s traumatic experiences during the Great Leap Forward of the late 1950s and the subsequent famine — was rejected by almost 20 publishing houses. The reasons I was given were all along the same lines: Anyone who dares to publish my book in China is certain to be closed down.
The novel took me 20 years to plan and two years to write. It is important to me as a writer, and I know it will be an important contribution to Chinese literature. However, I am fully aware of the realities of publishing in China, so I have no choice but to accept the fate of my book. All I can do is sigh.
By Helen Wang, April 21, '12
http://www.granta.com/New-Writing
16 April - Flying Towards a Country of Rain, poem by Wang Yin (tr. Andrea Lingenfelter)
17 April - Petty Thief, short story by A Yi (tr. by Alice Xin Liu)
18 April - Shen Congwen: A Letter, tr. by Alice Xin Liu
19 April - Podcast of Mo Yan, interviewed by John Freeman
20 April - Solitude, poem by Huang Canran (tr. Judith Roche)
Hugo Award nominated writer, Ken Liu, is also a keen translator of Chinese fiction. His latest project is “Taking Care of God” by the popular Chinese science fiction writer, Liu Cixin. You can read it in issue #2 of the free ebook magazine, Pathlight.
By Canaan Morse, April 20, '12
An informal article by Canaan Morse on the poetry blog Metre Maids. Don't know why the site wouldn't let me newslink it.
Alai remembered going to the British Museum and seeing Tibetan culture represented by the religious stuff only. "As a Tibetan I felt uneasy," he said. "Our culture is far more than just temples and lamas."
Talking about the influence of Tibetan culture by modernization, Alai said "development is good, as a culture couldn't just live in museums."
His view was echoed by Cering Norbu ［Tsering Norbu, 次仁罗布］. "This influence is not solely on Tibetan culture," he said. "It is why writers are important, as they should record the history of a nation."
Alai has a famous historical novel, the Dust Settles [Red Poppies, 尘埃落定], which follows a family of Tibetan chieftains before the democratic reform in 1959. When asked if such topic was sensitive, he laughed and voiced his confidence.
"In fact, I am free to express my innermost thoughts in China and writing itself is a happy experience," he said.
While Cering Norbu is working on a new book, which tells the change of life among Tibetans after 1959.
"Nobody has written down completely the changes Tibet experienced during the past half a century," he said.
"We are enjoying religious freedom. Our lives have been greatly improved, particularly after the reform and opening-up. I want to tell the readers our true feelings," he said.
Emily Buchanan reports on the London Bookfair -includes interviews with Shen Keyi, Xi Chuan and Ma Jian.
Memoir found in attic could be as big a hit as Wild Swans, by Louise Jury, Chief Arts Correspondent, The London Evening Standard, 19 April 2012:
A Chinese family memoir that languished in an attic for half a century is being hailed as a future hit as big as international bestseller Wild Swans. Agent Susan Mears is in talks with major publishers at this week’s London Book Fair after the manuscript documenting appalling hardship and bravery was discovered by London writer Howard Webster four months ago. It tells the story of Stephen Jin-Nom Lee, who rose from extreme poverty to become a colonel in the Cantonese Air Force, a professor, banker — and grandfather to Mr Webster’s Chinese-American wife, Julianne Lee.
Blue Door has acquired The Bathing Women, an iconic and bestselling novel by Chinese author Tie Ning which has been translated into English more than ten years after its original publication.
Editor Laura Deacon made her first acquisition for the list buying UK and Commonwealth rights through Arabella Stein at Abner Stein on behalf of Sobel Weber.
From Beijing the issue is not so clear cut. The official delegation consists of some of the country's most popular authors. Examples include Internet sensation Annie Baobei, whose soulful, sad short stories are bestsellers; Man Asian Literary Prize winner Bi Feiyu; and the audacious, upcoming author A Yi, who writes dark tales about the countryside. All three deserve to be lauded - even if their journey to London is sponsored by the Chinese state.
What is clear is that censorship has a caustic relationship to creativity. China is now commanding the world's attention as an economic superpower. Its literature, however, flags behind its political clout. Censorship, it appears, is keeping the country's best writers in chains.
By Helen Wang, April 19, '12
Just published! Ten stories from urban China, by Ho Sin Tung, Cao Kou, Jie Chen, Yi Sha, Zhang Zhihao, Han Dong, Ding Liying, Xu Zechen, Diao Dou and Zhu Wen.
Published by Comma Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1905583461
www.commapress.co.uk
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What has caused a bitter public wrangle in London is that Beijing did not only choose—with the full approval of the fair itself and of the British Council—which writers to bring to the fair. In a disturbing repeat of what happened at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2009, it also excluded some of China’s best-known writers. Among these are two Nobel Prize winners: Gao Xingjian, China’s only Literature Prize laureate, who lives in nearby Paris, and Liu Xiaobo, the Peace Prize winner who is now serving out an eleven-year prison sentence. More scandalous still, not one of China’s diaspora poets and novelists was invited, even though most of the country’s most distinguished writers live abroad.
“We must be very powerful and they are frightened of us,” Qi Jiazhen, a fiery, seventy-year-old writer told me, at a meeting of Chinese writers in London to protest the fair’s corrupt invitation list. “That is why they won’t let us into the fair.”
By Helen Wang, April 18, '12
From Michel Hockx: We are pleased to announce the launch of the JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH
ASSOCIATION FOR CHINESE STUDIES (JBACS), the new official journal of the
British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS).
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Yan Lianke (阎连科), author of Dream of Ding Village (丁庄之梦), speaks about the demolition of his Beijing garden-home, Thoreau's Walden and his own latest work, <北京，最后的纪念>. The interview is in Chinese.
By Nicky Harman, April 17, '12
All details here. Go for it!
By Nicky Harman, April 17, '12
Following the five Chinese short stories in translation which the Guardian ran last week, they've chosen a poem by Han Dong as their Poem of the Week today.
