Our News, Your News
By Canaan Morse, August 5, '11
We admit to being despicably late with this, and hope that Kadi defer from poisoning our coffee.
The Bookworm and English Trackers are hosting another Translation Slam and looking for two Chinese to English translators. How it works: translators tackle a Chinese text, and then present their versions on stage, fielding questions from the audience. This month, we will be translating an excerpt from the script (600 characters) of the play The Great Bruce Lee Romance: a Beijing Love Story. Full of love, angst and Beijing hua this original piece is sure to strike a chord with Beijingren of all nationalities. You will be given the excerpt as well as a synopsis in English for additional background information. If you are interested, please contact Kadi (kadi@chinabookworm) for more information about the event and payment. The event will be held Wednesday, August 17 at 7:30pm at The Bookworm.
Timed to coincide with and complement the 2011 Shanghai Book Fair--August 17-23-- this “literary week” will feature appearances by luminaries such as Nobel Prize winner Le Clézio, Ireland’s Colm Tobin and China’s own Bi Feiyu, winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2010. Here's a partial list of events. . .
Kunming-based Fan Wen (范稳), author of a trilogy set on the border of Yunnan and Tibet, has launched a new novel exploring the history of the Yunnan-Vietnam railway that linked Haiphong with Kunming in 1910. Bisezhai Village (碧色寨) portrays the clash of cultures between the French, then colonial masters of Indochina just south of Yunnan and the driving force behind the new railway, and the indigenous Yi (彝族). . .
By Cindy M. Carter, August 1, '11
(Abrahamsen's probably too modest to post this, so I will.)
The 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowships have been announced, and Paper Republic's own Eric Abrahamsen has been awarded a grant to translate Xu Zechen's novel Running Through Zhongguancun, the excerpt of which was first published right here, on PR.
For more info, see NEA website here.
By Nicky Harman, July 25, '11
Chinese Fables
Bi Feiyu and Chan Koonchung
23rd August at 6:30pm
Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
We’re delighted to bring two of China’s most respected and controversial authors together in this unique event at the Free Word Centre. Bi Feiyu won this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize for his masterful novel Three Sisters. The author was due to visit the UK last year to promote his book – an epic portrayal of contemporary Chinese culture – but was caught in visa bureaucracy. Chan Koonchung’s political fable The Fat Years, banned in China, will be available in English in July 2011.
Join these two fascinating writers as they discuss fables, families – and fat years – with critic Lucy Popescu (author of The Good Tourist). In association with Telegram Books and Transworld Publishers.
Booking details: www.freewordonline.com or call 0207 3242 570
Tickets: £5 (£3 PEN members/concessions)
The following writers/artists have generously allowed us to showcase their work:
Poetry: Salvatore Attardo, Eleanor Goodman, J.H. Martin, Camille Hong Xin, Arthur Leung, Vera Schwarcz, Miroslav Kirin, Alithini, W.F. Lantry, Sumana Roy, Russell C. Leong, Amylia Grace
Poetry in translation: Duo Duo, Mai Mang, Wang Jiaxin, Christopher Lupke, Zhai Yongming, Andrea Lingenfelter, Xi Chuan, Lucas Klein, Zang Di, Ming Di, Meng Lang, Denis Mair, Tony Barnstone, Chen Dongdong, Eleanor Goodman and Ao Wang, Shu Cai, Gao Xing, Leonard Schwartz, Zhang Er, Xiao Kaiyu, Kang Cheng, Vivienne Guo, Ralph Parfect, Aku Wuwu, Mark Bender
Fiction: Isabelle Li, L.M. Magalas, Kaitlin Solimine
Fiction in translation: Han Dong, Nicky Harman
Creative non-fiction: Madeleine Marie Slavick, Michal Slaby
Art & art criticism: Anton S. Kandinsky, David Rong, Zhang Dali, Mai Mang, Ted Ciesielski, Zheng Lianjie, Ji Shengli, Ai Weiwei
Reviews: Katherine Foster, Glen Jennings, Joel Heng Hartse, Alice Tsay, William (Billy) Noseworthy, Ruth Y.Y. Hung, Jason Eng Hun Lee, Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, Emily Walz
Interview: Karen Ma
Chinese authors are still struggling to carve a niche in the global gallery of contemporary literary greats
The last book to have notched up outstanding sales in the English-speaking market is Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui (translated by Bruce Humes/Robinson Publishing UK) in 2001. The somewhat morbid tale of a waitress-turned-writer of erotic novels - torn between an artist who overdoses on heroin and a German businessman who she knows is cheating on her - is thought to have sold over 300,000 copies.
Going by more conservative projections, a Chinese book that sells 5,000 copies in English is supposed "to break even", according to Huang Youyi, vice-president of China International Publishing Group (CIPG) and secretary-general of the Translators Association of China. "Occasionally when a book goes beyond 10,000 copies, it is considered a great success."
So far it is only the Chinese classics like A Dream of the Red Mansions, Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West and The Outlaws of the Marsh that have "enjoyed such continued sales", he informs.
It is bad enough to have to miss a writer, and it makes it even worse to
have to miss his writing as well.
By Cindy M. Carter, July 7, '11
Documentary filmmaker and long-time Japan resident Li Ying (李缨) has recently published a Chinese-language book 《神魂颠倒日本国》about his documentary film Yasukuni. The product of nearly a decade of researching, filming and editing, Yasukuni has stirred controversy in both China and Japan, been banned in mainland China, and been the subject of a lawsuit in the Japanese courts.
From 14:00-15:30 on Sunday, July 10, 2011, Li Ying will hold a book release event and signing at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in 798 Art District, Beijing. The event is free, open to the public, and will be held in Chinese.
读书系列：《神魂颠倒日本国》- 靖国骚动的浪尖与暗流
7月10日（周日）
14:00-15:30
UCCA报告厅
July 10 (Sun)
14:00-15:30
UCCA Auditorium
嘉宾 ：李缨
Guest: Li Ying
The three poems included here represent the turning point of Xi Chuan’s developing style, where the modernist lyric reaches, and begins to pierce through, its upper limits, the way “plains push out from the edge of the city / mountains lift up at the edge of the plains.” Later, he would describe his focus on the paradox, or oxymoron, as one poetic reaction to China’s political and economic realities; here, those realities are represented by a power outage and an awareness of our becoming history — and Borges’s annotated “aporia of history” — in which, like Borges, we all become librarians “preserving the order of the universe and books.”
You might think May 35th is an imaginary date, but in China it’s a real one. Here, where references to June 4 — the date of the Tiananmen incident of 1989 — are banned from the Internet, people use “May 35th” to circumvent censorship and commemorate the events of that day.
Earlier this year I visited Taiwan, where my book China in Ten Words had just been released. “Why can’t this book be published in mainland China,” I was asked, “when your novel Brothers can?”
That’s the difference between fiction and nonfiction: Although both books are about contemporary China, Brothers touches on things obliquely and so slips through the net, whereas China in Ten Words, by straight talking, goes beyond the pale.
“Brothers does a May 35th,” I explained, “and China in Ten Words is more like June 4th.”
Eight items of literary works published on the Internet will join another 170 novels to compete for the Mao Dun Literature Prize, one of China’s most prestigious literary awards, according to the Chinese Writers Association (CWA).
This is the first time that Internet novels have been accepted as qualified candidates for the prize, which is awarded to no more than five novels every four years.
The winners will be selected after two rounds of voting from a committee of 62 judges.
Recent years have shown a growing trend of Internet-based publication of literary works in China, whose number of Internet users climbed to 477 million this year.
In an earlier talk with media, Chen Qirong, a spokesman with the CWA, said that by opening the doors for Internet novels, China’s awards have begun to recognize the influence of Internet literature.
Let me count the ways of paradise: from that of the Monkey King to that of Hong Xiuquan is a flight of two hundred thirty-two years, from that of Hong Xiuquan to that of Chairman Mao is a flight of twenty-nine.
26:
The Middle Kingdom of Cathay, where many generals
started out as bandits
"The question of translators’ fidelity to the works they are charged with smuggling across borders has been much debated. Every thoughtful practitioner is aware that he is creating something new...Nevertheless, I often wonder what people mean when they say they like the way that, for example, Haruki Murakami writes. Or Pasternak. Or what, precisely, the Swedish academicians were rewarding when they gave the 2000 Nobel Prize to Gao Xingjian."
I didn't find there to be much in this article, but at least it's nice to see the NYT paying attention to our discipline.
Perhat Tursun was born in 1969 in Atush, a remote and mountainous county located in the southwest corner of China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, along the border with Kyrgyzstan. He earned a BA in Turkology and Literature and an MA in Chaghatay Language at the Central University for Nationalities in Beijing. Since 1989, he has worked as a folklore researcher at the Xinjiang People's Arts Center in Ürümqi, Xinjiang's capital city, and as a poet, essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. He is one of the most prominent and most-discussed authors in the Uyghur language today.
89: I fall asleep as soon as it gets dark, I get up as soon as it’s light out. I always dream of a doctor with a fever and a mail carrier with a toothache, and then I meet them; so in order to meet myself, I must dream of myself, but dreaming of oneself is so embarrassing.
By Lucas Klein, June 5, '11
My co-translation with Clayton Eshleman of Endure: Poems by Bei Dao is now out by Black Widow Press in a special edition by arrangement with New Directions, limited to 1200 copies (so hurry before they're gone!)--contact Black Widow for yours!
Of particular interest to readers of Paper Republic may be the appendix,
More…
"A lot of translation -- far more than most publishers and even critics are willing to acknowledge -- is real crap," notes the Literary Saloon...
Author and publisher Carmen Callil has withdrawn from the judging panel of the Man Booker International prize over its decision to honour Philip Roth with the £60,000 award. Dismissing the Pulitzer prize-winning author, Callil said that "he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe".
By Eric Abrahamsen, May 14, '11
Back in March we mentioned on the newsletter that Ou Ning had started a new literary magazine called Chutzpah (天南 in Chinese). It's got a English-language supplement (Ou Ning refers to it as a "parasite") called Peregrine featuring English translations of some of the content. The first issue of Peregrine is available for download as a PDF here. Translators include Lucy Johnston, Julia Lovell, Anna Holmwood, Dinah Gardner and Shumei Roan, translating Li Rui, A Yi, Gu Qian, and Liu Zheng, take a look!
By Lucas Klein, May 11, '11
Here is one of my least favorite poems in the standard anthology, The Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty 唐詩三百首, by Meng Haoran 孟浩然 (c. 689 – 740):
春曉
春眠不覺曉
處處聞啼鳥
夜來風雨聲
花落知多少
It’s one of my least favorite poems* for a number of reasons:
More…
By Nicky Harman, May 9, '11
The Guardian Online Arts section runs a World literature tour on the site, and it's heading to China ... go online and add your ideas...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/may/09/world-literature-tour-china/
By Canaan Morse, May 4, '11
For us at PR not to give a nod to today would be negligence.
Reports have been that the CCP has gone to lengths this year to keep people from publicly commemorating this day through discussion or presentation. At first thought, it seems unsurprising, but there is something special about the sensitivity of May 4th. It represents a movement the government would like either to appropriate or ignore, because it cannot afford to forget it.
More…
"The village was full of the walking dead," remembers Yan Lianke, now 53, slumping away from his desk and shaking his head. It is a crisp Sunday evening as we talk in Yan's office, where he works as a professor, amid the vacant halls of Beijing's Renmin University. The room is cold and bare: a lone bookshelf stands empty against the fading whitewashed walls and Yan courteously hands out paper cups filled with hot green tea. The kettle sits on the floor and is the only accessory in the room.
"Up to 30 million people lost their lives during the Three Years of Natural Disasters [the 1958-1961 famine that followed Mao's calamitous Great Leap Forward]. The intellectuals in China chose to keep silent," says Yan emphatically. "This time, I had to find a way to make my voice heard."
By Canaan Morse, April 18, '11
We are, at long last, updating the database. No, stop sniggering, I'm being serious. We've got new bio information for a number of writers, new books up and a seriously broader range of samples.
More…
