Our News, Your News
By Eric Abrahamsen, December 8, '09
The Foreign Correspondent's Club of China held an event last Friday that was a sort of retrospective on the Frankfurt Book Fair – lessons learned, insights gained, etc. (details here) The four speakers were Michael Kahn-Ackermann, head of the Goethe-Institute in Beijing; Jo Lusby, General Manager (China) of the Penguin Group; Zhou Wenhan, a freelance writer based in Beijing; and Kristin Kupfer, a German freelance journalist.
The discussion, held in the Sequoia Cafe, was good – highlights (from my point of view) included Michael Kahn-Ackermann's point about the enormous disconnect between the official delegation and the Chinese writers who attended. Essentially that the two groups had entirely separate goals, different methods of presenting themselves, and different styles of communication. Jo Lusby continued this with comments that the government would have to learn how to balance its control over "the message" with allowing those people who actually create culture to do their work. There was also a lively debate/argument over the responsibilities of the western press, with one excitable audience member (a journalist) saying, "When we ask Mo Yan if he's a dissident writer he has to answer!"
Zhou Wenhan, the freelance journalist, wrote his remarks out in Chinese, which were then ably translated and read by Jonathan Rechtman. I was impressed with how succinctly and forcefully he presented some very important ideas about how the Chinese government works, and so rather than regale you with half-remembered anecdotes I will paste below, with permission of both author and translator, the English version of what he said:
Kristin has asked me to talk about the strategic issues surrounding the communication between the German and Chinese organizers in a broader sense, but I'm not part of any government think tank or anything, so I can't really say much about the strategic side of things. I can only speak about some of my observations as to how the Chinese government seeks to manage information in all of its interactions with other countries, whether in terms of cultural exchanges, international conferences, or the Olympics.
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By Canaan Morse, December 2, '09
Title: *IUP Alumni Event: An Evening with Hong Ying
When: Sat Dec 05 17:30:00 +0800 2009
Where: Yuanfen New Media Art Space, 798
Description: IUP alumni, teachers, and students are cordially invited to join us for an evening program of literature, music and Sichuan food courtesy of 天下盐. Critically acclaimed author 虹影 will read from and talk about her newest work, Good Children of the Flowers. Musical interludes from cello and viola duo Kevin Olusola and Wu Tsong.
Please RSVP to David Chao
(e: david.chao@alumni.jesus.ox.ac.uk, t: 152 1013 4389)
IUP Alumni and Guests: RMB 200
Current IUP students and teachers attend free of charge.
Tickets may be purchased at the door
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This time, it came in through the wall, emerging like a spirit from an oil painting of a revelry of the Greek gods. It was about the size of a basketball and shone with a hazy red glow. It drifted gracefully over our heads, leaving behind a tail that gave off a dark red light. Its flight path was erratic, and its tail described a confusingly complicated figure above us. As it floated, it whistled a deep tone pierced with a sharp high whine, calling to mind a spirit blowing a flute in some ancient wasteland.
By Cindy M. Carter, December 2, '09
I have to admit: I've often dismissed (and sometimes dissed) the generation of Chinese writers born in the 1980s. There were so many prodigies, kids who started publishing not long after they became pubescent. Clearly, there was some precocious talent, but by the second or third book, you had to wonder if these teenage authors had experienced enough of life to be able to write about it.
I'm not asking that question anymore. The kids have come of age. They're in their mid- to late-twenties now, they've got a different attitude than their predecessors, they're blogging, and they're definitely writing some things worth reading.
I've been following the post-80's writers for a while now, and am finally seeing some things that knock my socks off.
Here are some short bits from two authors, both born in 1982. Zhang Yueran has been writing since she was 14; Han Han published his first novel when he was 17. Both are among China's most popular writers, and have sold millions (probably closer to tens of millions) of books between them.
Han Han, in response to how he feels about being a "public intellectual":
"Being a public intellectual is a lot like being a public toilet. Anyone can stop by and take a piss for free, and they don't have to clean up afterward. If you try to charge them 50 cents for toilet paper, they'll bitch about it and start kicking at your walls. But a city's got to have public toilets, otherwise people just crap in the streets. It's a pretty pathetic role sometimes, but if everyone in the city, even those who have their own bathrooms at home, comes to take a dump in the public toilet, well then... maybe there's some hope for this society yet."
Zhang Yueran, in her recent short story "Gone Astray":
"I could tell right away that Lin was a kindred spirit. Meeting him made me realize that two 'kindred spirits' need not necessarily like each other. I wasn't even sure if I'd want him as a friend, but I had to admit we had a lot in common. Lin was older than I'd expected, forty at least, small and rather scrawny. But he didn't seem to have been born that way: it was more like a lifetime of disappointment had whittled him down to size."
By Cindy M. Carter, December 1, '09
Maybe it's a meaningless list based on dubious statistics, but it's still fun. There are the usual popular authors, with a strong showing from writers of children's books and young adult literature. Nice to see some very worthy and serious authors on the list this year: Wang Meng, Yan Lianke and Alai, among others. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping, 让部分作家先富起来 ("Let some of the writers become wealthy first.")
The highest-paid authors in China, 2009 edition
By Cindy M. Carter, November 29, '09
I couldn't resist this one. Joel Martinsen of Danwei.org castigates, illuminates and pulls out some photos from the archives to illustrate past slogans from the Gate of Heavenly Peas.
(Here's a link to the same, if you're blocked by the ornamental firewall.)
"Gross [of online magazine Slate] must have a particularly lousy tour guide. First he can’t manage to find a chocolate bar anywhere in China, and now he’s suggesting that explicit mentions of Marx and Lenin once adorned Tiananmen Gate..."
I loved this pre-revolutionary Tiananmen Gate slogan - apparently a favorite phrase of Sun Yatsen's - taken from the Book of Rites:
“The world belongs to the people” (Tianxia weigong / 天下为公)
A question for our translators: this phrase clearly means that each and every one of us has some share in this world, that even the humblest among us is entitled to some piece of the communal pie. But is there any implication of a corresponding obligation, any sense that those who partake of it should also contribute to "building" the pie? I've often wondered about the range of those two characters weigong / 为公. Look forward to hearing your thoughts.
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 25, '09
The University of Oklahoma is on the verge of launching a major initiative into Chinese literature, which comes as a surprise to those of us who were twiddling our thumbs, but has actually been in the making for three years now. This initiative comes in two parts: a series of Chinese books to be published starting in 2011, and the launching of a new literary journal, Chinese Literature Today, a sister publication of the venerable World Literature Today, available in Chinese through Beijing Normal University. The new journal will launch next year, and they're soliciting submission, so have at it. The order of the day is "scholarly articles written to be accessible to a wide readership", ie not just smart but well-written, too.
From the Submissions Guidelines (PDF):
World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s College of Arts and Sciences, and Beijing Normal University are pleased to announce an exciting new scholarly journal focusing on contemporary Chinese literature and culture in partnership with NOCFL. The new title, Chinese Literature Today, will feature articles, literary criticism, and original works of fiction and poetry by accomplished scholars and authors from China and abroad. As the editors of Chinese Literature Today, we would like to invite you to take full advantage of this exciting new opportunity by submitting your work today.
In 2006 World Literature Today (WLT), one of America’s oldest periodicals devoted to world literature, began working with China’s most prestigious College of Chinese Language and Literature at Beijing Normal University (BNU) to produce a special issue focusing on China. WLT celebrated this publication in the summer of 2007 by holding the first “China and World Literature Today Conference” in Beijing. Following these initial successes, WLT and BNU began the more ambitious project of initiating a Chinese-language edition, which was unveiled at the “China and World Literature Today International Conference” held in Beijing in October 2008. Many of the nearly three hundred international and Chinese novelists, scholars, editors, and poets who attended the conference voiced a desire to see more Chinese literature and literary criticism available in English translation. Thus, Chinese Literature Today was born.
Submissions should be sent to the CLT editor at clteditor@ou.edu by December 16, 2009.
Download the full submissions guidelines (PDF) here.
Download the CLT styleguide (PDF) here.
Yang was born in Tianjin in 1915. He went abroad to study at Oxford, where he met his wife Gladys, with whom he later translated classic works of Chinese literature for the Foreign Languages Press.
Their translations included Selected Works of Lu Xun and a complete English version of A Dream of Red Mansions, which the two began in the early sixties and finished in the following decade after a spell in prison during the Cultural Revolution.
Celebrity status, foreign authorship and Mongolian and Tibetan motifs continue to pique China's appetite for fiction. American Stephanie Meyer, vampire novelist, and Guo Jingming, reputedly the Middle Kingdom's best-earning writer in 2008, both boast an impressive four titles within the Top 30 this month. But surviving in the corporate jungle and realizing those enticing white-collar dreams are not forgotten either...
Overseas publishing rights for the Chinese novel, Gold Mountain Blues,have been purchased for English, French, Italian and Dutch editions.
In the tradition of Wild Swans and The Concubine's Children, Gold Mountain Blues is the story of five generations of a Chinese family, from the 1860s to the present. The novel relates the struggles and sacrifices of the laborers who built the Canadian Pacific Railway, and the evolution of the modern Chinese–Canadian identity.
"I'm not sure if The Boat to Redemption can help overseas readers know more about China. It's just a novel centering on the fate of people caught in an absurd time," Su said in an e-mail interview, adding his upcoming novel will be set in contemporary China.
"A nation must have the courage to face its own history, whether it's glorious or shameful, beautiful or gray. Misunderstandings often come from hiding and evasion.
"After all, a novel does not stand for the truth of history, so I'm not afraid of misunderstanding."
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 17, '09
News broke today that Su Tong's novel The Boat to Redemption was chosen by the Man Asia Literary Prize judges as this year's winner. Su Tong was the only Chinese writer on the long list. The book is to be translated by Howard Goldblatt and published in the UK next February by Transworld UK.
Here's an article from the Guardian with more detail. The following is from the press release from the Peony Literary Agency (née Creative Work) which represents Su Tong.
On Nov 16, 2009, the Man Asian Literary Prize announced in Hong Kong the recipient of
the prize. Open to all Asian novels unpublished in English, the prize aims to bring
exciting new Asian authors to the attention of the world literary community.
Su Tong's prolific and provocative oeuvre – six novels including Rice (2004) and My Life as Emperor (2006), a dozen novellas, more than 120 short stories – have earned him a
place at the centre of China's literary scene. His best known work abroad is the novella
Wives and Concubines, which was made into the film Raise the Red Lantern directed by
Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. The film garnered an Oscar (1991), and won a Bafta
in 1993. Su Tong's Binu – The Myth Of Meng Jiang Nu (2006), the tale of the girl whose
tears collapsed the Great Wall, sold more than 100,000 copies in China within a month of
publication. It has since been sold into 15 countries.
Boat to Redemption which won the award is a raw, charged and unerringly human
comedy of the revolution. It is the story of disgraced Secretary Ku who has been banished
from the Party and leaves the shore for a new life among the boat people on a fleet of
industrial barges. Refusing to renounce his high status, he maintains a distance – with
Dongliang, his teenage son, from the lowlifes who surround him and he takes on Life,
Fate and the Party in the only way he knows…
For further information, please contact Marysia Juszczakiewicz (in Hong Kong) or Tina
Chou (in Beijing) at:
Email: marysia@peonyliteraryagency.com
Tel: (852) 2167 8887
Fax: (852) 2167 8885
Email: tina@peonyliteraryagency.com
Mobile: 137-1866-7210
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 15, '09
EDIT: We've made a permanent home for the materials we brought to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which you can see by clicking here or following the link under the Explore Paper Republic heading on our home page.
So, very briefly: I and Nicky Harman have arrived in Frankfurt, where we'll be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair through the 28th.
In the near future I'll put up a longer, more detailed post about what we're up to here, but the short version is: we've come with a small packet of seven Chinese books that we think the whole world ought to translate and read. The small version of the packet can be downloaded by clicking here (PDF, right-click to download), and in the next couple of weeks we will be uploading substantial translation samples for each of those books, which can be downloaded separately. Take a look at the packet for now, and let us know what catches your fancy!
Edit
The sample from Han Dong's forthcoming novel Screwed!, can be downloaded here.
Three essays from Liang Wendao's Common Sense are here.
The US President’s upcoming visit to the Middle Kingdom has engendered a ripple or two in linguistic and media circles. Currently, Chinese headline writers refer to the current White House occupant as “Ow-ba-ma” (奥巴马), the first syllable rhyming with “cow.”
Since Obama himself and most native English speakers read the name with a long “O”, as in “open,” China’s version appears inaccurate...
A little later, a voice spoke and the room soon hushed itself—for the launching part of the book launch. The woman speaker soon amazed me with her interpreting of the speech given by Zhou Linfei, the grandson of Lu Xun (Sorry, Mr. Zhou. I know you hate to be introduced in this way, but it’s still a little more convenient than “whose father’s father is Lu Xun”). Zhou was clearly a descendant of Lu Xun, for, with the suit he was wearing, he was like a Lu Xun in a modern version.
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 10, '09
Julia Lovell very kindly consented to give us the following interview, on the occasion of the Penguin Classics' publication of her translation of the complete fiction of Lu Xun.
Edit: Great minds think alike, or at least ask their questions of the same folk – Danwei has also posted an interview with Julia.
Lu Xun occupies a transitionary literary period between the classical writing of imperial China and what we consider modern Chinese today. How did you go about choosing an appropriate voice and register in English? What were some of the resources you turned to?
I suppose that when I started I was trying to recreate Lu Xun's own frame of reference. As is well known, he was a voracious reader of foreign literature. He once advised young writers to "read no Chinese books. Or as few as you can. But read more foreign books"; he even advocated something called "hard translation" that imported foreign syntax into the Chinese language through translation. So I thought that an obvious place to start might be some of the (particularly Eastern European) writers that he was keen on, and whose impact on his writing some scholars have studied: Gogol's "Diary of a Madman", for example. My own academic background is also very much in May-Fourth period writing - so I found it helpful to draw on knowledge of that era and of its ideas about the literature it was trying to create. A big part of the May Fourth vision of a new, modern literature was that it should intervene in life, that it should have an edge of political urgency to it - and that's strongly there in a lot of Lu Xun's fiction and essays.
But finally, and at the risk of sounding lazy, I think that Lu Xun does a lot of a translator's work for him/her. There's a tightly controlled fury bound up in his best, most powerful stories (I'm thinking particularly of pieces such as "Medicine", "Tomorrow", "Kong Yiji") that simply asks to be recreated in the target language. (Though I'm not saying I've succeeded at that.)
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A long-running dispute over Google’s efforts to digitize books has spread this month to China, where authors have banded together to demand that their works be protected from what they call unauthorized copying.
Two Chinese writers’ groups claim that Google has scanned Chinese works into an electronic database in violation of international copyright standards. The organizations are urging China’s authors to step forward and defend their rights.
Chinese poet Li Shizheng, who writes under the pen-name Duo Duo (which is even prettier in Chinese: 多多), has been named the winner of the estimable Neustadt International Prize for Literature for 2010; see, for example, The Norman Transcript's report, Chinese poet awarded Neustadt Prize at OU.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 30, '09
There's plenty more to say about what went on at Frankfurt, but I said most of it in an article for the Abu Dhabi paper The National, which I will link to and leave it at that!
