Our News, Your News
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 23, '07
ESWN, the first place to look for all things Zhang Ailing-related (as well as a good deal else), posts a transcribed letter from Hu Shi to Zhang Ailing (aka Eileen Chang) on the subject of her novel Qiuge (秋歌). This is part five of a series of reproductions of Zhang Ailing’s letters…
The South Bend Tribune carries an article on an ink-and-wash art exhibit by Gao Xingjian at Notre Dame University. A nice background on Gao is accompanied by a really rather astonishing sample of his painting.
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 14, '07
The Beijing Foreign Languages Printing House, once the country's sole purveyor of Communist propaganda, is struggling for solvency.
Upcoming: the shortlist of the Man Asian Literary Prize (aka the 'Asian Booker') will be announced on the 25th of October.
Rejoice, for Jonathan Spence hath published another book. This one is on the 17th-century historian and essayist Zhang Dai, and sounds excellent.
More soon…
By Eric Abrahamsen, October 1, '07
Who knew? Apparently a shady consortium of literary types known as the International Federation of Translators pulled some strings in the UN, leaned on a few world leaders, and got September 30th (that’s today) declared International Translation Day. Good to know we’ve got the clout of a transnational cartel behind us! Ruining the effect slightly is this year’s rather apologetic theme: “Don’t Shoot the Messenger!” Granted, there are incidents of violence against translators (though I can only think of the Rushdie situation at the moment), but this is hardly the way to signal our pride. Rectify the situation! Today’s your day to read a book in translation, brush up your foreign languages, or kiss a translator.
If you’re curious, September 30th was picked because it was originally the day sacred to St. Jerome, best known for translating the Bible into Latin.
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 28, '07
Recently my in-laws came to visit, and while they were here we found ourselves, as is our wont, singing old Cultural Revolution songs. So far 物产阶级文化大革命 The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is Good is my favorite, in part because it’s got a great bouncy rhythm, but mostly because the lyrics are batshit insane. Here’s the chorus:
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is Good,
It is Good,
It is Good,
It is Good.
How’s that for nuance? More comes later, about overthrowing the imperialists, but really all you need to know about the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is in the first, second, third and fourth lines of the chorus. The curious thing about this song is the phrase 就是好, which translates most simply as ‘It is Good’, but actually conveys something along the lines of ‘It is Good (And That’s Final – No Matter What Anyone Says)’.
The point of the song, in other words, is not simply that it’s good, but that it is a priori good; it is good without needing any reason to be good; the answer to the question ‘is it good?’ is already ‘yes’ before the question is even voiced; in fact, we’d really rather you didn’t ask that question, because simply asking sounds suspiciously like doubt. You wouldn’t be looking to get struggled against, would you?
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By Eric Abrahamsen, September 19, '07
Last Tuesday, the 11th, brought the publication of a 'China’s Strongest Writers' ranking, put out jointly by Sina’s book channel and something called the ‘ranking list website’. Specifically it seems to be the handiwork of a guy named Wu Huaiyao: as a related Phoenix TV article puts it, we’re seeing the creation of a “new internet career – the professional ranker.” It was Wu who brought us 'China’s Most Wealthy Writers' last year; that key issue out of the way, we’re now getting around to their actual strength as writers.
Much as the whole thing reeks of media circus, it’s still worth a look. Wu Huaiyao, no dummy, went to ten of China’s most influential literary critics to nominate the 58 writers who formed the basis of the list. Zhu Dake and Xie Youshun (who has a blog post about it) are probably best-known among the critics, and Zhu gets most of the media attention. He warns that strength does not equal influence does not equal earning power, and gets a few digs in at the inanity of last year’s wealthy writers ranking.
The list itself is here (scroll down past the Lord of the Rings splash page; it’s all in Chinese but there are pictures!). The top ten writers are as follows:
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By Eric Abrahamsen, September 8, '07
It was originally Gordon Fairclough’s article in the online WSJ that got me thinking about road-trip literature in China, and now on top of that, wouldn’t you know, it happens to be the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s On The Road. On The Road is one of a few discrete chunks of foreign literature (others include the works of Borges and Milan Kundera) that, for various reasons of historical accident, floated across the sea and became trendy here. There are readers who wouldn’t know Hemingway’s beard if it turned up in their soup, but by god they could point out Vesuvio Cafe on a SF street map.
Fairclough’s article mentions a growing road-trip literature in China, and cites “‘Go the Distance Now,’ a book chronicling five years spent traveling around China by car.” One travelogue does not a road-trip literature make, but it started me thinking – Kerouac’s popularity must point to some kind of latent interest in this sort of thing, and really, China is the perfect country for road literature. It’s obscenely large, for one. It sports unbelievable geographical and cultural diversity (anyone who believes in the homogeneity of the Chinese, including the Chinese themselves, needs to take a road trip). It’s traditional culture encourages stasis, and trepidation about venturing away from home. The place is ripe for some maverick to demonstrate the heady joys of having the wind in your hair. Actually, a fair number of younger, middle-class adventurers are discovering that for themselves, but as far as I know they have yet to find their bible.
So what have we got? Journey to the West aside, Ma Jian’s Red Dust is probably the closest thing there is to a road-side portrait of China. But it’s an awfully political book, and I wonder how many people actually read it inside the country. Xu Xing’s You Can Have Whatever’s Left, a picaresque about a couple of rogues wandering the country, definitely qualifies. I suppose even Gao Xingjian’s Soul Mountain counts, although that struck me less as road literature and more as one man’s tiresome journey through his own angst-ridden impotence (ahem).
How about it? What am I missing?
By Rachel Henson, September 3, '07
It was really getting on her nerves that so many fit and healthy men came to her for treatment, not because there was anything wrong with them, but because they wanted a look at the slag. I was the exception because my back genuinely looked like Pigsy had dug a couple of trenches in it and, even if I was pretending it hurt, those wounds were a good enough reason to see a doctor. They gave her some hope that she could get me to agree she wasn’t a slag. One person acknowledging that she wasn’t was hugely different to no one acknowledging it at all. But I had to go and disappoint her.
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 23, '07
Cindy and I are currently working together on a subtitle translation project, for the short documentary films coming out of Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale project. Among the 1,001 Chinese people that Ai Weiwei shipped to Kassel, Germany, fifteen or sixteen filmmakers were included, and they’ve produced a series of small films about certain of the ‘artists’.
My first short film centered around Gouzi and Zhang Chi, which was a pleasant surprise as I’ve only known them, Gouzi in particular, by their writing. Gouzi is mostly famous for being drunk, it seems, and in fact the whole hour-long spot is sodden (the first shot is Zhang Chi blarging in someone’s bathroom). Most of it takes place at group dinners in various restaurants and living rooms around Beijing. The subjects represent a certain slice of Beijing’s literary community – 35 to 50, once hot young bloods, all devastated in one way or the other by the events of June 4th, 1989.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, August 21, '07
I'm re-reading George Steiner's After Babel, one of the great theoretical texts on translation, and this passage made me laugh:
Thus any light I may be able to throw on the nature and poetics of translation between tongues has concomitant bearing on the study of language as a whole. The subject is difficult and ill-defined. Regarding the possible transfer into English of Chinese philosophic concepts, I. A. Richards remarks: 'We have here indeed what may very probably be the most complex type of event yet produced in the evolution of the cosmos.'
By Cindy M. Carter, August 9, '07
I'm blowing off deadlines left and right, so don't have time to do a full translation of this chapter. Even though I'm not really in the game, just wanted to toss in a few low-denomination chips and support the translation of this tremendously influential and unfairly neglected Chinese author....long live Wang Xiaobo! And wansui to Brendan, Eric and Feng37 for bringing his words to life.
Her reasoning went like this: although everyone said that she was a slut, Chen Qingyang felt that she was not, because to be a slut you had to sleep around, and she had never slept around. Although her husband had been in jail for over a year, she had never slept around in his absence, nor had she slept around prior to his imprisonment. For this reason, Chen Qingyang simply couldn't understand why people insisted on calling her a slut.
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