Suggestions for BOTM April

[imron]

Nope

[roddy]

Ok, how about this. It's looking like we're not coming up with a book for April, and some of us are still working through March's book. So how about we identify three or four short stories, aim to get through one a week for April, and see how that goes? Sound reasonable?

[imron]

Sounds like a plan.

[roddy]

Right, well I'll start the ball rolling by recommending one I've already read, which was mentioned in the Chinese Science Fiction topic, 中国式青春. This was originally recommended by zhwj, and I really enjoyed it, funny and - yes, I'll admit it - I even found it somewhat touching. You can find it online here, and I'll also attach a .doc for anyone who wants it.

The basic premise is quite simple: As baby Superman is travelling from Krypton to Earth, a piece of space dust grazes his capsule, slowing him infinitesimally . He arrives on Earth 12 hours late, landing in a Peoples' Commune in the Chinese countryside, where he grows up.

11,000 characters, give or take, so not a massive undertaking at all.

PS And no, I'm not going to fix the typo in the .doc title

中国是青春.doc

[roddy]

Don't all rush at once

[muyongshi]

I've started it and find the concept interesting and am really curious as to how it will develop. Unfortunately I'm finding the first bit a bit 枯燥

[Sam Addington]

So far I have only read the first three pages. Like Muyongshi, I don't find anything passionately riveting in it. I find it interesting to note that this style of literature has changed little in the last thirty years, the last time I paid any attention to it. It has very unforgiving characterizations of commune members as being uneducated and blindly toeing the party line. Not only uneducated, but lacking in common sense. The lacking in common sense bit is the bit I have trouble with. I find it very classist and city-folk concescending. I try to apply the benefit of the doubt .. it is after all satire .. but I find it to be very artless satire.

I also find these stories rely heavily on onomotopoeia which I find a bit uninteresting. But perhaps it gives it a more live, story-teller like quality?

To qualify the above: I have to use the dictionary while reading. I may be missing a lot of the pleasure due this fact. (I don't mind a mindless read and I have the feeling that this is a mindless read. Unless of course you are reading it in a language not your own.)

Question 1: Why, when Wang Erya finds her son has lifted the tractor above his head and used it to irrigate the fields with three shovelsful of water (please correct me if I have the details wrong) does she feel 羞愧? In Japan it is said that the nail that stands out above the others gets pounded in. Can this have anything to do with it? Please help me with the psychology here.

Question 2: 这么屁大点小孩子 I know that 屁 is 屁股, but what does it signify here? that he is strong? Or that he is still a toddler and thus his butt is largely proportioned? Here is my attempt at a translation "There, before her eyes, little one-year-old Xiangyang was waddling along the path at the edge of the field. Now, you may say there is nothing strange about such a precocious child taking a few tottering steps, but on his head was a tractor!"

Question 3: What is a 红叉? Not in my dictionary. Nor is 零饼.

Question 4: What is the unit in 一千二百度？Or is this one of they typos you asked us to ignore?

Question 5: 被牢牢接住之后 after being tightly constrained?

Question 6: Same line 他 this refers to the technocrat, right?

I got a good laugh out of the next little section where his teacher keeps assigning punishments. For one thing I didn't have to look up a single word.

And that is about where I am right now.

[zhwj]

1) It's more the fact that he's so young yet he's performing a service for the commune - he's shaming her by example, even more so because she's his mother and should be an example for him.

2) 屁大点事 is something insignificant - the size of a fart. So he's just walking in the field - nothing special, except for that tractor.

3) 红叉: Red X. 零饼: 0. The teacher thought the essay was a fabrication and marked it accordingly.

4,5,6) the unit is 度, degrees. The guy was so flabbergasted that his mind somersaulted 1200 degrees, or 3 1/3 times, and after he had returned to earth, he decided to write up his conclusions....

[roddy]

Yay, people are reading it!

Does anyone want to suggest another short story for those who don't like tales about superheroes growing up in communes?

[gato]

I hesitate to suggest another book since 《围城》, my last suggestion, didn't quite meet expectation, but what the heck, how about 棋王 by 阿城. It's fairly short, at around 4 web pages, not sure how many paper pages it is. I do have a bilingual version back at home.

The text:

http://book.kanunu.cn/html/2005/0828/981.html

棋王 by 阿城 出处： 发布时间：2005-08-28

Bilingual version:

http://product.dangdang.com/product.aspx?product_id=445463

阿城小说选(英汉对照)

douban perspectives here:

http://www.douban.com/subject/1020961/

棋王

Bio:

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-AhCheng.html

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

Ah Cheng , pseud. of Zhong Acheng, 1949-, Chinese writer and painter. His father, the film critic Zhong Dianfei, was forced by the Communist government to sell his library of Chinese and Western classics, which Ah Cheng secretly read before delivering them to the book dealer. During the Cultural Revolution , he was sent to work on commune farms in Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan. After returning to Beijing in the late 1970s he gained recognition for his drawings, stories, essays, and film scripts. In the mid-1980s he was a prominent advocate of "seeking roots" literature, a movement by young writers to reestablish their cultural roots, which had been lost during the social upheavals of the previous two decades. He is best known for his series of "king" novellas.

[Sam Addington]

Thank you to zhwj for his clarifications.

Is the use of 1200 degrees as utterly absurd as it would be in English?

That is what I don't like about stories like this. There is very little skilled use of metaphor and what little metaphor is used seems extremely obscur.

Although the idea of his mind doing the sommersaults is rather cute ...

Hopefully the remaining pages will go a bit more smoothly.

[Sam Addington]

I saw the movie 洗澡 recently. It was very sweet. Was that based on the story by 阿城？

[zhwj]

Jin He Zai's writing draws considerable stylistic inspiration from the Mo Lei Tau humor of Stephen Chow. It's not derivative, per se, but it has its roots in the late 90s/early 2000s after Chow's films (particularly A Chinese Odyssey) began to circulate widely among Chinese youth. Absurdity plays a large role. The author made his name with the online "Story of Wukong" written in that style

I think he's actually pretty skillful at deploying it. But it's not to everyone's taste, that's for sure.

[gato]

I saw the movie 洗澡 recently. It was very sweet. Was that based on the story by 阿城？

The movie "洗澡" is not related to Ah Cheng's story but rather is an original screenplay by its director Zhang Yang. See http://imdb.com/title/tt0215369/fullcredits#writers

Nor is it based on the novel 《洗澡》by Yang Jiang, who happens to be the wife of Qian Zhongshu, the author of 《围城》.

http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/12537958.html?fr=qrl

电影《洗澡》是不是杨绛的同名小说改编的？

[Sam Addington]

zhwj, thank you once again for your clarification. Being a 53 year-old "ex" China scholar I certainly appreciate being brought back up to date. I know none of this.

I have continued reading this morning and have actually been enjoying the story with very few references to the dictionary. I think I am accepting the story more for what it is. I have just reached the part where he is sitting atop the Empire State Building being interviewed by who I can only assume is Lois Lane. I began to lose the story line, so I knew it was time to quit for the day. I will pick it up again tomorrow.

I thought of Ray Bradbury while I was reading the part where Li Xiangyang and DingDing were sitting on the hill at twilight sipping orange sodas and I remembered that I too, at one time, enjoyed reading science fiction ... no matter how far out.

I am not at all familiar with the

Mo Lei Tau humor of Stephen Chow

so you will have to fill me in on that, or I will have to do a bit more research myself. When you mention humor, I immediately go to pieces like "Animal House" or Mel Brooks "Blazing Saddles" which I never really appreciated all that much.

One bit I thought a bit strange stylistically was the jump to DingDing as an old grandmother. I guess the author just wanted to get his point in. And I appreciated the nostalgia of losing the utilitarian world where a piece of paper was of value and the current world of flagrant waste. I lived in Guangxi in 1980 and felt that I had the rare opportunity of going back in time to the thirties (and in a few instances even to the 13th century). I could see that world disappearing even as I witnessed it.

I will withhold further criticism of the story until I get to the end.

[skylee]

I am not at all familiar with the

Quote:

Mo Lei Tau humor of Stephen Chow

so you will have to fill me in on that' date=' or I will have to do a bit more research myself. [/quote']

One classic example -> 周星驰——小强

[Sam Addington]

skylee - yet another new thing to learn ... how to use that web page you directed us to. I cannot watch the movies in live time ... to many pauses for the upload. I will have to learn to download them myself. But only so much in one day! Meanwhile I have order two of his movies from Netflix. There is quite a selection on Netflix. I ordered Shaolin Soccer and the Cinderalla Story. They say there will be a long wait for Cinderella Story.

[Sam Addington]

I have finished reading the story. While I appreciate the youthful exuberance of the story I still find it to be very poorly conceived. Once again I refer to the old grandmother watching her grandchild fold paper cranes ... the same grandmother that died old and friendless in the hospital after blowing that whistle all those years? Come on. Get real. He swears his undying devotion to her and the next moment he gives up just because he loses his papers and his right to citizenship? I don't think so! I think the author just wanted to get the story finished so he could publish it. He didn't really give much thought to the consistancy of the theme he was developing. He came up with a few gems, but they were lost in the general garbage of incomprehensible jumps from superhero-dom to dad-in-the-suburb-dom. Sure society gets us down (whether, as the author ably points out, it be US society or Chinese). But somewhere along the line the author forgot the leaves on the trees, the flowing river, the stars up above and the little things life gives us to keep us going. He teases us into believing in true, undying love only to throw it in our faces. I think the author as some more to learn about the true strength of human character. Life is what you make of it no matter where you are. The good life is there for us all as long as we choose it. It seemed Li Xiangyang was about to chose it and then he let it go. Much too choppy. Very little of any use. Two thumbs down.

Next candidate please!

[gato]

I've started reading 《棋王》 mentioned above. It's good so far.

[skylee]

I wanted to suggest 梁山伯自白書 but there are many typos in the versions on-line.