What are you reading?

[Guest realmayo]

When you outsource part of your thinking/memory to a device/tool, your brain will figure that's something it doesn't need to know and therefore won't put in much effort to remember it.

 

Doubtless the likes of Matteo Ricci (of 16th century memory-palace fame) made the same complaint about paper dictionaries....

[laurenth]

Haha! Very true realmayo.  When people grumble about those who read ebooks "because you don't have the feel of the paper, blah blah", I kind of get a chuckle and I think to myself that medieval monks would never have exchanged their beautiful illuminated  manuscripts for any of those standardised, soulless "printed" books invented by that  Gutenberg devil.

 

I believe e-books and popup dictionaries most certainly helped me start reading authentic material faster than would have been possible without them. But I also believe that there's a moment when popup dictionaries tend to become an hindrance rather than a useful crutch.

[Guest realmayo]

there's a moment when popup dictionaries tend to become an hindrance rather than a useful crutch.

 

I can believe that, but perhaps it's possible to avoid them becoming problematic if you make sure to always include some 'paper' reading alongside a larger quantity of e-reading? I hope so.

[laurenth]

That's precisely what I'm doing, realmayo. I won't be throwing away my popup dictionaries, if only because a sizable part, probably most, of the native material I want to read is still beyond my comfort zone: reading Yu Hua's 没有一条道路是重复的 on paper is perfectly feasible, though, so that's an oportunity for me to try. As many novels I bought on paper (including 平凡的世界 , 家, 鬼吹灯 or 盗墓笔记) are also widely available online, I tend to use e-readers/popup dictionaries for difficult parts and paper for those parts that are easier. The problem is I've often been lazy and I've often relied to easily on popup dictionaries, that's why I took a conscious decision to read this book without them.

[Lu]

In university, I knew the phone numbers of all my friends by heart.  Now the only phone number I can remember is that of my parents.  When you outsource part of your thinking/memory to a device/tool, your brain will figure that's something it doesn't need to know and therefore won't put in much effort to remember it.

I still know the phone numbers of my primary school friends' parents. But not those of my current friends. I should really make an effort to learn them.

 

Now reading Yang Jisheng's Tombstone and it really is as good as advertised. More informative than depressing, in my opinion. It does feature lots and lots (and lots, and lots) of incidents of whole families starving to death, beatings, cannibalism, and what have you, but importantly, it explains very clearly how all this could happen: nobody dared contradict Mao and everyone was forced to pressure the people below them, until it got to the peasants all the way at the bottom of the ladder and all they could do was starve.

[laurenth]

I'm reading 林良's 雨天的心晴.

 

It's a good book for intermediate learners because it includes very short texts (one page), most of which are written in a very plain language. Each text is followed by a  one-page comment by another writer, which often amounts to repeating/summarizing what's in the short story, sometimes in somewhat more abstract terms. So it's nice for reviewing or enriching the vocab you've just learnt. The short stories I've read so far simply retell 林良's childhood and youth memories. Not earth-shattering, but very nice and informative about the life of a kid in a (seemingly rather well-off) Chinese family in the 1930s-1940s.

 

While I was exploring the young adult literature section of an Eslite bookstore in Taipei, I purchased this particular book because it bore a sticker mentioning  "2014年度最佳少年兒童讀物獎", so I thought I could not go wrong. Exploring the list of winners of that award might be interesting, but I haven't searched for a list of winners yet.

 

It seems 林良 is a well-known writer of children's literature and has written quite a lot (see list in Wikipedia article). Also might be worth exploring further.

[Geiko]

I have another easy reading to recommend! It's 《全世爱》by 苏小懒. I was browsing the webpage of Babel 101, a translation group who choose not-so-famous Chinese writers and translate excerpts of their works into several languages, when I found out their translation of 苏小懒's story. It seemed interesting, the love story between the author and her husband, and I found a copy in my local library, so I borrowed it. And I'm enjoying it a lot! It's written as a diary, each day lasts about one page, and there are many dialogues, so it's incredibly easy to read. Besides, it talks about the daily problems of three people who live together, and some of the situations are hilarious. A real page-turner!
 
Here you have one fragment I particularly enjoyed, see how difficult it feels to you! (小懒 is the main character, 木木 and 阿橙 are her flatmates, two boys, and she's describing how different they are from one another). 
 
关于人品的问题——
木木：小懒要洗衣服啊？
小懒：对啊。有事吗？
木木：没有，只是想提醒你，这台洗衣机有时会漏电，你千万别在洗衣机转动的时候湿着手从机筒里拿衣服啊，不然很容易电着。
小懒（感激地）：谢谢提醒啦！
阿橙：哎，小懒要洗衣服啊？
小懒：对啊。有事吗？
阿橙（指着小懒手上拿着的一件外）：这件要洗吗？
小懒：洗啊，正要往洗衣机里放呢。
阿橙（拉过衣服，使劲擦手后）：好啦，去洗吧。
小懒（迷茫地）：呃，你刚刚是什么意思？
阿橙：没事啦，我刚才吃完了油条，没找着纸擦手。
小懒：……

[Wurstmann]

That's really easy! Nice find.

 

I'm reading 猫城记 at the moment, because of the chinesebookclub sub-reddit. It's interesting so far and not too hard.

[Lu]

Reading Red China Blues, by Jan Wong, a book I randomly found at the Deventer book market. Great read. Wong became a dedicated Maoist as a teenager in Canada, and actually went to China to see utopia for herself. She entertainingly describes her experiences as a student at 北大 in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, her own naivite and how she very slowly loses her revolutionary fervour. She later returns to China as a journalist and reports on the Tian'anmen crackdown, among other stories. I don't think she describes anything that hasn't been covered in other books, but her perspective is new and she has a great sense of humour about both herself and everything around her, and an entertaining style.

[laurenth]

After finishing  林良's 雨天的心晴, I immediately delved into a modern Chinese version in 2 volumes of the famous 三國演義 (白話改寫版 -改寫者：陳秋帆).

 

Though I haven't read the original, not even in translation, I happen to know how it opens: 話說天下大勢，分久必合，合久必分。So I was surprised to see that my version starts with a very simple dialogue between 劉備 and his mother: 「娘，今天天氣很好，我要進城去走走，賣幾張席子，好賺點錢回來補貼家用。」

 

Therefore I knew that my version would not be a "simple" rewriting of the original novel into modern Mandarin, as I had thought. Sometimes it feels like entire episodes were scrapped while others were well preserved. For instance, the story of how 老司徒王允 devises a plan to drive a wedge between the usurper 董卓 and his adopted son and mightiest  general 呂布, by using the beautiful  貂蝉, takes almost 30 pages. The evolution of the characters and of the situation, and how the trap closes, everything is described in adequate details. It's a good story. On the other hand, just after that, the downfall of  呂布 and  王允 is described in one sentence: … 結果呂布戰敗，老司徒王允也被李催 、 郭氾殺了。

 

Maybe it's the same in the original version but, I don't know, it feels weird and unbalanced.

 

Other than that, it's a good, often gripping book, not too hard to read  (see first sentence: it was a selling point for me when I opened the book in the bookshop). Of course, there's a certain amount of vocabulary relating to the feudal society (weapons, characters, social relationships, etc.) and of set phrases that the author uses, I suppose, to make his text feel like the original.

 

[stapler]

@ Geiko - That book sounds very interesting. I'd like to read more books which are dialogue. If anyone else knows of any books that are all 'spoken' I'd love to know. It seems they're quite difficult to find... Or maybe I'm just bad at searching...

 

I just finished reading (every Chinese learners' favourite author) 余華's 十個詞彙裡的中國. The book is biographical. I heard it hasn't been published on the mainland. But I can't confirm. My own copy of this book is falling apart because it has traveled with me across the world and is covered in stains.

 

As for the content, basically Yu Hua chooses 10 words and shares stories from his own life as well as other events he has heard about to describe the modern Chinese condition.

 

草根 for example talks about how the constant rise and fall of people in modern China is the same as that during the cultural revolution. A standout story for me is the one about a newly rich farmer wants to buy a new BMW but doesn't understand what GPS is etc and doesn't understand why the car is so expensive. Eventually the salesman tells him that the seat needed two huge cows worth of leather to make. After finding out and telling everyone how many cows the seat needed he goes and buys 8 cars. I laughed almost to tears. This reminds me of so many Chinese people I have spoken to. So often I have to talk about farming or make farming analogies to help them understand my life in Australia.

 

Another two chapters which stand out for me are 山寨 and 魯迅. The first is a hilarious commentary on how China has mastered the art of plagiarising and mocking everything. The later because Yu Hua describes for me - an outsider - the beauty of Luxun's work (The Madmen's Diary perfectly captures the insanity of the narrator with its opening sentence "那趙家的狗，何以看我兩眼呢？")

 

The topics Yu Hua covers makes it seem like it's going to be a "list of everything awful" with China type book. But that wouldn't be Yu Hua's style. The beauty of this book is how he makes heroes out of China's underclass - its thieves and its liars and its battlers. And this has really helped me re-imagine my own interactions with these kinds of people when I've been in China. I'd say a book that can radically alter your understanding of people is a good one.

[skylee]

I am reading the novel 步步驚心 by 桐華. Actually I have finished the main text and am reading the epilogues. There seems to be a Part II and I plan to read that too. I find the main story very enjoyable. It is to me a young adult version of 雍正皇朝 which I read decades ago. It is good to find something that I like and is so easy to read.

Here is one version found on the internet - http://zhidao.baidu.com/question/574301434.html

[古文奇才]

@laurenth

 

If your Chinese is good enough to read an abridged version of 三國 you should try the original. It's not even that bad. My copy had extra notes and explanations for difficult words, so if you can read "結果呂布戰敗，老司徒王允也被李催 、 郭氾殺了" then you can read it.

 

So many great sayings:

 

賠了夫人又折兵

lose the bait as well as the fish

 

寧我負天下人 莫天下人負我

I'd rather betray the whole world than let it betray me

 

兄弟如手足 妻子如衣服

bros over hoes

[laurenth]

@古文奇才: as a matter of fact, I tried. Reading the original version is still not feasible. However, just for fun, I used both versions to compare a short extract that happens to be quite similar. The original version felt relatively easy only after I'd read the same thing in the abridged version:

 

 

Abridged: 可是關雲長騎的是赤兔馬
Original: 那關公馬快，

 

Abridged: 只跑了一段路，就趕上了文醜，

Original: [missing] 趕上文醜，

 

Abridged: 關雲長一刀就把他砍下馬。
Original: 將文醜斬下馬來。

 

Abridged: 曹操[missing]一見關雲長斬了文醜，
Original: 曹操在土阜上，見關公砍了文醜，

 

Abridged: 馬上下令追殺，
Original: 大驅人馬掩殺。

 

Abridged: 都紛紛落水淹死在黃河裡。
Original: 河北軍大半落水

 

Abridged: [missing]
Original: 糧草馬匹仍被曹操奪回

 

Sometimes the "abridged" version is in fact more verbose/detailed than the original , while in other cases some details of the original version are missing in the abridged version (Cao cao being 在土阜上, or the fact that 糧草馬匹仍被曹操奪回).

 

Aligning more extracts like these could be a good idea for a gentle introduction to literature written in old "semi-vernacular" Chinese. I wonder if such books/textbooks exist.

 

[古文奇才]

@laurenth

 

Well maybe you're on to something. I did watch lots of cartoons and read comics before tackling the original. Maybe it's like the Iliad - easier to read when you already know what's gonna happen to the Trojan Horse.

[laurenth]

I restarted reading and almost finished Yu Hua's 没有一条道路是重复的. I stopped when the end of the book was in sight, though, because there was more and more interesting but complicated literary criticism and theory, with complex sentences and plenty of abstract vocab. I needed a break. A wuxia break, say.

 

So I'm reading 陸小鳳傳奇, which is the first novel in the Lu Xiaofeng series (陸小鳳系列, Wikipedia), by Gu Long 古龙.

 

By the same author, I'd read 流星•蝴蝶•剑 before, so I knew Gu Long's style is relatively simple and repetitive, but also effective and entertaining. I'm not disappointed up to now. 陸小鳳 is a maverick who likes the company of women and booze. He has lots of friends, many of whom are weirdos. Up to now, the plot is simple and interesting enough, though I'm a bit overwhelmed (just as in 流星•蝴蝶•剑) by the sheer number of colourful characters and the fact that most of them seem to be playing tricks on each other.

 

There are many versions of the novel floating around on the net.

 

I'm using a traditional character version I found on haodoo.net. If you read the novel in your browser, they even have a version written vertically, right to left. I downloaded an epub version (traditional characters, but written horizontally from left to right) that I converted to the Amazon format using Calibre to read on my Kindle.

 

Note that there are many online versions, but they were scanned with varying degrees of success.  I had taken the time to check the accuracy of the text of the third volume in the series (決戰前後  of which I have a paper copy) against the haodoo version, which was perfect where many other versions had typos.

 

There's an online simplified character version on kanunu8.com. I haven't checked its accuracy though.

 

An audio version is available on Ximalaya.

[Guest realmayo]

What's 没有一条道路是重复的?

 

I just finished 秘书长 by 洪放. I liked it. Written in 2006. About a 秘书长 of a fictional city, his dealings with the people higher up, his subordinates as well as old army comrades and important business people in the city. And all the money he gets given by people, usually in the form of 卡, which I guess are anonymous bank cards? I couldn't really work that out. Seemed to be the standard way of giving money to grease the wheels back in 2006. Don't know if it's still current.

 

I had to spend a few hours researching and figuring out how Party committees work and what the job titles mean. Good to have done once though, now those words and titles which I just filed away under 'political stuff' are a bit more meaningful. And it appears that all the way from national level down though provinces and municipalities down to townships, the political committee structure is the same. So for instance newspaper reports involving any level of government ought to make a bit more sense now.

 

Wonder what next? I do have an electronic copy of 陆小凤传奇, not sure about its accuracy though -- the last 古龙 book I started was way too slow to read on account of the mistakes which kept slowing me down.

[laurenth]

What's 没有一条道路是重复的?

 

 

I talked about it briefly in post #1059. After the part about his son, Yu Hua talks about many other episodes of his formative years - Yu Hua's standard fare. After that, there are essays about literature, other writers and classical works. That part is interesting for its contents - it made me want to read again several classical works - and also as an introduction to humanities related vocab and writing style. It's also much harder to read.

[Guest realmayo]

Ah thanks, I'd forgotten that post. Feels like I've read too much Yu Hua recently and therefore need to read more widely but next time I get back to him I'll bear that book in mind.

 

Also saw in that earlier post you mentioned Simon Leys, I read a collection of his essays, The Hall of Uselessness, a couple of years ago and recently picked up a couple of more of his books second hand and basically free off amazon. He writes really well.

[skylee]

After reading an article on Apple Daily written by 練乙錚，I have found and started reading this book ("統一與分裂" by 葛劍雄).

http://m.txtgogo.com/download/epub_2144.html

I am also reading 瑯琊榜 in parallel.