What are you reading?

[ouyangjun]

As you may have seen from my previous posts, I'm in love with the Amazon Kindle store in China.  I'm able to download a bunch of samples of books and go from there.  I downloaded about 10 different samples, and after reading them all I ended up going with a  韩寒 book called 《一座城池》.  I'm about 20% of the way through and am enjoying it so far.  This is now my second 韩寒 book.  I think I will always have some nostalgia for 韩寒 books because his book 《1988: 我想和这个世界谈谈》 was the first complete Chinese novel I finished on my own.  I find his books have stories that keep me engaged and I don't need to reference a dictionary too often... which is always nice.

 

The reason I ended up choosing this book was because 韩寒 is the director of a new movie that recently came out in China called 《后会无期》, and I got caught up in the 韩寒 hype and skipped (for now) reading what I'm sure has potential to be one of my favorite books of all time in any language.  The book I'm referring to is 王小波 《黄金时代》, which from what I downloaded as a sample was great.  Another book taking place during the cultural revolution that focuses on a promiscuous relationship between a young man and his female doctor... the story telling is excellent and underneath it lies a bit of rebellion in the form of 性关系.  The book also made me laugh out loud a few times when talking about the situations and body parts... the sample ended with him writing letters to the 队长 about his relations with the his lady friend.  For sure 《黄金时代》 will be my next book after 《一座城池》.

[Lu]

Now reading a book translated as Namen in de Muur (Names in the Wall), original title 人啊，人, by one Dai Houying. Published in 1980, translated in 1988, and sold with on the cover 'a novel from contemporary China' and a picture of the Wall. Such innocent times when you could sell a Chinese book without the need of a headless girl in qipao on the cover.

It's about a number of people working or previously working at a university, and the relations between them. A lot of unresolved issues and pain from the CR, in addition to interpersonal issues. Everyone seems so wrapped-up in their own pain that they only rarely stop to consider the others human beings with their own thoughts, makes me want to kick people. I don't know how much of it is Chinese-ness and how much is because of the traumas from the Cultural Revolution. Some of it reminds me of how things were dealt with (or rather, not dealt with) in 巴金's 春. Parents talk down to their children and get annoyed when the children try to state their own thoughts on matters. A man has left his wife for another woman and is now treating that woman badly because he really thinks he should have stayed with his first wife. 15-year-old girl talks with former friend of her mother's. At some point she says she's lonely. The man is shocked, absolutely shocked that a 15-year-old little child can be lonely. Eh, what? How is that surprising? And how is a 15-year-old a little child?

The dialogue is often a bit stilted and I don't think it's all the translator's fault. People are lecturing each other on marxism and humanism, hard to make natural-sounding dialogue out of that.

Still, the longer I'm reading the more I'm appreciating this book. All the relations between the main characters are messed up and for the most part they're extremely unwilling to face what happened only a few years ago and come to terms with it, instead they prefer to suppress all that, and the resulting unhappiness is shown very well.

[Yang Chuanzhang]

@ouyangjun

 

Let us know what you think after you've finished 黃金時代. It's been sitting on my bookshelf for some time and I've started reading it a couple of times, but I never stuck with it for more than 15 pages.

 

I'm reading 盛世 by 陳冠中 at the moment, which I'm enjoying a lot. The plot summary on the cover sounded a bit silly, but it's actually a lot better than I think it would be. I find it quite hard to interpret, though.

[ouyangjun]

@Yang Chuanzhang - I will definitely update when I finish 黄金时代.  First going to finish this 韩寒 book, and then I've got to not fall into my normal trap of downloading a whole bunch of samples and reading samples for weeks until finalizing on a book to read...

[MPhillips]

Am reading Matsumoto Seichõ's detective story "Points & Lines" in Chinese(松本清张～点与线) on line. Does anyone have a recommendation for original Chinese detective fiction on line (contemporary-not Judge Bao!)?

[imron]

I found 黄金时代 to be quite boring - especially the middle and later parts of the book which really felt like they dragged on. Personally I'm not sure what everyone else sees in this book. Each to their own I guess.

[Basil]

Finished 人生, now one hundred pages into 平凡的世界。

 

Although good, 人生 felt like a first novel. Quite a few stylistic no-noes. 平凡的世界feels like a huge step up, stylistically, though from my safe perch in 2014, I feel there's areas where he deliberately trivialises the brutality of the times.

[Kobo-Daishi]

Because of the recent threads on The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I've been reading "Three Kingdoms and Chinese Culture", edited by Kimberly Besio and Constantine Tung put out by the State University of New York Press.

 

I had downloaded a copy ages ago, but, never got around to reading it until the recent two threads on the romance.

 

I thought it quite interesting that Three Kingdoms was once banned in Korea and content from it were once included in Korean state and civil exams.

 

 

Kobo.

[skylee]

Banned? How interesting. Which reminds me that when I visited Jeju years ago, I joined a local tour with a group of American Koreans. A guy told me that his name was Yu, same as Liu Bang in the Three Kingdoms ("You know?"). I did know (my Korean was much better back then).

[edelweis]

I'm almost done with Un chino en bicicleta by Ariel Magnus. Not sure I'll be able to finish it because I'm supposed to return it tomorrow and besides I just found out this copy is misprinted and some pages are missing near the end.

Anyway it was supposed to be

la historia más hilarante que se ha escrito sobre la inmigración china en Argentina

and I admit it is reasonably funny although I could have done without the description of the visit to a brothel. There's some suspense initially as the book starts with a hostage situation but it's more a comedy than a thriller. Actually I'm not sure it's much of a comedy either, perhaps one could describe it as a humorous retelling of everything the author's researched about the Chinese in Argentina.
Also, one of the characters is actually Japanese, and this sometimes causes some confusion as you can read below. But all in all I find it reasonably well researched even though some of the opinions appear to be specific to some characters and not that common among Chinese people.

 

Some quotes (hope these aren't against forum policy, else just delete...)

[...]en China los restaurantes no tienen nombre, se llaman invariablemente Lugar para llenarse la panza, y lo mismo pasaba con los del barrio chino, los nombres en castellano los había puesto algún inspector municipal.
- También hay que tener cuidado con las servilletas, los vasos, todo. Yo no compraría nada que tuviera caracteres chinos. Ni mucho menos hacer como los giles que se dejan tatuar kanjis en la piel. Te ponen cualquier cosa, a veces hasta sin querer.

sounds familiar? almost like reading CF but with the added exoticism of the Spanish language...
 

Quiero aprender chino pero no puedo porque cada 100 li me cambian de dialecto. Quiero aprender sus costumbres pero tampoco puedo porque cada 100 li me cambian de etnia.

Dito.

Apparently some believe the Mayan culture came from ancient China:

[...]mientras China se había hundido en las luchas hereditarias y la corrupción generalizada, los mayas habían conservado las tradiciones en toda su pureza. La prueba más pálpable de esta integridad virginal era paradójicamente el erotismo, según la tesis revisionista [...] los caracteres chinos eran en su inicio pornográficos y eso se veía con toda claridad en el contenido no apto para menores de lo caracteres mayas.

(but well written I have to say)

 

 

- Dueño contento con tu tlabajo. Quiele contlatalte. Cama dentlo. Hay gato pala que la lata no moreten.

- ¿La lata no moreten?

- No, la-ta. Mo-re-ten.

- Ah, que las ratas no molesten. Chen, si sabés pronunciar la ele y también la erre, ¿porqué decís erre cuando es ele y ele cuando es erre?

- Lamilo, si sabé chupal vino, ¿pol qué no me chupás la plótesis?

 

(Ramiro's new friend Chen is a failed castrato.)

 

 

Un chino entra a una panadería, señala las medialunas y pide, con la mano pués no sabe español, llegó al país hace unos meses, media docena. Sorprendido y molesto por lo que considera un pedido insólite, al fin y al cabo la ciudad está llena de cabinas, locutorios y celulares, el panadero le alcanza el teléfono.

Classic joke but always funny. There's 3-4 pages ot this but unfortunately that's the part where the library's copy is faulty.

 

Edit: now I need to have a taste of this dulce de leche which the main caracter can't live without.

[laurenth]

Does anyone have a recommendation for original Chinese detective fiction on line (contemporary-not Judge Bao!)?

 

 

I've read two novels in 璇儿's detective series 第十二夜. The first one, 万灵节之, was reasonably interesting. The second one, 天方夜谭, was so bad I stopped in the middle (the main problem, for me, is that it consisted in a long string of very unlikely events happening in close succession). There are a few more novels in the same series, so you may find other episodes are worth reading.

 

They are available online.

[laurenth]

I've just read 无门城, a short story written by 赵本夫. He's the one who also wrote that other, truly wonderful novella titled 天下无贼. Both stories are included in the same collection titled  天下无贼. While reading the first few paragraphs of 无门城, I thought that it started as a philosophical tale à la Borges, but it evolved into a political satyre with an ending that hesitates between cruelty and hope. The inhabitants of the 无门城 are described as numbly resigned to their lot, but the narrator then warns that 城墙的根基已经白孔千疮了.

That story was published in 1988, so it was eerily premonitory.

[MPhillips]

Thanks for the recommendation Laurenth! @Edelweis--It might help you to find the stuff in your own country to know that "dulce de leche" is called "cajeta" in some hispanophone countries--on the other hand caution must be exercised as "dulce de leche" serves as a euphemism in the countries where "cajeta" is considered obscene, kind of like the situation with "coger" ＆ “tomar”. It probably wouldn't be too hard to make at home-I think it's just milk & sugar-I bet a lot of stirring is necessary however!

[imron]

天下无贼 is a great collection of short stories.  I must confess when I first bought it, I didn't realise it was a collection of short stories and thought it to be a full novel.  Needless to say, the first few "chapters" really threw me when they had absolutely nothing to do with the movie.

[laurenth]

As far as I remember, the movie was good, though its mood was very different from that of the short story. It's basically a picaresque road movie that turns into an action movie, while the short story is more poetic or even magic - eg the opening scenes, where a meeting is called with wolves, and a flashlight is used to draw on the desert sky. Accordingly, the point of view is different, with a focus on the thieves in the movie and on the fool in the story.

Btw, I said in my previous post that 天下无贼 was a "novella", but it's a bit of a stretch, as it includes only 13 pages. I've only read those two stories so far, I'm very slow...

[imron]

I definitely liked the short story when I got around to reading it, but it doesn't appear until much later in the book.  When I was reading the first short story, I was trying to match it to the movie (which I really liked) but it seemed completely unrelated and so I assumed it was just background stuff they left out of the movie.  Then the next "chapter" was completely unrelated to both the first "chapter" and the movie and that's when I started to twig that something was amiss.  I went back a had a look at the cover, and sure enough right there in Chinese it said short-story collection    

[Varian]

I currently finish  酒國 by 管謨業 (The Republic of Wine by Mo Yan). It's extremely bizarre but interesting. It kept me thrilled and wanting to know more! Although I must say that the closer I am to the end weirder it becomes

[Basil]

I've finished book 1 of 平凡的世界 and am now a quarter of the way through book 2. Will write thoughts on completion.

[imron]

I look forward to hearing them (note: probably best to put them in the 平凡的世界 thread rather than this one).

[Basil]

Sure,

 

I'll dust off my essay typing fingers...