What are you reading?

[Lu]

Over the past week I read, in Dutch translation, short stories by Mo Yan ('Nuan', good story, chilling), Se Bo (Tibetan writer, story about a girl who's mother is a prostitute, if I understood it correctly), Lin Mingqian (story about a boy discovering sex. This sounds a bit bad in summary, but it was a decent story), Jin Haishu (story about Chinese in Tokyo) and Lei Xiang (story about mainlander teachers in Taiwan, told from the perspective of a young boy).

 

Also read Zhang Jie's My Mother, in which she writes a pretty detailed account of her mother's last days and eventual death. It's a painful book. Every other page brings an If only...: If only I had done Y instead of X she would still be with me now. Mother is an 80-year-old lady with brain cancer. I don't think she would have lived much longer, and a doctor in the book agrees with me, but it doesn't stop Zhang Jie from if only-ing her way through her monther's sickness and death. Every other page is Zhang Jie's guilt: I didn't do enough for my mother, how can I ever repay her, I did X but why didn't I also do Y and Z. At the same time, both Zhang Jie and her mother simultaneously trying to suppress their own needs and comfort to make things easier for the other person, and since they both know the other is doing this, they need second-guess everything and it doesn't make Zhang Jie's feelings of guilt, both in the moment and in hindsight, any less.

 

Some things are surprising, or maybe not surprising but different. Zhang Jie feels guilty for leaving her mother alone to spend time with her husband, or to work. 孝順 to the extreme, I suppose, but if we all were as 孝順 as Zhang Jie feels she should have been, society would come to a grinding halt. She repeatedly worries about being all alone when her mother is dead, even though she is married (to her second husband, a man her mother somewhat disapproves of, so I assume Zhang Jie was not in any way forced to marry him but picked him herself) and has a grown daughter with a good job.

 

Zhang Jie occasionally writes about tough love towards her monther: saying mean or seemingly insensitive things to her, sometimes untrue. But she also explains why she does this: to motivate her mother to get out of bed, to exercise, so that she can recover from her operation. It's illuminating. Another thing I found interesting is how Zhang Jie pulls every string and uses every guanxi she can find to get the best possible care for her monther. No thought is given for whether she is skipping any lines: her mother is the only thing of importance. I can understand her feeling this way, but it's interesting that the idea that other people might have mothers too never even seems to cross her mind. When at some point she doesn't push through a point, she reproaches herself for thinking about other people too much where she should have cared about her mother.

 

All in all an interesting book. I felt bad for Zhang Jie as I read it, because she is beating herself up so much over endless things that are really not her fault. I also felt I learned something about the inner workings of a number of aspects of the Chinese mindset.

[Lu]

Over the past few weeks I read stories in English translation, in Pathlight. Liu Liancheng, 'A Village of One'; Wei An, 'Going into the White Birch Forest' and 'Thoreau and I', both good 散文, although the latter is probably more interesting if you've actually read Thoreau, then it adds something to a discussion. Xia Jia, 'Heat Island', scifi about two students in meteorology, reminded me of Liu Cixin's work. Zhou Xiaofeng, 'The Great Whale Sings', 散文 in which she makes the ocean into a great living being, very good. Qiu Lei, 'Illusory Constructions', once I finished it I felt I should read it a few more times to solve the riddle of What it is Actually Saying, and didn't feel like it. Then I realised this is exactly what I don't like about a lot of Dutch literature: the story is not the story, it's a riddle to be solved, and I often lack the patience for that. Just give me a good story already. So then I gave myself permission to just not really like this story, and moved on. Wang Zu, 'Snowfall'; Liu Qingbang, 'Pigeon', pretty staightforward story set in a coalmine, apart from the setting it didn't seem particularly original, but it was good and the setting was new. Zhang Wei, 'Rain and Snow'; and Ye Mi, 'The Hot Springs on Moon Mountain'.

 

Also reading 圈子圈套2, because I felt like reading something easy. It is indeed easy, so that's good. I did forget how everyone is an asshole, including Hong Jun, and the sexism oh the sexism. 邓汶 misses a challenge in his life and thus takes a job in China. Good for him! except he has a wife and a daughter in the US and just doesn't even take them into account. 菲比 gets a new job. What kind of job? She doesn't know and 洪钧 couldn't care less, as long as she is home in the evening and not talking to any strange men. 邓汶 visits 洪钧. 菲比 drops by with drinks & food, disappears into the kitchen and comes back to serve them refreshments. A bit later 洪钧 has to leave, so 邓汶 leaves as well and he is surprised that 菲比 doesn't. Only at that moment, the book writes, did he realise she was not a guest like him but the lady of the house. And I though dude, the fact that she just walks into the kitchen didn't tip you off? Anyway, it's still fun even if I'm shaking my head sometimes.

[skylee]

This is the article I liked best among those I read recently - 

 

感謝國家感謝 big brother - 

http://aukalun.blogspot.hk/2017/10/big-brother.html?m=1

 

“全人類上網成癮，集體病重。一直以來，希望減少上網，避免無意識反射動作就拿起手機查訊息讀新聞分享八卦。知易行難，說說而已。

 

感謝國家感謝黨。回內地兩天，指根清淨，願望達成。

 

一過關，手機變成廢物，慣常瀏覽的新聞網站必遭封鎖已不是新鮮事；這一天，連各種通訊軟件，如 Whatsapp、Instagram、LINE全部死掉，臉書不能上、谷歌搜尋不讓搜、連 gmail 也不能查。

 

手機上捷徑，剩下能查閱的，大概是天氣與足球網站。世界真和諧、盛世真高興。幾個朋友的手機，都遭遇同一命運，我們乖乖放下手機，認真喝咖啡。

 

聽說，共產黨有個很重要的會快要開，所以要深度維穩，思想控制。朋友投訴，近日翻牆軟件也失效，gmail 封掉，耽誤了與外國朋友的業務往來。中國夢，原來是鎖國夢；網絡操控技術應取代網絡支付技術，成為中國新四大發明。

 

手機號碼實名、買車票要實名、買股票要實名、網絡留言要實名、住酒店要實名；電子支付通行，你去什麼地方消費過什麼全部有記錄；天眼處處，臉部識別技術開始成熟。網絡監控不斷進化，每個人的行蹤無所遁形，我們終於來到這一天：Big brother is watching you，歐威爾的《1984》成真。

 

飯局中，內地朋友問，為何香港年輕人不嘗試認識一下中國？

 

我以為，那些無人倖免的認識祖國交流團，讓年輕一代深刻認識祖國，應記大功。

 

今時今日，大中小學生有無數機會參加交流團；一踏過邊境，還未來得及陶醉於祖國偉大建設，人人手上，立即見到活生生的殘酷現實：慣用的社交媒體與通訊軟件，統統被禁被封。

 

這是深刻的國民教育，這就是他們所認識的祖國，學生們每一次上網就是一次頓悟，深切體會到你在香港擁有的自由是多麼寶貴，威權管治，原來一直在你身邊，從未走遠；立刻就明瞭，國家叫你相信他，原來國家並不相信你；所謂制度自信，背後充滿恐懼不安。

 

這種詭異的國情教育，自打嘴巴、自掘墳墓、自我推翻；從交流團一開始，直到行程結束，殘酷現實縈繞不去，時時刻刻在手機上提醒你。去一次，學生們的愛國心，回天乏術。

 

二十年來，交流愈多、離心愈強。自作孽，不要怪別人。

 

是夜，回到高級酒店，卻發現網絡通暢。原來，網絡的自由，要視乎你口袋裏的銀兩；我才明白，為何有位愛國先鋒在北京愛完國之後，能夠 facebook live。

 

監控系統鋪排妥當，愚民技倆可鬆可緊，操控之術細緻精巧，已臻化境。“

[Geiko]

On 2017/6/12 at 10:44 PM, Geiko said:

This couple of months I've been very lazy: I started 《三體》，but I found it a bit hard (maybe because I'm not a huge sci-fi fan?), so I've left it for later

 

I've restarted 三體 and the reading is going much smoother, I guess I was just lazy the first time, because it's not that hard. I oblige myself to read ten pages per day, which would be enough to finish the whole book in one month. I also try to improve my reading speed, but that's a more difficult process. 

[Angelina]

On October 7, 2017 at 8:18 PM, Lu said:

Zhou Xiaofeng, 'The Great Whale Sings', 散文 in which she makes the ocean into a great living being, very good

 

 

This looks interesting. 

 

 

 

update:

I borrowed it using Kindle Unlimited 

[Lu]

@Angelina, I hope you liked the 散文!

 

Over the past two weeks I read still more stories in English translation, in Pathlight.

Zhang Wei, 'King's Blood', a bit... mystical is perhaps the word.

Li Jingze, 'The Orphan of Zhao', in which the author tells and simultaneously critiques and makes fun of the tale of Zhao Dun and Yi Gao. Fun to read and at the same time an interesting take on old stories.

Alai, 'Aku Tonpa', Alai's take on folk hero Aku Tonpa. Good story, but I think it would be even more interesting for someone who is familiar with Tibetan folk culture and more familiar than me with Alai's work, because I suspect there is a lot to think and talk about there.

Zhu Wenyin, 'Double Pupil', very tragic story about fallen king Li Yu and his Lady Zhou, he not Guan Yu and she not Guan Yu's concubine.

Mei Yi, 'Dreamed to Death', about how a father (factory worker) dreams himself to death with his hopes for his two sons. (The story is told from the perspective of the youngest. The father's surname is Mei. Mei Yi is, judging from the author picture, clearly a woman. So it was momentarily confusing when halfway in the story, the second child was a son and not a daughter, as I had assumed up until that point.) Good story, I should look into more of her work.

 

Also still reading 圈子圈套 and making good progress.

[Lu]

Over the past week I read more stories in English translation, still in Pathlight.

 

Ge Fei, 'Song of Liangzhou'.

Xu Zechen, 'Vsiting Dai on a Snowy Evening', as far as I can tell from the story an expanded retelling of a short anecdote from the 世说新语. In many ways it resembles 'The Orphan of Zhao' which I read last week: some anachronistic modern elements, some making fun of the people in the story, some explanation and backstory, all entertainingly written. I now wonder if this is a genre in Chinese literature, it sure makes for fun reads. Also I know Xu Zechen as a chroniqueur of 漂流族 life, but clearly he writes at least as many stories that have nothing to do with 漂流族.

Li Xiuwen, 'The Heart, Too, Broken', a reimagining of the Hua Mulan story, in which Mulan is a 'morbidly obese' 'cross-dressing transsexual who had an alternate intepretation of her own gender' and in love with the most beautiful girl in the village. Which is an awesome reimagining, if you ask me.

Li Feng, 'A 16th-century Oil Peddler', character in story reads his own story and isn't too happy with it. Nice story.

Chen Qian, 'Coming Downstairs', young woman is traumatised by her father's suicide in the Cultural Revolution and inspired by this to study trauma psychology. Best story I've read this week. It's rather slow to start, but then it gets good. Second-generation scar literature.

[Lu]

Over the past week I read still more stories in English translation, again in Pathlight.

 

Kong Yalei, 'If I Fall Asleep on the Plane That's Going to Crash', about a young woman who can foretell future calamities, but like a true Cassandra can't do anything about it, and decides to kill herself. Intriguing concept, I liked the story.

Zhang Yueran, 'Weird Auntie', fairy tale within a fairy tale. I haven't read a lot of Zhang Yueran but I like what I have read. Not sure how to describe her genre, it's not really magical realism, it's more introducing something fairytale-like into the real world. Modern literary fairytales, perhaps.

Zhou Jianing, ‘Let Us Talk About Something Else', woman wants to be a writer but the bigshot male writers around her have more fun putting her down than welcoming her. Depressing but good story.

Wei Meng. 'Pregnant', hallucinatory and short.

Li Zishu, 'The Norther Border', a tale of masculinity, interesting story, shoud reread it.

[abcdefg]

@Lu -- I haven't been following this thread closely of late, but it seems you have found some very interesting material in English translation. My reading of Chinese has stalled at a primitive level, but I read quite a bit every day in English. Would like to sample some of these contemporary Chinese authors, mainly for the sake of gaining/improving cultural insight.

 

Could you tell me more about Pathlight? Is it an online literature website? (Apologies if you have explained that before.)  I did a quick search just now which took me to a post of Roddy's from 2013, but clicking the link took me to a page named "Paper-Republic." Looking around there, I discovered a "Pathlight" link as well, but it only gives me short bios of the authors, not full text of what they have written.

 

Does one need to become a member and sign in? Does one need to pay a fee to access the material?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

[Lu]

Pathlight is a periodical, published four times a year, with short stories and poetry translated from Chinese into English (there are also a number of editions in other languages). It came out of the group of people who run Paper Republic, although I'm not sure if they are exactly the same people now. I just buy as many different paper issues as I can every time I'm in Beijing (I've stockpiled some ten issues and am slowly making my way through them now), but there seems to be an online edition as well. Here is a link that might be useful. I don't think it's free though. @roddy translates for Pathlight sometimes, don't know if he has any more detailed information?

 

One of the editors told me some time ago that the magazine is, unfortunately, not very well distributed. In Beijing, you can usually buy it at the Bookworm, which is an English-language bookstore with many China-related books and author events. If Kunming has something similar, perhaps you can ask about it there.

 

You could also consider Renditions, also a periodical for Chinese literature in English translation. I often see it in university libraries, but haven't really looked into it.

 

The Dutch equivalent (not interesting for you, but perhaps if someone Dutch passes by) is Het Trage Vuur, which unfortunately is discontinued, but does have 18 years of back issues. It's not available online.

[roddy]

1 minute ago, Lu said:

@roddy translates for Pathlight sometimes, don't know if he has any more detailed information?

Not a great deal. It's done in partnership with a publishing house (People's Literature Press, I think), but for online info and updates, Paper Republic is probably your best bet. Copies are available on Kindle at a very reasonable £3. Even the free sample for that linked one includes a full piece (think it's an extract rather than a short story) so maybe worth a look. If this kind of thing is your bag, do also check out the Writing Chinese project at Leeds - for example, they've got a 畢飛宇  (damnit, stuck in traditional)  intro and story in both Chinese and English. There's also a lot of stuff on the Read Paper Republic section, but as far as I can see that's all in English. Although Google the Chinese title, it's quite possibly available somewhere.

 

Actually, just noticed there are free Mobi /ePub downloads on this page.

[Luxi]

7 minutes ago, roddy said:

do also check out the Writing Chinese project at Leeds

 

The Writing Chinese project has a book club  that publishes stories etc in translation, often with the original alongside.

 

There was a very nice e-magazine for Chinese literature in translation, "Chinese Arts and Letters", but hard to find and it looks like only a few numbers were published. you can find a couple of links here:

http://english.jschina.com.cn/chineseartsletters/

[abcdefg]

Thank you, Lu, Roddy, and Luxi. Will explore your suggestions.

[Luxi]

A nice update from Pathlight:

https://paper-republic.org/davehaysom/pathlight-an-update/#body

 

Hopefully it will become more active as well as more easily available.

[艾墨本]

Started on 《乡土中国》费孝通 in Chinese. I've read it before in English and loved it and finding the Chinese is quite simply written. He speaks directly and gets to the point. For those who prefer non-fiction, I highly recommend it. It's an overview of the traditional social system of China which was (and is) based around the land that people live on and how having such "rooted" lives effected local culture(s).

[Lu]

Over last week, I read more short stories in English translation, still in Pathlight.

 

- Hai Nan, 'The Runaway Game'. Sue is married to Joe, then meets Skip, who years ago was her boyfriend and then killed her friend Sean. The story unfolds and then ends very neatly and cleanly. It was nice enough a read, but it felt a bit simple. Also I wondered what was up with the English names: there didn't seem to be a need for it, the story would have worked exactly as well (perhaps slightly better, even) in an explicitly Chinese setting.

- Fu Yuli, 'That Damn Thing She Said', married but neglected woman has one-night-stand with a man she doesn't even find all that attractive. Really good story, with all the awkwardness and choices she knows are bad but makes anyway very well written out. Really good.

- Cai Dong, 'The Holiday Monk Returns', stressed-out power couple each go to a retreat to find themselves/become better persons: he to a monastery, she to a 'charisma-building' course. Enlightenment is found in the charisma-building.

- Tian Er, 'The Gift of a Cut', lapsed writer is sent into the countryside on program to convince couples to get sterilised.

Not in Pathlight but in Dutch translation:

- Leung Pik-kwan, 'Aunt Lee's pocket watch', entire factory/company slowly rolls into a different timezone because the watch of aunt Lee, unofficial boss of the company, is slow. Good story.

 

Also I finished 圈子圈套, which I will write about in the dedicated thread. But not right now, because it's time to get some work done.

[roddy]

I'm not sure I'd make the same decision now (these were a good three years ago) but the Skip character's Chinese name was 奔涛 which seemed more than coincidentally close to 奔逃 for a character who does a runner. Hence Skip, as in skip the country, skip out. That was perhaps unnecessary, and I could probably not have gone all non-Chinese. It made it through two good editors though (and that piece did get bumped back for a second run, as I'd managed to shorten it too much in the translation).

 

The Holiday Monk was also one of mine. I seem to remember the bit at the retreat being quite good (what was up with that crying guy though? I forget) but didn't enjoy the return down the mountain so much. 

[Geiko]

I finished 三体 after almost two months, and well, science fiction is definitely not for me. The scientific parts were a bit hard to understand (but, as a friend of mine said, I wouldn't have understood them even if I had read the book in Spanish, so who cares), and the rest of the story was both easy and even interesting at times, but at the end the chunks I didn't understand were too many and I totally lost interest in the book. I don't know if I'll ever read parts 2 and 3...

 

I've just started a totally different book, 城南旧事, by 林海音, and I love it. It's a story about the author's childhood in old Beijing. My edition also includes many black and white photos in every page, it's a delightful story to read! Besides, the language is very easy (you see Beijing through a little girl's eyes), and the book is short, 99千字, it will take me less than two weeks to finish it. I strongly recommend it to everybody!

[Guest realmayo]

Recently read Night Heron by someone called Adam Brookes: fun, fairly gritty British spy story, with a very China-heavy plot.

Without the China stuff it would still be good, readable, page-turning thriller.

And usually when these kind of books do have a China element, I think it's stupid.

But here, it's great. Fair amount of pinyinned dialogue. Nothing that seemed drastically off or wrong to me (although long-time Beijing residents might find lots of criticise, I wouldn't know).

So a rare, for me, book that is actually improved by the China-focus.

It's the first in what appears to be a three-book series, I'm onto the third now. Definitely recommend them all!

 

 

[imron]

Sounds good.  Might have to have a read of that one.