What are you reading?

[Lu]

On 4/28/2023 at 7:17 PM, Woodford said:

I am currently about 1/3 of the way through 白鹿原. I have more mixed feelings about that one. Much like a Mo Yan novel, it's filled with obscure vocabulary, it's gritty, it's dark, and it has all sorts of odd bathroom/sexuality humor. Much like the Mo Yan novel I read earlier, it also has a couple of laugh-out-loud, absurd moments. It doesn't have as much charm as 平凡的世界. Many of the characters are pretty awful people. I think the book (which is very popular on Weixin) is beloved for its historical value, more than anything.

I was once told by (if I recall correctly) a Chinese professor in literature that this is the best contemporary Chinese novel. (I still haven't read it.)

 

I just finished 《说部之乱》 by 朱岳. Short stories, some short, some extremely short. Weird, weird stories. It's a fun read, engaging, but so weird. I can't quite make out if some or most of the stories are metaphors that I haven't figured out, or that they just are what they are, which is weird stories. I did enjoy each one of them though, and it was not a difficult read. I should read a bit about the book to see if anyone else can shed light on it.

[SunnySideUp]

Could you elaborate a bit - what makes these stories so weird?

[Lu]

On 5/8/2023 at 11:31 PM, SunnySideUp said:

Could you elaborate a bit - what makes these stories so weird?

Most of them (or maybe all of them, not sure) take place somewhere/sometime that isn't really a specific place or time. Sometimes it's clearly a fantasy world, sometimes it's just a kind of non-specific place. The set-up is often quite mysterious, a mystery that the reader would expect to be resolved at the end. But then in most stories it isn't resolved at all, there is just another twist thrown in that makes the whole thing even stranger, but still in a way that fits the story. Many stories have details here and there that seem highly significant, without me figuring out if they really are, and why. Some stories almost bite their own tail, which would resolve them nicely, but then don't.

 

I'm afraid I don't explain myself well. As I said, I did enjoy the stories, even if most of them aren't resolved.

 

Here is one of the less-weird stories, as an example: 'The Death of Zernik', as translated by David Haysom.

[SunnySideUp]

That was an interesting read, thank you for sharing!

[Woodford]

I've finally finished reading 白鹿原, which is actually a pretty big milestone for me. When I added the book to my collection a few years ago, it was ranked as my most difficult book. The CTA software predicted that I would be faced with about 16 unknown vocabulary words on each page (at that stage of my development, anyway), and when I quickly picked up the book and browsed through it, it seemed pretty much illegible. I placed it at the very end of my reading list, treating it like an intimidating "last boss battle" that I would get to someday. It is now the 34th Chinese novel I've read, overall. And not only was I able to read it fairly well, but there were some parts that I found impactful and/or enjoyable. Although I transitioned to real, physical books some time ago, I chose to make this experience Pleco-assisted (it will probably be my last book for which I use the Pleco reader). Out of my 560-page journey, I came up with a list of 255 new vocabulary words. So not bad at all. Definitely not 16 words a page.

I learned that the author (Chen Zhongshi) was in fact a friend of Lu Yao, and this book is influenced by Lu Yao's work. To me, it feels like a more literary (and hence difficult to read) version of "Ordinary World" with grittier depictions of murder, betrayal, adultery, sexual assault, etc. His work has also been compared a little bit to that of Mo Yan for its magical surrealism. Chen dials it back a bit, though; the book has just the slightest hint of the supernatural. Mainly, it's a white deer spirit that shows up as an apparition in key points of the story.  The book has a somewhat more linear plot, with a smaller cast of characters. The characters, along with the plot, are quite stark and memorable. The book spans through the fall of the Qing dynasty, the tyranny of the warlords, the rise of the KMT and the Communists (who are friendly with each other for a while), the war with Japan, and the establishment of the new China. The story follows two rich rural families, the Bai family and the Lu family, who are basically "frenemies" of one another.

 

Some interesting characters consist of Mr. Zhu, a scholar who is superstitiously regarded by the village people as having magical powers. He denies any such powers, and wants to be left alone. One day, a villager tells him that his livestock went missing, and he needs Mr. Zhu's help to find them. In an effort to just get the villagers to leave him alone, he dismissively says, "Go look in such and such a place, and you'll find your animals." As it turns out, the animals were found in that place. So Mr. Zhu's status was cemented then and there, and he could never escape  it. Then there's Lu Heiwa, a communist renegade who is rejected by his father for marrying a prostitute named Xiao'e. He spends most of the story running around with a lawless gang of bandits. It's like the classic American outlaw/cowboy stories, except the cowboys are Communist cowboys. Through most of the story, the KMT is in charge, and the Communists are forced to live underground. The KMT/Communist divide tears apart relationships in the village. In fact, there's an interesting plotline where a boy and a girl have been recruited to the two opposing revolutions, and they promise to wait and marry one another once one of them changes sides. Once they're both either KMT or Communist, they can get married. Xiao'e (mentioned earlier) is one of the most interesting characters in the story--a tragic figure who is despised and mistreated as a "temptress" by the people of White Deer Plain. She lures in the son of one of the main characters in the story and gets him addicted to opium, effectively destroying both him and his family. In an interesting plot twist that I won't reveal here, the whole village is forced to reckon with the question, "What is her life worth?" Because of the traditional outlook of old Confucian society, Xiao'e is despised for her immorality, but the men can take liberties and sleep with her with full impunity. The book doesn't make a lot of explicit commentary, but it seems to constantly remind the reader of how badly women were treated in old China.

Though I don't plan to read the book again anytime soon, I can appreciate that, yes, the book would endure multiple readings. The top reviewer in Weixin Dushu declared that he's already read the book seven times (wow). It always seems like there's so much going on beneath the surface. Like any masterful author, Chen Zhongshi has been asked by his readers, "What does this part of the story symbolize? Is there a deeper meaning behind this character?" And he refuses to give a straight answer. I liked the book more than I thought I would, though I sometimes struggled to remember all the characters and all the plot points. Every now and then, especially in portions of dialogue, I struggled to understand what somebody was saying. It definitely wasn't a casual read, but it wasn't boring, either.

[Woodford]

Finally finished 置身事内, which I had been reading alongside 白鹿原. It's a book about the history of Chinese economic development, and it's won a bunch of awards and sits at the top of various book lists on the internet. Linguistically (i.e., recognizing the Chinese words/characters/phrases), it was a rather simple book. But because of the complexity of the ideas presented in the book, my level of reading comprehension varied. I suppose that even when I hear news about the business world and the stock market in my own native language ("S&P Futures are down for the third quarter," etc. etc.), I often don't really know what it means. So when I read such things in Chinese, the experience isn't going to be much different.

 

The book had some really interesting points, though--especially when it spoke really candidly about the challenges that the current Chinese economy faces, its trade conflict with the United States, etc. Elsewhere in the book, he speaks about the complex relationships between the central government, local governments, and the economy, and what factors led to China's massive success. He spends a large amount of time addressing the gigantic real estate bubble that has fueled (and has subsequently hindered) the Chinese economy. He emphasizes that there's no single abstract economic theory that can build up a country's economy as a "one size fits all" solution, and he explains why it's so hard for other developing countries to break through and attain the same success. He believes that going forward, the best strategy is for China to divert more tax money to the people, rather than the development of industry, especially with an aim towards increasing consumer spending (which is disproportionately low, and forces China to export its extra goods to other countries). He concludes on a high note, saying that even though things have looked grim, he still believes that Chinese people have a bright future ahead.

 

Overall, it was a positive reading experience, though I am certainly no economist!

[dakonglong]

On 6/22/2023 at 8:30 PM, Woodford said:

Overall, it was a positive reading experience

 

I have also been really enjoying this book. On a related note, I found that it immensely improved my ability to read newspaper articles. It used to take me ages to read a New York Times 中文 or BBC Chinese article, now (and I am only half-way through the book) it feels like I can breeze through them. Maybe I just absorbed a more academic style of writing or learned some more formal grammar or something? I'm not exactly sure.

 

Either way, it feels like 100 pages of this book have improved my newspaper reading skills more than 500 pages of fiction.

[lordsuso]

Hello everyone, after reading all of the comments in this post (yes, all of them, thank you for the great recommendations), I have decided to join you and make my first comment here. I have been reading in Chinese for the last 6 months, and like many other wuxia lovers my first book was 流星·蝴蝶·剑 by 古龙. I really enjoyed it so I recently started 多情剑客无情剑 by the same author, so far so good. I have also read 秃大王 by 张天翼, a very short and easy fairy tale, and 卻上心頭 by 琼瑶. It seems that 琼瑶 was to romance what 古龙 was to wuxia, a very prolific author with an easy-to-understand writing style. I am not really into romance but I actually enjoyed the story. I am also following multiple manga: Dragon Ball is by far the easiest one, Doraemon and One Piece are also quite easy, and Yugami-kun and Mob Psycho are a bit harder.

[Lu]

On 7/2/2023 at 11:11 PM, lordsuso said:

Hello everyone, after reading all of the comments in this post (yes, all of them, thank you for the great recommendations), I have decided to join you and make my first comment here.

Welcome to the forums! Cool how much you've read already and how you enjoy it.

[Woodford]

Just wrapped up the latest reading binge, and it's been a good one.

平凡的世界: 1200+ pages later, I finally finished the last volume of this behemoth. The characters were really relatable, there were some really heartfelt moments, and there were some really great plot twists. I like how Lu Yao avoids clichés in his writing, so it's really hard to predict the outcome of any individual plotline. One memorable chapter involved a UFO/alien visitation. Not really central to the plot, but really wild. I guess the author was bored that day, and wanted to do something different.

为什么是中国: Written by a person who was formerly a senior member of China's military. Basically goes through the whole "century of humiliation," talking about the struggles of the Opium Wars, the wars with Japan, the Korean War, and current challenges between China and the USA.

南京暴行：被遗忘的大屠杀: I broke my general rule of not reading Chinese books that are translations of English books--I made an exception in this case, because the book is influential in China and talks about a really important topic. Iris Chang writes about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing, the heroic efforts of some people who tried to save the lives of Chinese people, and the ongoing challenges to holding guilty parties accountable for their actions.

植物的战斗: A work of popular science that goes through the evolutionary history of plants. Where did they come from? Why are they green, and not some other color? Why are some plants spicy when eaten, and why do spicy plants taste good to humans? It attempts to answer a lot of fun questions.

认知觉醒: This is a short self-improvement book that encourages people to order their lives with more clear thinking. It presents the idea that our brain has three sections: instinctive, emotional, and rational. The latter is too often overpowered by the former two, and we tend to seek the path of least resistance, comfort, security, overeating, etc. The instinctive and emotional brains are not inherently bad, but each part of the brain should be given its proper place. The author gives a lot of practical tips, like keeping a journal, cultivating mindfulness, and training ourselves at the "edge" of our comfort zones; too little challenge will lead to boredom and no progress. Too much challenge will discourage us. The book is well organized and systematically presented. These sorts of books aren't really my cup of tea, but I thought I'd read at least one such book.

 

Of the above books, I think I particularly liked 平凡的世界, 南京暴行, and 植物的战斗. Those would be the ones I'd recommend to anyone who might find those kinds of books compelling.

Next up, I'll be reading a Liu Cixin book for the first time in years: 超新星纪元. It's apparently inspired by "Lord of the Flies," and imagines a civilization run completely by children. It isn't regarded to be his best work (it has a fair number of negative reviews in various online readers' communities), but I find the premise to be interesting enough.

[Cerulione]

I'm jumping on the reading bandwagon. I'm still a budding reader so I'm not reading big-name literature yet! ?

 

Currently finishing all Mandarin Companions Graded Readers to get myself re-acquainted with the Chinese written language. I am also working on Elementary level multi-chapter stories from the Du Chinese reading app. Yesterday I tried starting Imagin8 Press' Journey to the West since the book had just arrived. Chapters 1 and 2 I can perfectly grasp each word just from the Audiobook since I know what the spoken words mean but reading them in print is still quite a challenge as I had forgotten most of the written language. Hopefully soon!

 

Although I'm probably skipping Imagin8's Journey to the West for now to just start with BLCUP's Graded Readers for Chinese Learners Level 1.

 

All in all, I can understand most books I attempted so far if they are read to me (audiobooks) and after 20 years of not using Chinese, they're all gone but funnily they come back quickly enough. That Mandarin Companion's Breakthrough Level took me three days for the first one last month but now I can finish level 1 in less than an hour effortlessly. I'm tempted to actually listen to the audiobooks of all the materials I have while looking at the text to see if it helps to link the sound I recognize with the characters.

[dakonglong]

I am about 1/3 of the way through 狂飙 and it is incredible! I highly recommend it to anyone looking for an engaging Chinese crime novel.

[PerpetualChange]

After a long break, I'm picking it back up with 青铜葵花 by 曹文轩. 

As I'd mentioned here earlier, I'd read 草房子 and mostly enjoyed it very much, but was disappointed upon jumping into  青铜葵花. However after restarting the book last night, I think I can enjoy it. If not, I'll just move on to something else. 

 

In non-Chinese reading, I just finished a book I enjoyed very much called The Galaxy and the Ground Between by Becky Chambers. Kinda a "feel good", "soft" sci-fi about different alien species who are stuck together in the space-opera version of a airport hostile due to some kind of satellite malfunction. Lots of "learning about our differences" type stuff going on, though not as science-y as the segments you may be thinking of between the human and the "rock" character in Project Hail Mary. 

[Luxi]

Not sure this is a good place for this post, but it's probably something that may interest active readers Chinese literature.

 

I asked Bing to list the winners of the 2023 Mao Dun Literary Prize:

 

Quote

Good morning. The 2023 Mao Dun Literature Prize is one of the most prestigious literary awards in China. It was announced on August 11, 2023, and the five winners are:

 

- Yang Zhijun (杨志军) for The Snow Mountain and the Homeland (雪山大地), a novel that depicts the changes and challenges of the Tibetan pastoral society in the modern era¹².

- Qiao Ye (乔烨) for Baoshui Village (宝水村), a novel that portrays the transformation of a remote village in the Taihang Mountains into a cultural tourism destination¹².

- Liu Liangcheng (刘良成) for Ben Ba (奔巴), a novel that reimagines the Mongolian heroic epic Jangar and explores the spiritual pursuit of modern people to return to nature¹².

- Sun Ganlu (孙甘露) for A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains (江山如画), a novel that takes the reader back to 1930s Shanghai and uncovers the revolutionary spirit of the underground members of the Communist Party of China¹².

- Dong Xi (东西) for Resonance (回响), a detective novel that touches on the individual's inner struggle between trust and doubt¹².

 

I hope this information is helpful to you. ?

 

Source: Conversation with Bing, 13/10/2023
(1) Mao Dun Literature Prize winners cover a wide range of topics. http://www.china.org.cn/arts/2023-08/15/content_102945916.htm.

 

(2) CSSN-Mao Dun Literature Prize winners revealed. http://english.cssn.cn/whatsnew/topline/202309/t20230909_5684379.shtml.
(

3) Mao Dun Literature Prize - Wikipedia. https://bing.com/search?q=2023+Mao+Dun+Literature+Prize+winners.
 

 

Glad to see the Forum back. Thanks @roddy!

[Luxi]

To abide by the sub-forum heading...

 

I just finished reading Ge Fei (格非)'s "Peach Blossom Paradise" (《人面桃花》), I wanted to read it in Canaan Morse's English translation but by the time it arrived to my door, I had finished reading the Chinese - which turned out to be much more direct and clear than I thought, though still needing plenty of dictionary help.

The story takes place just after the 100 Days Reform of 1898 by the young Qing Emperor, which Empress Dowager Ci Xi crushed with a military coup. The story doesn't deal with the historical events, but with their reflection, effects and after-effects in a remote rural location. To me, it was one of the most engaging contemporary Chinese novels that I have read so far, it kept me reading well into the night. The plot is complex and full of twists, the characters are lively and nicely drawn, the events happen on the edge of realism without turning into fantasy. The story has several layers of meanings, a critique of idealism - or failure of - at its core. More and better about it here:
https://eastasianliteratureintranslation.com/2023/06/30/peach-blossom-paradise-by-ge-fei/

 

This is the first novel in Ge Fei's Jiangnan Trilogy. I started a few pages of the 2nd book "My Dream of the Mountain and River" (山河入梦), but it didn't appeal to me.  The third in the Trilogy is  "Spring Ends in Jiangnan" (春尽江南),  2011, but I have  moved on to read stories from previous issues of 当代 Magazine (qq-weread has many). 

Currently reading  橘颂, a novella by Zhang Wei (张炜) in vol.5 of 当代.  橘颂 is the name of a ginger cat, one of 2 main characters in the story, it's also the title of a poem in the Songs of Chu (楚辭): "Eulogy to the Orange" - seems very much a story I will like.

[lordsuso]

I recently finished 多情剑客无情剑 by 古龙. Compared to 流星·蝴蝶·剑, I found the dialogue a bit harder in this novel because the characters speak in a semi-classic style more often, but the fight scenes (which tend to be the most difficult passages) are shorter so that helps. The atmosphere was too over-dramatic for my taste, and the characters slightly annoying, but overall it was very entertaining.

 

I am going to read three shorter books now: 聚散兩依依 by 琼瑶 (my second 琼瑶 book, she is quite easy to read), 白馬嘯西風 by 金庸 (my first 金庸, I am quite scared even if it's a short novella), and 活着 by 余华. 

[Jive Turkey]

I wanted to mention a couple of books I've read this year that I thought were interesting and pretty readable.

 

落葉歸根 by 嚴君玲: The writer was born into a well-off Shanghai family before WWII, and her mother died shortly after her birth. Her father remarried to a stereotypically nasty, manipulative stepmother, and the author grew up being kept at arms length by her father. The family moved to HK around 1949, and the academically gifted writer was eventually able study medicine in the UK. She returned to HK where she practiced briefly, but she eventually went to the US where she continued to practice medicine, and where she married badly, divorced, and slowly, yet in my opinion probably not completely, unpacked the emotional baggage of growing up in a pretty toxic family. The writer actually wrote this book in English first, and then translated it herself into Chinese. I wonder how many Chinese who have settled overseas, even intellectuals, stay sharp enough in Chinese to translate their own English work into Chinese. The Chinese version is well-written, and seemed to sell well in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the mainland. 

 

大江大海一九四九 by 龍應台: The author is of course a really well known public intellectual in Taiwan, and was so during her time in Hong Kong a few years ago. She has been pretty widely read on the mainland, but some of her titles, including this one, now seem to be unavailable there. In any case, this book tells the stories of the author's family along with many others as they experience the end of WWII, civil war, and then fleeing to Taiwan. The narrative includes a lot of oral history from different kinds of people, including school children, nationalist soldiers, and even a couple of Taiwanese guys who grew up under Japanese colonialism, were conscripted into the nationalist army, and then ended up on the mainland for a few decades after the conclusion of the civil war. The book is a good example of journalistic metahistory. It seems a bit too ambitious in what it tries to do, but the stories are nonetheless moving, and as a whole, I think it provides a good sense of waishengren experience pre- and post-exile. 

[Woodford]

I finished Liu Cixin's 超新星纪元 (Supernova Era) a while back. Some of its underlying ideas are really interesting (it was inspired by the political upheaval in China in the late 80s, and what Liu thought about it). The concept of the book had a lot of potential; it's influenced by the classic "Lord of the Flies" book and explores what would happen if all the adults on Earth were gone, and children were left to run the world by themselves. As many dissatisfied reviewers point out, the story becomes really silly really fast. But I adjusted my expectations accordingly, and I was willing to embrace the silliness somewhat.

 

Due to a nearby Supernova explosion, Earth is flooded with radiation that damages the DNA of every living thing. Children below the age of 13, who are better able to repair their own DNA, survive. All the adults get sick and die, and in the several remaining months they have to live, they must train the children to run the world without them. The most laugh-out-loud moment for me was when the (child) president of the United States somehow convinced the (child) leader of China that it would be in their best interest to trade land, so that China resettles in North America, and the Americans go live in China. For some really vague reason. It's just an extremely unlikely scenario. America also becomes a dystopian hellscape, because, well, the adults left behind a lot of guns, and the children inherit them. The US then becomes the villain in the story, compelling the other countries to engage in "war games" where they all fight for control of Antarctica, which has become inhabitable because of climate change.

Is it Liu's best writing? No. Is it a fun way to practice Chinese? I think so.

 

Now I'm reading two books: the classic 骆驼祥子 by Lao She, which is actually a real pain for me to read. I can manage it well enough, but the language can be so dated, and there's so much obscure dialect in it. I get the story (which is pretty good), but some of the dialogue, especially, just goes over my head. What? What just happened? What did he just say? I must confess, though, that some of Lao's language and descriptions are really ornate and beautiful.

 

The other book is by an internet celebrity by the name of Luo Xiang, a Chinese legal expert who's popular with young people. It's called 法治的细节, and he shares his thoughts about the philosophy of the law, personal freedom versus public interest, the death penalty, surrogate parenting, the burden of proof in criminal trials, human nature, and every controversial topic under the sun. It's a bit difficult to follow sometimes, and Luo can be a bit verbose, but it's been a really engaging read.

[7800]

I've recently realized the obvious: it's much easier for me to read about subjects I'm familiar with.

I'm reading 矩阵分析与应用 (第二版) by 张贤达. I'd say it is an undergraduate-level math book about matrices, though I can see it being used by graduate students too. It starts from the very beginning, but it might be better to take at least one simpler course on linear algebra and learn some multivariable calculus before giving this book a try, because it doesn't teach anything outside of Matrix Theory, you need to know the rest already. I bought an $8 second-hand copy on eBay, mainly because that's the only place that would ship it to my country  (Smile of Internal Despair).

Reading it has been much easier than I expected. I picked it up just to take a look and see if Chinese books on math had any 特点, but once I noticed I could painlessly read it I decided to do it. 矩阵分析与应用 is full of words I've never seen before, however it's not been hard to infer the meaning of most mathwords in Chinese. The first chapter is reeeally basic, and that helped me a lot with getting used to the language. I still need to check the dictionary sometimes, because words like 酉矩阵 contain not so common characters like 酉 (yǒu). I think 酉 is there just to create a new word, its meaning doesn't seem to be related to the idea of 酉矩阵 (Unitary Matrices), so I could have simply skimmed through it and ignored its pronunciation, but I'm willing to learn everything well. To make things even easier, the author frequently throws in some English vocab when he's defining new concepts:

 

Although not a novel, I've found this book to be highly entertaining, and it looks awesome:

 

(picture from some site out there)

[Lu]

On 10/16/2023 at 5:09 PM, Jive Turkey said:

大江大海一九四九 by 龍應台: The author is of course a really well known public intellectual in Taiwan, and was so during her time in Hong Kong a few years ago. She has been pretty widely read on the mainland, but some of her titles, including this one, now seem to be unavailable there.

It has always been unavailable there. It sold well in Taiwan and Hong Kong when it came out, but the bookstore where it sold best of all was the Hong Kong airport bookstore. (Or so I've been told.)

 

I finally joined the 平凡的世界 club, finished volume 1 yesterday. What a pleasant read. It was easy to put down after a chapter and pick back up again some time later. No plot in the Western sense, but the ongoing lives of the various characters. Some bad things happen, it being the later years of the Cultural Revolution, but no life-destroying stuff, everyone picks back up again and just tries their best. You end up rooting hard some some characters and some pairings, but even the 'bad guys' have their sympathetic parts, they may have serious character flaws but they're not evil. I was a bit worried the volume would end on a cliffhanger, but it didn't really. I need to read some other things first now, but it'll be nice to pick up volume 2 some time in the future.

 

I bought the whole set something like ten years ago, read a few pages and concluded that I could learn a lot from this if I read it with dictionary & SRS. I now read it with very little dictionary lookup, and it was nice to find proof that I have learned a word or two in the intervening time.