Reading Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide (荒潮, 陈楸帆): Part 2

[roddy]

Ok, so I'll try and get through a couple of chapters of Part 2 of this today. If you've stumbled in here in 2024 and aren't sure what's going on, head back to the start and follow along.

 

Overall enjoyed this chapter - it was great to see some proper sci-fi action bits, and I loved the idea of Mimi having to save herself as she did. 

 

Chapter 7

 

1) The chapter starts with Mimi in captivity and soon undergoing what felt like a long and not necessarily necessary rape scene, courtesy of our old friend 刀仔. To be frank I wouldn't blame anyone who wants to skip it, and you can head onward about 2,600 characters to "海。苍白如死尸皮肤的海" taking my word for it that Mimi has a very bad time of it. 

2) Next, another dream sequence, with similar themes to the earlier, but with an appearance by Chen Kaizong and an indication that whatever it is that is causing the dreams needs her in some way: "她那饱受折磨的脆弱肉体，便是完成这件绝世珍品不可或缺的关键元素"

3) Mimi's day does not take much of a turn for the better, when she gets buried alive in the paupers' graveyard of earlier. There's an out-of-body experience as she floats up above her assailants-cum-gravediggers* and... then things get more interesting, when she has an in-body experience. Remember that abandoned battlemech from earlier? The one the orphan died in and is covered with Daoist symbols. Guess who's in charge of it now. She attacks 刀子 and his pals as they walk happily off, but soon finds herself struggling to maintain control of the robot - her buried body is close to death, her spirit (or whatever) becoming weaker. There's then a nice little scene as she clings on to control long enough to dig herself out of the grave, while not crushing herself to death, and using the battlemech to shock herself back to life. We end with Mimi back in her own body, weak but alive.  

 

*One thing I'm curious about is: is this advanced technology which looks like magic at the moment, or is it going to be left unexplained as magic. I hope the former. 

 

钝角  - obtuse angle, compare 锐角. 
舔舐 - lick
凌迟 to kill be dismembering, or to fall into decadence, deterioriate 
曼陀罗  mandala
鼓风机  - bellows, air blower?
控制腔  - not sure what the right term would be, I'm thinking cockpit or control pod. 

[roddy]

And carrying on... 

 

Chapter 8

 

1) The Luo boss takes his revenge on 刀仔 for losing his charge, and we get some of 刀仔's back story. Loved the phrase 撒泡尿都能闻得见骚, possibly my favourite of the book so far. I came out of this bit thinking 刀仔 was dead, but I see he gets a lot of mentions later on, so I may have misunderstood. 

 

2) Back with 文哥, who's found a badly injured Mimi after she makes her way home. She's in the hospital, and he's making use of her as some kind of symbol for his struggle against the clans (although given he's got the info to bring them all down...)

 

3) At the hotel, the Luo boss watches Scott and Director Lin leave - now why are they there? As far as I'm aware, we have no reason why they'd be concerned about Mimi, although we might have to assume it's to do with the tech they're tracing, which we have to assume is that stinging helmet thing. Lin's left some guards, so she'd definitely not your average migrant worker. Note the 盲人摸象 - and you thought those 'Ten Chinese Idioms for Foreigner" lists were useless. Luo and his men overpower the guards and enter Mimi's room, where Chen Kaizong is keeping watch at Mimi's bedroom. The two men have a bit of a chat and we learn a bit more about the ceremony Luo wants to carry out. It sounds to me like it's not necessarily bad news for Mimi - the sorceress will use her to help the Luo boss's son, but there's no indication she'll be hurt. Not that we can trust him. We find out via Luo that Scott is also searching for Mimi, with Lin's help. Lovely phrase: 肉不肥他是不会伸爪子的.

 

4) Scott and Lin have a chat - I have very few notes here, not sure if it's because nothing happened or I was getting tired. Lin tells him the computer-thief was from the Coltfoot Organisation, and the fact that the founder of Coltfoot is the brother of the provincial environmental chief - who Scott has thought was an ally. Lin gets a phone call telling him of the Luo incursion at the hospital. 

 

5) The next small stretch, from 他们把我们叫做‘垃圾人 to 战争已经开始, could be confusing if you don't notice it's the content of a flyer which is circulating (different formats may make it clearer). Chen Kaizong has shown this to the Luo boss, who spots it as 文哥's work. Luo changes his mind about just snatching Mimi (if this was the original plan, why's he there personally?) The police, alerted by Lin, turn up heavily armed and there's a standoff between them and the Luo lads. This gets interrupted by more spookiness - some kind of infrasound attack which incapacitates everyone, compared to the foehn wind effects, apparently emanating from a still-unconscious Mimi. 浮士德 is Faust. 

 

Good stuff as the aftermath of Mimi's attack and... transformation...? play out. Still unclear on exactly what Scott and Lin are up to, which would be fine if we weren't spending so much time with them. Perhaps I'm missing something. The social unrest stuff is a new angle, not sure how much of that we'll see. 

 

I've got one more chapter written up as notes, then I'm hoping to write these up as I go. Not sure if that'll work better or not. 

 

 

 

 

[roddy]

Right, Chapter 9, which I've got notes on, and perhaps another. This is not technically what I should be doing. 

 

1) Scott's about on some mysterious mission. Will we find out what he's actually up to? Another boat trip. An ocean rendezvous. A mysterious woman. Could it be... YES! It's Sug-yi from the prologue. And she's in charge of some ongoing 行动 - presumably not just the sneaky hotel tricks. She and her organisation are on the trail of some e-waste contaminated with a highly dangerous virus - prosthetics believed to have been manufactured by a company named SBT. And you'll remember that the serial number on the piece of tech Scott picked out of the workshop many chapters ago started with SBT. And SBT and Scott's firm share a shareholder. So his role seems to become a bit clearer - while working on the new factory project, track down some dangerous waste, I'd assume as it risks some kind of scandal. I'm unclear as to whether we're talking about whole container loads, or just that one helmet thing 文哥 had. And actually, still has,  I guess? What happens when he realises? And Coltfoot wants the waste to expose SBT. We end with a reference to the title - have you ever heard of the 荒潮 project?

 

I think we should have more dialogue like the 这是勒索吗 exchange. I got a laugh out of "I'll stick to soap."

 

2) Back with CKZ and Mimi in the hospital. Mimi seems to be healing miraculously fast. I appreciated the attempt to sell this odd relationship better: Chen knows what it's like to leave your home. Not yet convinced, mind. And she's still acting weird, humming a piece of music Chen has in his head. That's it for Chen and Mimi in this chapter.

 

3) Exposition time! Nice Ray Bradbury fact. There's a bit on rare earths and their importance and a 36 Stratagems reference - to the fact that Scott's firm have developed a method to recover rare earths from waste. This would make the whole enterprise hugely profitable. And apparently the Balearics have fallen to the Chinese. More background on Scott - responsible for a major chemical accident, turned to Christ, is now back doing dirty deals. Seems clear he's going to side with the good guys in the end? Scott sets to researching the 荒潮 project and I realise I've read a chapter more than I thought I had. 

 

 

冲锋衣 - I guess we might call this a technical jacket in some contexts, but more likely just waterproof. Google image searches are clear - a 冲锋 is a military assault, a 冲锋衣 is your usual North Face or Berghaus hillwalking gear. Which makes me wonder what we call the clothes soldiers wear during a 冲锋

吃水线 - lovely. Waterline, Plimsoll line

暗下消失 - this had me wondering, can 暗下 be used for noises, or should this be something like 'faded into the darkness'

太空梭 - was interested to see 梭 here, as I only knew it as a weaver's shuttle (我的日子比梭更快，都消耗在無指望之中。) but see it (rarely) used in the context of a shuttle bus. Anyway, 航天飞机 more common for space shuttle. 

牙买加 - My wife looked this word up in the dictionary. Jamaica? No, she wanted to.*

物联网 Internet of things

实打实 - I like this

做空, also see 短仓 - to short a stock.

杠杆获利 - leveraged profit? Not sure if it's my finance knowledge failing me here, or the Chinese. I can see how the finances used for a deal might be leveraged, but the profit?

经典动机 - 动机 for musical 'motif' raised an eyebrow, but I put it back down later. Also 乐汇?

语塞 - language-blocked, tongue-tied

八音盒 - music box. A full octave

龌龊勾当 - dirty deals

安那其, more commonly 无政府主义, anarchy

 

 

* This is an extremely old English joke.

"My wife's gone on holiday?"

"Jamaica?" (Did you make her)

"No, she went of her own accord."

[roddy]

Chapter 10 (three more chapters in this part, then another six to round off. 

 

1) Time for a stunning breach of medical privacy - Chen Kaizong has a nice long chat with Mimi's doctor about her condition. There's an intriguing question of whether Mimi is really Mimi any more, or even a person: 。非人的东西? She has evidence of repeated viral infections of the brain - I'd assume that's the augmented reality though, as the stinging helmet that I should really find a better name for was a one off. Then she also has a matrix of metallic nano-particles in there too, which I'm blaming on... no, got nothing, stinging helmet it is... Oh, and evidence of electrocution. So our takeaway is that Mimi's got some weird head stuff going on, and the Silicon Isle General Hospital is very bad at keeping secrets.

 

2) Back to Scott, doing his researching into the 荒潮 project. The Japanese WW2 back story isn't too relevant, although it's where the Arashio Foundation - shareholders in both SBT and 惠睿 - gets its name from. Development of a hallucinogenic drug, QNB, to be aerosolised for military use, a regretful scientist, quite a lot of chemical and biological vocab. QNB, it turns out, can cause shared hallucinations and mass religious experiences. And the US have been using it since Vietnam. The hallucinations are not pleasant. Lovecraftian. Nauseated, Scott takes a break and we get to revisit Chen and Mimi.

 

3) Mimi goes 'missing' - is she missing, Kaizong? Or are you getting a bit controlling? Anyway, she turns up in the hospital cafeteria in the company of.. Boss Luo! The man who wants her for a son-saving ritual. Luo and Chen do some verbal sparring, with Luo telling stories about the younger man's father. Chen seems to come round to the idea of Mimi wandering off with Luo - he's given him his word no harm will befall her, after all. Man, that witch is going to flip when she gets a look at Mimi now.

 

4) Scott again. QNB has permanent effects, means those exposed to it do not live happy lives. The Japanese-born scientist behind it, 铃木晴川, gets to offer herapologies and we end with Scott going all Minority-Report on a virtual mind map and putting Mimi at the centre of it. 

 

 

盛唐工笔 - ornate painting style of the Tang dynasty

二次再临 - the Second Coming. I liked this description of zooming in on Google Earth

不是不报,时候未到 in full is 善有善报,恶有恶报,不是不报,时候未到,时候一到,一切都报

克苏鲁 - Cthulhu. Bet that'll come in handy.

鱼死网破 - the fish dies or the net breaks - a life and death struggle

器质性 - organic, as in organ of the body （器官). 

[roddy]

Chapter 11 in my ongoing quest.

 

This is the first one I'm typing up as I read. We'll see how it goes. 

 

1) Quick flashback to Mimi meeting Chen Kaizong in the hospital, where she's feeling out of place - but not alone - in her own body. 

 

2) Preparations for the Luo family's ritual, to be attended by Chen Kaizong. It turns out Director Lin is close to the Luo's and helped them in their attempt to snatch Mimi. The ceremony starts - I'm unclear as to what's expected for Mimi here, I originally assumed she'd suffer, then it seems like she'd be fine, but Chen's (unbelievingly) seems to think she's meant to come to harm? "不信一旦施法成功，罗子鑫便能从昏迷中苏醒，而小米将会代替罗子鑫死去". The ceremony goes a bit odd, the witch seems to end up cut out of it before taking on a somewhat sacrificial role. I took Lin's “骗子。” comment to mean the witch was a fake, and so the apparently real outcome (including the immolation) was Mimi's doing. And then the hint at the end of this section that the boy is not necessarily the boy any more. Intriguing. 

 

3) Now we get the ceremony from Mimi's point of view, as she watches whatever it is in her head create a very lightly explained consciousness bridge (意识之桥) to the boy. Then there's an attempt at an explanation of what's happening physiologically with the boy, but the upshot is that there's some kind of circuit breaker in his head which has been tripping too easily. Because the local dialect.... has too many tones... and there's too much information entropy (信息熵)... so he can only speak... Mandarin. Ok. So her consciousness tentacle (触手) goes in there and fixes it... so we'd have to assume the boy is in the same position as Mimi, but something's gone wrong, which is... now fixed?

 

4) The water delivery guy (I assume the one from the chase earlier, haven't checked) spots Mimi being taken into the Luo's compound and spreads the word. I'm assuming also that this is between hospital and ritual. And, to the incomprehension of the locals, the 垃圾人 seem to have formed some new sense of community...

 

5) Mimi reflects on her situation as Mimi 0 coping with Mimi 1. There's also reference to the face of a Western woman she sees - is this new? I think so. I liked 第三者的介入并不会让情况变得更简单. Then we get the aftermath of the ceremony - who's Lin reporting to, Scott? And then... the Rubbish People attack! The storm the Luo compound to rescue Mimi, who a) isn't in any danger and b) seems quite capable of rescuing herself, as things are going. Chen takes a nasty blow to the head, and Mimi realises there are other games afoot.

 

寄居 - 'living away from home', but clearly playing on the parasite meaning of 寄 in 寄生. 

飘飘欲仙 - is it just me, or is that pretty?

抽丝剥茧

8字形 - it just occurred to me the problems this might cause an interpreter. 八字形?

切分节奏 Syncopated rhythm

踉跄 - stagger

布洛卡氏区 Broca's area. 韦尼克氏区 will be Wernicke's 

虫豸 insects and reptiles - so crawly things?

说不清道不明 would be a great phrase to use when your Chinese fails you. "My computer needs a new.... ah, it's all too ineffable."

[roddy]

Chapter 12! Penultimate chapter before the end of Part 2. 

 

1) Director Lin and Boss Luo go to see 翁镇长, who seems to be a bigger cheese than either of them. Chen Kaizong is hurt and under care of an eye doctor. Weng is not happy with the chaos (and does quite a good impression of a Bond villan). Loved the description of the octopus turning red: 如同喝醉酒般. Their hopes of a curfew or information lockdown are rejected, and they leave discontented - with a reminder that something in the past caused Silicon Isle to be turned into a low-bandwidth zone. I can't think of anything we've heard about that before. 

 

2) Scott and his temporary translator take a trip to the night market. He's being followed - but by who? And Scott sends the translator off to pick up some food - or does he!

 

3) Back with Boss Luo, who's thinking about his business model and how 文哥 reminds him of himself as a younger man - and he wonders why such a smart chap is stuck on Silicon Isle. There's also some more about the low-bandwidth order, which resulted in workers and locals alike leaving, due to the lack of opportunities it meant. We also learn the cause - a scandal over the rape of a migrant worker girl. I'm not overly keen on how we slip from Luo's point of view to the brother of the girl, and might wonder if the author nods towards this with "说书人的想象中". Anyway, that results in the leak of government documents, thanks to a virus engineered by the brother. Annoyed at this, the government sends Silicon Isle back to the digital stone age; annoyed at that, Silicon Isle businessfolk try and track the brother down to do nasty things to him. They fail to find him, but if he's not 文哥 I'll be a little bit surprised - a point is made of saying he arrived immediately after these events. At the end of this section we find the culprit in that earlier attack was, again, 刀子. And we also get quite a fantastic mixed metaphor: 如今这条烂狗再次栽倒在同一块骨头上，而这次掀起的波澜，却仍在海面下逡巡暗涌. 

 

4) Back with Scott. Having ditched the translator he dispatches his tail, but fails to get any useful info. Given the follower was carrying a knife, not sure if we're meant to understand Scott was to be killed. In a conversation with his handler 乙川弘文, Scott complains that the piece of kit he's tracking down (?), serial number SBT-VBPII32503439 (you remembered that, didn't you?) is somehow an unpredictable risk to the project and possibly "甚至不是为人类设计的" - which seems like a whole new angle to me. His handler agrees to give him the whole story...

 

小人得志

八腕真蛸 - common octopus?

万花筒 kaleidoscope

娓娓道来

悻悻告退 - angry, resentful 

茹毛饮血

味蕾 - taste buds

沃洛波罗斯之蛇 -  ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail. 

[roddy]

Chapter 13, again the penultimate chapter in Part 2, as I can't count. 

 

1) Scott, sleepless as he mulls over revelations not yet revealed to us, goes for a motorbike ride. Exposition time (I think there might have been better ways to do this than the second-hand information dump). So the piece of kit they're all interested in is a... helmet?.. designed to hold skulls together. But for gorillas and the like not humans. Going back to the Waste Tide project, when it closed the patents went to SBT and whatever Scott's firm is called. And so the research continued, including reengineering the virus that were intended to undo the damage caused by QNB (see Ch.10 above) to reverse or prevent the effects of aging on the brain, and creating the viral batteries we heard of earlier. Meanwhile, he's playing chase with a following car. 

 

2) Chen Kaizong takes an inordinate amount of time to tell us about his new cybernetic eye and a very odd event in his college years when he had to identify the burned remains of his roommate's girlfriend as the roommate himself could't recognise her, due to her constantly swopping out her cybernetics. Or something like that, this seemed like a bit of a waste of time to be honest. He's wary of cybernetics and young Western people love 'em. 

 

3) Boss Luo. What's a 慢箭手? Ah, some kind of hacker specialised in working in the low-bandwidth environment without getting caught. Luo wants one to keep an eye on the strikers.

 

4) Wen Ge, out from the police station and ordering his lieutenants about. We get a first indication of any guilt - 内疚在作祟, with reference to Mimi. One of his orders is for the battlemech (here the 黑金刚) to be fetched. He goes to see Mimi, now in an informal hospital run by a Mongolian doctor (每一个蒙古大夫都有他的独门秘籍, obviously). When recording her on his AR he thinks he sees.... the face of a young Western woman. She's back (See Ch.11). It seems Mimi has some powerful effect on Wen Ge via visual effects on the AR - 心中剩下的只有纯粹的崇拜，甚至还有一丝畏惧。And the news of the resurrected Mimi spreads far and wide...

 

Found this chapter a bit of a drag, to be honest. We get second hand exposition from Scott, more Chen Kaizong backstory than we can ever need, and at best set up for future action from Boss Luo and Wen Ge. 

 

Some vocab I pulled out, with comments if it's not a simple dictionary look up

氤氲
靛蓝
和衣 - to sleep in one's clothes, like that. 
海马区 - I knew the hippocampus meant 'sea-horse', but hadn't realised this was a mythical creature, rather than actual sea-horses.
高分子 macro molecule
打退堂鼓
螳螂捕蝉，黄雀在后 
就里 - the inside story
厝边头尾 - looks to be dialect for neighbours?
闪烁 - sense of being evasive, non-committal here in 闪烁其辞
接驳 - I knew this is the context of shuttle, but can also be 'to connect seamlessly - which makes sense. 
眉间拧起了川字纹 - a furrowed brow. That's brilliant. 

[roddy]

Chapter 14! I've definitely slowed down lately, been enjoying my other books too much.

 

1) Scott expositing on how SBT tested its brain-computer interface with chimps and the like. Which involved a helmet with the serial code SBT-VBPII32503439, which was used to remote control one particular chimp, who also had some kind of synaptic enhancer injected. So some more info on the helmet, but nothing we might not have expected. 

2) Back with Chen Kaizong again, who... wanders about considering his new prosthetic eye and not really doing much. Except he feels a bit closer to Mimi, as they're both cyborgs now. 

3) Scott again, who I now realise is still on that motorbike. Parallels drawn between Mimi and his dead daughter, who would be the same age now. The effects of the virus are way beyond what was expected, and it looks like it's mutating to increase its chances of survival. This makes Mimi very valuable, and he's planning to use her relationship with Chen to get her off the island so he can sell her - and if needed, he has some secret weapon delivered to him by Coltfoot in the fun and games at the night market earlier. Or... will he save her? On his way back to the hotel he catches a glance of his tail from the night market (remember the burn he inflicted?) and "顿时明白了一切" - which is more than can be said for me. Why's it revelatory that someone who was following him before is following him now? There's a bit of road-jousting, but nobody gets badly hurt. 

4) Scott sits on negotations between the three plans on how the project will go ahead. Tensions between the locals and the workers are high... and there's a typhoon on the way! Scott starts talking to Chen about Mimi. I was confused by 但她是罗家的人，罗锦城会以此作为要挟条件, I thought Mimi was with Wen Ge. Although maybe he doesn't know that? Chen accepts Scott's offer to put Mimi above the contract and 'save' her. 

 

 

斯金纳箱 - Skinner box

汉诺塔 - tower of hanoi， despite Hanoi being 河内. 

突触 Synapse

补丁 - patch, here as in software

栖身 - to stay, sojurn. I paid particular attention to this one, as I noticed recently I'd been thinking 栖 was xi1, not qi1. Which is a little embarrassing, but doesn't appear to have had any actual consequences. 

沃尔沃 Volvo 

防抱死系统 - anti-lock braking.

解析度 (screen) resolution

 

 

[Tomsima]

Chapter 7:

 

Well, I think you said it all, I wish I had skipped the first half of this chapter. I don't read your posts until after I've read the relevant chapter first, otherwise I find I lose the incentive to get properly involved in the reading. This time, however, I feel it might have been wise to, as the whole thing left a bit of a sour taste in my mouth for the rest of the chapter. Chen is coming up with all these fantastically interesting ideas, but is expressing them in what is, in my personal opinion, a very hackneyed style (seriously how many more times is he going to treat us to phrases like "她與死神之間，只有一個吻的距離"?) I can only think his style is influenced by some internet novel genre writing, because it feels like he's always trying to convince the reader about how exciting everything is all the time. But that's not really my main gripe: why on earth are we being treated to such unnecessary oversexualisation of what is more or less a minor throughout this chapter? Even after the first half is done, every single description of Mimi seems to require focusing in on 那片潔白的胸脯 or something similarly pale, weak or exposed part of her body. Ridiculous really, just get on with the sci-fi story, there's so much to be told and so much potential for a gripping story. These unnecessary descriptions can only be cautioned to future readers, as if you can get past this, the rest is deservedly thought provoking.

 

I'm also left hoping for some explanation as to why what happened with the mech body transfer thing happened. Its one thread from this chapter I'm looking forward to following on in future chapters. Sorry for being pretty negative, but...come on, that was a strange chapter

 

vocab notes

 

摩西, Moses

榫接, tenon; unite by a tenon

踢躂舞, tap dance

燐光, phosphorescence

滂沱, torrential

靛青, indigo-blue

畸變, distortion; aberration

矩陣, {math} matrix

切面, {math} tangent plane

舒張, n {physiology} diastole (period of time when the heart relaxes after systole [contraction])

[Tomsima]

Chapter 8:

 

finally getting into some good action, had a good time with this chapter, felt a bit like one of those blockbuster movies where you can ignore all the disagreements you have with the director and script writers because, whatever, its a fun story, suspension of disbelief and all that.

 

On 4/13/2020 at 5:14 PM, roddy said:

(if this was the original plan, why's he there personally?)

 

Yeah, I have just kind of given up hope that these kind of illogical parts of the story are going to be explained, seems like it was just a way to get Luo in there for the big scene with the busting windows and blood etc. Fun, but also kind of requires a lot on the part of the reader to go with it all.

 

On 4/13/2020 at 5:14 PM, roddy said:

It sounds to me like it's not necessarily bad news for Mimi - the sorceress will use her to help the Luo boss's son, but there's no indication she'll be hurt. Not that we can trust him.

 

I'm all in, I'm just going with Luo is the good guy who's made some crappy decisions to get to where he is. Maybe this whole event will change his moral stance from now on, what with having seen his life flash before his eyes and all. I'm going with the theory that Luo and Chen are gonna be on the same team eventually, then Scott who is appearing more and more dodgy is gonna turn into some sort of bad guy. We'll see...

 

Glad to see Mimi is becoming a strong, empowered woman too by the looks of things...

 

vocab:

 

血花亂飛, Blood spattered everywhere.

囈語, crazy talk; ravings

不置可否, decline to comment; not express an opinion

盯梢, shadow; tail; stalk

思忖, ponder; consider

打頭陣, spearhead an attack

撅, break, snap (sth long and thin, like a twig) used of a cigarette breaking as it was hit out of the hand 陳開宗一把拽下他唇上的香煙，撅在地上，碾成碎末。

字斟句酌, weigh every word; choose one's words with care

肉不肥他是不會伸爪子的, if there's nothing special in it for him, he/she won't/wouldn’t get involved

泛紅, to blush, flushed

下頜, the lower jaw

應激反應, (physiological etc) stress

狡黠, sly; cunning

兩面三刀, double-dealing; double cross

攔路虎, obstacle, stumbling block

合縱連橫, 1 {history} (during the Zhànguó 戰國/战国 "Warring States" period, 475-221 BCE) the "vertical" and "horizontal" alliances (opposite strategic theories of vertical [north-south] or horizontal [east-west] alliance of states against or with the state of Qín 秦) 2 strategic maneuvering of all kinds

前車之鑒, warning taken from the overturned cart ahead; lessons drawn from others' mistakes

顧慮重重, worried, full of misgivings

謀定後動, plan first and then make your move

無處棲身, with no place to stay, nowhere to ‘roost’ in this case

還魂, 1 to return from the grave 2 (old) to recycle (waste products) (thought this two layered meaning was interesting to pick out considering the context)

神諭, oracle

蹚, wade; ford

乘虛而入, act when one's opponent is off guard; exploit one's opponent's weakness

靜謐, tranquil

堆笑, put on a smile; force a smile

箍手銬, cuff with handcuffs

阿爾卑斯山脈, the Alps (very surprised I did not know this, nor able to guess it while reading!)

太陽穴, temples (on the head) (an interesting contrast to the medical term for temples I happened to learn recently, 顳骨, this would appear to be more colloquial…?)

浮士德, Faust, came up in 浮士德與魔鬼的交易 Faust’s pact with the devil

神情恍惚, be in a trance

弔橋, a drawbridge

懸索橋, suspension bridge

除顫器, defibrillator

次聲波, infrasound wave, low-frequency soundwave

對講器, intercom

輪廓收攏清晰, silhouette gradually coming into focus

七竅流血, (blood flowing from the seven orifices of the head) bleeding profusely from the head

駐波, standing wave (“a wave which oscillates in time but whose peak amplitude profile does not move in space”)

不共戴天, refuse to live under the same sky (with one's enemy) — absolutely irreconcilable

[Tomsima]

Chapter 9

 

Another bittersweet chapter. Some exciting action taking place out on the ocean at the start, good bit of tension, I read this bit really quickly as it was quite gripping, and a good end with the introduction of '荒潮'. But not all good things last, and immediately we're thrown back into the ckz mimi relationship, which inevitably involves some pale-skinned /r/menwritingwomen descriptions. I enjoyed learning about the Fareinheit 451 story, but just as I was getting back into the story, Chen has to take us on another yellow adventure, and we spend about 5 minutes reading about an 'economic hitman' using his VPN...to check out futuristic porn sites.

 

Things I specifically noted of interest in this chapter:

 

I was interested to see 戰爭的藝術 turn up in the Chinese, rather than just straight up using 孫子兵法. I fielded the question with my wife and she couldn't tell me what 戰爭的藝術 referred to, so I can only presume this is a Chinese author writing the English thoughts of Scott in Chinese, which I thought was a pretty interesting consideration, and clearly effective as I understood immediately what he was referring to.

 

They still navigate computers with mice in the future. Came off as kind of antiquated in the world of designer pornography, mech-suits etc. Either its a case of if it aint broke don't fix it, or a nod to the fact that foreigners aren't as hi-tech as China...? No criticism, just stood out a bit as an unusual detail to add by the author.

 

It's surely relevant that Scott has lost his faith, considering how much time Chen is putting in to his religious descriptions for most of the lead characters. Does it tie into my theory that Scott is a bad guy? Who knows, clearly things aren't so obviously black and white...

 

Vocab:

 

帽檐, hat brim

信條, article of faith, creed, tenet, dogma

虎視眈眈, eye covetously

按捺不住, cannot control (or contain) oneself

艾哈邁達巴德, Ahmedabad

整垮, coll. topple; overthrow

做空, {finance} sell short

洗漱, wash one's face and rinse one's mouth

柴可夫斯基, Tchaikovsky

序曲, overture

自瀆, masturbate (seems to be a formal word with religious undertones)

蘇制,Soviet-made

望洋興嘆, to feel powerless and incompetent (in performing a task)

 

The rare earth elements from Scott's section:

錸 lai2 {chem} rhenium (Re)

釔 yi3 {chem} yttrium (Y)

鑭 lan2 {chem} lanthanum (La)

 

夜視儀, {mil} night-vision device/instrument

暗度陳倉, 1 do one thing under cover of another 2 enter into a secret (romantic) affair

附庸國, vassal state; dependency

等邊三角形, {math} equilateral triangle

瀆神, to profane (as in act profanely, desecrate)

安那其, anarchy

 

 

[roddy]

On 5/16/2020 at 10:02 PM, Tomsima said:

I can only presume this is a Chinese author writing the English thoughts of Scott in Chinese, which I thought was a pretty interesting consideration

I remember when they have the meeting out on the ocean that it seemed like maybe he was trying to write odd Chinese to reflect the fact the conversation would have been in English, but can't recall any specific language. 

 

I think the use of mice perhaps reflects the fact that Silicon Isle is a 低速区, and so the more advanced tech isn't available? Wasn't there a bit earlier about Scott not being able to access his translation module or something. While Silicon Isle has some futuristic stuff, it's the leftovers and hand-me-downs of the rest of the world. 

On 5/14/2020 at 2:08 AM, Tomsima said:

Glad to see Mimi is becoming a strong, empowered woman too by the looks of things...

 

On 5/16/2020 at 10:02 PM, Tomsima said:

Does it tie into my theory that Scott is a bad guy?

Let's revisit both these later. 

 

I'm hoping to get through a lot of the rest of the book this week - got other stuff I want to read at the moment, and while I'm still enjoying this, I'm kind of at a 'oh, just tell me what happens' point. 

[Tomsima]

Chapter 10:

 

On 4/17/2020 at 3:30 PM, roddy said:

Then she also has a matrix of metallic nano-particles in there too, which I'm blaming on... no, got nothing, stinging helmet it is...

 

Maybe its something to do with all her rubbish smelling she's done? I remember that CKZ was going on about it when they were looking at the scans

 

他想起小米嗅闻废气时的卑微姿态，下陇村黏稠污浊有如地狱的空气，废弃的电子玩具、荒芜的田野、燃烧的垃圾，孩童们在恶毒土壤中绽放花样笑容。

 

Not exactly an explanation, but perhaps a precursor to one?

 

On 4/17/2020 at 3:30 PM, roddy said:

Mimi goes 'missing' - is she missing, Kaizong? Or are you getting a bit controlling?

 

CKZ is such a clear cut case of 一廂情願 its painful...like him trying to convince himself that he and Mimi are so similar:

 

他俩更像是一对同病相怜的囚犯，受困在这片不属于他们的土地上，身为异乡人却又有着牵扯不断的硅屿情节

 

Who is he trying to convince? One driven by poverty to sift through rubbish, and one on a business trip from the US, so sad you both can't get along on Silicon Isle...

 

Scott also reveals himself to be a fellow woman-pitier in this chapter, much to my amusement by this point:

 

斯科特心生崇敬，更多的却是怜悯，作为一个女人，铃木晴川身上背负了太多不属于她的责任和罪疚

 

Scott as a character is literally making no sense to me - I thought he was meant to be super successful and knowledgeable, but he just watches some random video he finds on the internet which he himself describes as 陰謀論調 and yet once its finished hes like 'wow, how did I not know this!? and then immediately links it all to Mimi. Am I missing something here?

 

Feel like this chapter was written by Chen Qiufan after a night long hollywood binge, A Clockwork Orange, Akira, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, CSI, House, Minority Report, its all here, just mixed up enough to make you go 'why...?'

 

Okay, this book is turning into a love-to-hate-it read, and that makes it all the more hilarious if you ask me!

 

Very useful vocab for all the technical stuff:

 

General

 

寫意, Type of Chinese painting freehand brushwork in traditional Chinese painting (characterized by vivid expression and bold outline)

陣列, {computing} array

點陣, {physics} lattice

百寶囊, bag of tricks, (like a mary poppins bag?), treasure trove

陰鷙, malicious and insidious

發瘮, horrifying

氣溶膠, aerosol

毫無徵兆地, without warning

毒蕈, (poisonous) toadstool

旁白, Voice-over, background narration

克蘇魯, Cthulhu, fictional cosmic entity created by writer H. P. Lovecraft

吞槍, to commit suicide by a shot in the mouth

油炸鬼, {coll.} deep-fried dough fritters (Guangdong dialects, 油條)

後生仔, young guy (Guangdong dialects)

贖罪日, Yom Kippur; Day of Atonement

交響樂團, symphony orchestra

拓撲, topology (English loan)

Chengyu
 

劈頭蓋臉, right in the face, directly at someone

牽強附會, force an analogy; make a far-fetched comparison; give a strained interpretation

如釋重負, feel relieved (at finishing sth.)

義正詞嚴, speak out sternly from a sense of justice; speak with the force of justice

振臂高呼, raise one's arm and shout

模稜兩可, Equivocal, ambiguous

輕舉妄動, act recklessly

不識好歹, not know what's best for one

一窮二白, extreme poverty

拖家帶口, be burdened with a family

Medical
 

器質性, organic

前額葉, prefrontal lobe

前扣帶皮層, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)

膠原, collagen

遞質, neurotransmitter

肺纖維化, fibrosis

福爾馬林, formalin, formaldehyde solution

二苯羥乙酸３奎寧環酯. 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate (QNB), an odorless military incapacitating agent.

乙酰膽鹼, acetylcholine

抑制劑, inhibitor, depressant, suppressant

後遺癥, sequelae; (fig.) after-effect; aftermath

譫妄, delirium

條件反射, conditioned reflex

Military
 

驅逐艦, destroyer (warship)

少校, (PRC, US & Brit. Army, PRC & US Air Force, US & Brit. Marine Corps) major; (PRC, US & Brit. Navy) lieutenant commander; (Brit. Air Force) squadron leader

中士, (PRC, US & Brit. Army, Brit. Air Force, US & Brit. Marine Corps) sergeant; (PRC & US Navy) petty officer, second class; (Brit. Navy) petty officer, first class; (PRC & US Air Force) staff sergeant

致幻武器, halucinogenic weapon, falls under 'psychochemical warfare'

非致命, non-lethal (e.g., of a weapon)

 

NB. Just rereading this vocab list and noticing 交響樂團, symphony orchestra, there, made me think of the Tchaikovsky reference from the previous chapter. So Scott conducts like an orchestral conductor, and who is it that he conducts 'to', but Mimi, the person who hummed Tchaikovsky (...through telepathy with CKZ..?). Will this kind of proleptic writing prove to be the saving grace of Chen Qiufan, or will it be more of a Game of Thrones moment, where the reader remembers all the details, but then finds none of the loose ends are to be tied together in the end?

edit: also just saw your comment about Chekhov's gun in the other book thread, fitting!

 

[Tomsima]

Chapter 11:

 

Well, I can't say I like the writing style of this book any more than before, its still the usual gloopy overdone descriptions and intentionally vague technobabble...but I'm kind of making my peace with it because the concepts are all pretty interesting. Not only that, I've definitely noticed that I've been paying way more attention to the amount of waste and packaging there is all around us, I saw someone throwing a box of perfectly good tennis balls out into the skip by our house today and I got pretty riled, almost like...a true 垃圾人? A good consequence of reading the book I suppose.

 

All this being said, I thought the reasoning that the boy was tripping his 'neural circuit' because the local dialect was just so darn difficult with all those tones, was frankly unreadable without bursting out laughing. Its like the author is blowing his own trumpet about his own dialect through the mouthpiece of his characters thoughts, give me break! I was actually a bit annoyed as well, because the previous section had set up for some really intriguing opportunities when it said the boy was speaking to his father using putonghua, I was wracking my brains for what characters I knew that weren't able to speak the local dialect and might be 'possessing' him. The actual answer was pretty lame.

 

I'm not sure why, but I feel like the person thats occupying mimis body with her is a woman from a foreign company (think I found out about her by checking a phrase that turned up when mimi first tried on 文哥s helmet. Cant remember any more, but feel like we don't know the character thats in control of her yet. Interesting...

 

One thing I've noticed thats come in handy a lot in this book is my cantonese dictionary, which has given the colloquial meanings for a lot of my unknown words used by Luo, eg 仆街 'go to hell', 奴仔 'kid, child' (朝安方言)

 

 

Vocab:

 

墮雲霧中, at a complete loss

幻肢, phantom limb

茶餘飯後, over a cup of tea or after a meal

抽絲剝繭, make a painstaking investigation

廳堂, hall (for gatherings, ceremonies, receptions, etc.)

供奉, enshrine and worship (ancestors)

列祖列宗, successive generations of ancestors, actually turns up in the text as "供奉列祖", as in "worship the (numerous) ancestors"

施法, to perform sorcery, to perform (esoteric) Buddhist ceremony

冰窖, ice house

如芒在背, feel prickles down one's back—feel nervous and uneasy

心揪到嗓子眼, heart was in (his) throat (interesting to see how to express this in Chinese)

熾焰, flaring fire

摜, guan4, hurl (to the floor)

踉蹌, stagger around

趔趄, stagger; reel

奴仔,(Chao'an) child

聚酰亞胺, polyimide

汗毛豎立, (body hair standing on end) experience a frightening situation

汗毛微豎, hairs standing on end (although how to fully interpret 微 here is unclear)

射頻, electronics radio frequency (RF)

電閘, circuit breaker

跳閘, (of a circuit breaker or switch) to trip

熔斷, electricity fuse; blow out

仆街, 'go to hell'

神靈附體, spirit possession

贅肉, flab

發落, deal with (an offender)

暈厥, faint

刮蹭, to scrape one's car against sth

縹緲, dimly discernible; misty

崆峒, {archaic} a legendary mountain; 'fairyland'

[roddy]

I'm basically finished now - just have the epilogue to go - and it's fairly consistent (for better or worse) from now to the end. It manages to be a generally fun ride, I think, but I haven't even started to think about loose ends. 

[Tomsima]

Chapter 12

 

An interesting sequence of events, good bit of Bond villain and old HK movie vibes going on throughout this chapter, which I really enjoyed. But yes, the atmosphere is ruined again by careless racial stereotyping and unecessary pornographic tangents (which the author seems to admit is his own imagination wandering? Found this very weird too) Roddy, I would love to hear how you felt about reading this sentence when it came up: 毕竟他来自一个建立才近250年的年轻国度，在饮食文化上，可以说离茹毛饮血也不过几英里的距离。We've all heard these kind of views cracked as jokes, but seeing it in print just made me feel uncomfortable, am I overthinking this?

 

Author spends what felt like the better part of this chapter discussing food, which is of course a feature to be expected in any modern Chinese novel I suppose. That being said, it seemed to be at the expense of '外國人 just don't get our complex flavours', just like how '外地人 just don't get our complex dialect'. Boring stereotyped cultural tropes, its this kind of thing that will ever stop this being a 'classic' book for me. I would love to know how the English translation deals with this, selling to an international audience when the author appears to enjoying doing a lot of 'cultural gatekeeping'.

 

Aside question: does Scott use the word 芫荽 instead of the commonly used 香菜 to give his Chinese a textbooky '背單詞' kind of feel? Or is it that I'm just not familiar with this word?

 

My vocab:

 

小人得志, small man intoxicated by success

蝦青素, {biochemistry} astaxanthin

悻悻而去, go away angry; leave in a huff

語重心長, speak gravely and earnestly

煜人名， '新煜' (yu4)

石斑, grouper

蟶子, razor clam

蝦蛄, mantis shrimp

海膽, sea urchin

芫荽, coriander (proper name for 香菜?)

四目相對, eyes meeting (ie two sets of eyes making eye contact)

佔有欲, possessiveness

議價權, bargaining power

遠颺, {wr.} flee to a faraway place “威名遠颺”

坊間, in the streets (esp. with reference to bookshops in the past)

杳無音訊,  have never been heard of since

連接埠, here it was 網絡連接埠 'internet protocol port' - fancy word for IP address?

參數, {math.} parameter

羸弱, thin and weak; frail

篝火, bonfire

了卻餘生, to give up on life

逡巡, hesitate to move forward; hang back

乏人問津, not catching attention or interest in people

長夜, 'long/eternal night', grave; death

 

Some Southern-style colloquial words:

 

貨櫃, a colloquial form of 集裝箱 (shipping container) used in Guangdong

食肆, collective term for eating establishments, restaurants, coffee shops, cafes etc.

佝僂, with arched shoulders and back, hunchbacked

[roddy]

23 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

Roddy, I would love to hear how you felt about reading this sentence when it came up: 毕竟他来自一个建立才近250年的年轻国度，在饮食文化上，可以说离茹毛饮血也不过几英里的距离。

I vaguely remember that. Interesting that he still loves his Western cultural references - though now I think about it - all quite old, and quite European. It does get a bit of an eyeroll. I'm curious about how Ken Liu handled this as well. @Luxi, you've read the translation, perhaps you can help out? 

27 minutes ago, Tomsima said:

fancy word for IP address?

port is correct - an IP address tells you where the device is, but a device can have multiple ports. 

[Tomsima]

27 minutes ago, roddy said:

he still loves his Western cultural references - though now I think about it - all quite old, and quite European

 

I also noticed in this chapter the ouroboros reference was put into the thoughts of 羅錦城 rather than Scott, which I thought seemed to break character a bit, i feel like there were a few other western references that you'd expect to be from Scott but also weren't, which again made following the narrative confusing again...

[Luxi]

1 hour ago, roddy said:

you've read the translation, perhaps you can help out? 

 

Found it! This comes relatively early in Chapter 12, while touring the market stalls, the text by Ken Liu goes:

 

Quote

Many of the dishes were far more complex and subtle than he (Scott) had imagined.

 

Followed by:

 

Quote

Of course, considering that he came from a young country that had been founded only about 250 years ago, it was understandable that his own culinary culture had progressed but a few steps beyond tossing the meat over an open fire after skinning the kill.

 

... Liu's somewhat elaborate translation of 毕竟他来自一个建立才近250年的年轻国度，在饮食文化上，可以说离茹毛饮血也不过几英里的距离。

 

I leave it at that. No comments...not even a mention of what may come out of sophisticated and subtle Chinese wet markets.

 

By this stage of the novel I had the impression of reading the script for a TV series,  it just didn't feel like literature to me. Maybe I was turned off by Mimi's ordeal that nearly made me delete the book from my Kindle account in Amazon. From there on I wasn't kindly disposed towards this book.

 

[roddy]

See, I think that'd be a lot less jarring if it was a consistent voice. It's not actually the content - if a Chinese writer wants to poke fun, fair enough. It's that it feels a bit jammed in unexpectedly.

 

Your experience sounds similar to mine, Luxi.