In the one hundredth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are throwing a goodbye party! Friends, listeners, and past guests joined me for a little reminiscing and musing. I drank precisely one beer. The show is going on hiatus, exactly as I’ve been warning you for the past ten episodes or so.
The feed will stay up indefinitely, and it’s likely that I will be migrating the hosting to a free service to make that permanent online presence economical.
I expect I will return to the show, though it will probably be years from now.
再见！It has been a pleasure, pengyous.
‘I wrote the asinine words ‘liquor is literature’ and ‘people who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature’ when I was good and drunk, and you must not take them to heart.’
In the ninety ninth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we’re taking a lengthy holiday with Mo Yan in The Republic of Wine, so get your visa stamped and your baijiu in hand. This time there are two discussions. First, sober, with returnees Dylan Levi King and Michelle Deeter. Then, drunk with DLK and poet/translator Martin Winter. Listen all the way through, comrade, to hear two of us curse then proclaim our love for a prominent figure in the field. This is the penultimate episode; the time for tomfoolery is almost over.
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(酒量 – jiǔliàng – capacity for liquor)
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I supposed every last one of this country’s 1.3 billion inhabitants all had their own obsessions with the giant germ cell.
In the ninety eighth episode of the Translated Chinese fiction podcast I am joined by two fine fellows, Shi Yifeng and contributing translator Carson Ramsdell. All a-puff with imperial gusto, we leaf through The Book of Beijing to discuss three of the stories collected within: Han Song’s Reunion ( 北京西站，春节之前 - běijīng xī zhàn, chūnjié zhīqián - tr. Ramsdell 先生), Xu Kun’s Dogshit Football (狗日的足球 - gǒurì de zúqiú), and Mr Shi’s own Is Mr Zhang Home? (张先生在家么 - zhāng xiānshēng zàijiā me). Prepare to shiver, to snicker, and to squeal – but not necessarily in that order.
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(复杂 – fùzá – complexity)
(壮美 – zhuàngměi – magnificent)
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‘Starting to write a suicide note would be too melodramatic. If she wrote it, it would only contain one line: This love makes me so uncomfortable.’
In the ninety seventh episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are passing the gates of Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (房思琪的初戀樂園- fáng sī qí de chūliàn lèyuán), an all-too-real #MeToo novel by the late Lin Yi-han, centred around the titular girl and the cram school teacher who abused her all through her teens. Reflecting with me on the troubling nature of the text and the dark realities it holds a mirror to is its translator, Jenna Tang.
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(樂園 – lèyuán – paradise)
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‘the man spun instinctively to face them, both hands covering his chest, looking almost sorrowful as blood glazed his fingers’
In the ninety sixth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are entering into dialogue with bioscientist-turned-historical-fictioneer Chen Yao-chang and translator Chen Tung-jung to learn how they cultivated Puppet Flower: A Novel of 1867 Formosa (傀儡花 - kuǐlěi huā), to see if we can arrive at a peaceful settlement between the native people of southern Taiwan, their absentee Qing administrators, and the diverse Western powers creeping ever closer. Oh, and the other people on the island. You know – the Hakka, the Hokkien, the Han… have you lost count yet?
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Sinoist Books is hitting the road for a UK tour
The Book of Beijing is coming to Manchester
The Little Red Podcast does a Chinese sci-fi episode
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// WORDs OF THE DAY //
(真 – zhēn – truth)
(Formosa – 福尔摩沙 – Portuguese for ‘beautiful’)
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Chen Yao-chang’s place in stem cell history
The efforts of Le Gendre and other westerners to map southern Taiwan
The TV adaptation: Seqalu: Formosa 1867
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Trembling hands seem to check for the forgotten secret language. Withered bodies, like finding some long-forgotten receipt. Where have you been all these years? The mountains echo again, spring’s call is finally answered: I am the secret language you forgot. You are my lost credentials.
In the ninety fifth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are embarking on My Travels in Ding Yi (我的丁一之旅 - wǒ de dīng yī zhīlǚ). This is one of the later works in the life of Shi Tiesheng, an idiosyncratic writer best remembered as being a ‘disabled writer’ but better remembered as something far more multifaceted. Peer in from another mind, another world, as academic Chloë Starr and I confer with Christ and become embodied with Budda. Perhaps, somehow, we’ll puzzle out our brief roles on the stage play of existence.
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(心识不死 – xīn shì bùsǐ – the spirit never dies)
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‘It’s just life, right? One place is as good as another’
In the ninety third episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are Running through Beijing (跑步穿过中关村 - pǎobù chuānguò zhōngguāncūn) in the loping style of 70后 hero Xu Zechen. At the fabled finishing line – observing us wryly, beer and chuan’er in hand – is the translator, Eric Abrahamsen of Paper Republic fame. Insert your porn DVD, stamp your hukou, and - most importantly – find somewhere to sleep tonight.
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WATCH: Two queens discuss their translation of Lu Min’s Dinner for Six
BORROW: University librarians take note: new tome incoming
READ: A Sailor on the Ferry 🇭🇰 by & tr Jasmine Tong
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(跑步 – pǎobù – running)
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the glorious Beijing hukou
Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen, tr. our guest Eric & Jeremy Tiang
the analog and digital history of Zhongguancun
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‘I’ve never broken any rules, not even rules at school. Why would I blackmail someone?’
’In the ninety second episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are getting duped by Bad Kids (坏孩子 - huài háizi). Fleeing the proverbial orphanage with me is the book’s translator, Michelle Deeter, here to mark a breadcrumb trail through the dark children’s palace that author Zijin Chen has constructed for the benefit and perturbation of all.
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READ: 'The Sacred Clan': Liang Hong turns to fiction to explore rural China
VISIT: an exhibit on poet Su Shi at West Lake Museum in Hangzhou
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(骄傲 – jiāo'ào – pride)
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Children’s palaces of China and the Soviet Union
The Untouched Crime, also by Zijin Chen
Amazon Crossing’s translated Chinese titles
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‘The “exquisite bridges and flowing water” one finds in poetry are not written by real farmers, but those who claim to love rural life when they most fear it.’
In the ninety first episode of the Translated Chinese Podcast, we are travelling half across China to pod you. The writer in question is rural/online star Yu Xiuhua and my guest is her translator, the thoughtful and particular Fiona Sze-Lorrain. The art in question is Yu’s collection of poems and essays Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm (月光落在左手上 - yuèguāng luò zài zuǒshǒu shàng), but spare also a thought for my guest’s recent release, Dear Chrysanthemums: a novel in stories.
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the Qiu Jin affair - a #namethetranslator incident
Machine Decision is Not Final - new theory-fiction sci-fi allstar text
a Xu Xiaobin reading from Paper Republic
Sinoist Books northern expedition incoming, keep your eyes peeled
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(悟 – wù – understand, enlighten, awaken)
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In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Li Juan, another rural writer
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‘The man in the bed looks at her. An enormous force seems to be pulling him into a world behind him, a world whose gates will soon be shut forever. She strokes his forehead gently.’
In the eighty ninth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are enfolding ourselves within Cocoon, the dreamlike and sometimes upsetting dual-bildungsroman and return to realism by post-85 author Zhang Yueran. Lost with me (yet ever so far away) somewhere in the low-hanging fog is the book’s translator, Jeremy Tiang. All time is one time, you poor thing; so join us, that we may better navigate it.
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Meta news: We’re not blocked!(?)
A new Condor Heroes film is in the works
READ: an excerpt of Cloudland by Wu Ming-yi
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(茧 – jiǎn – cocoon)
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Scar literature - Cultural Revolution trauma writing
Chinese writers at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (a long history)
The Crow Road & The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The Promise Bird by Zhang Yueran
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‘The final cut – the coup de grace – entered Qian’s heart, from which black blood the colour and consistency of melted malt sugar slid down the knife blade'
In the eighty fifth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are experiencing the lacerating pains of Sandalwood Death, as dealt to us by Nobel literature prizewinner Mo Yan. It’s time to rip Shandong Province apart in a rebellion for the songbooks. Weapon in hand, the Sun Wukong to my Yue Fei is translator Stefan Rusinov. We laugh, we brood, we hallucinate, and we shake our fists at the craven villain Yuan Shikai, all the while pondering: is torture an artform?
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A Record of My Battle with the Virus by Han Song, translated by Michael Berry
Xi Xi: Can We Say // a special issue on the recently late writer
Gu Long’s Blood Parrot, translated by Deathblade
SCMP takes a look at the new prequel to The Wandering Earth
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(喵 – miāo – meow)
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Gao Xingjian - another Han nobel lit prize winner
Mo Yan’s Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Jiaozhou, Imperial Germany’s Shandong colony
Stefan’s previous TrChFic appearance, discussing Can Xue
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‘Generation after generation, people have lived in this massive sick ward we call the universe ’
In the eighty fourth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are lost deep inside Hospital, the first entry in an abyssal trilogy by show favourite Han Song. Old-time wardmates Michael Berry and Mingwei Song are here too, groaning in the darkness.
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Tencent’s Three Body Problem series arrives… on Youtube!
A podcast interview w/ Yan Ge & Jeremy Tiang on Strange Beasts of China
Bookshop.org puts out a Lunar New Year reading list 🐇🐇🐇
New book: New Medieval Books: A History of Chinese Literature by Zhang Longxi
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(生存 – shēngcún – survival)
(痛苦 – tòngkǔ – pain)
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Remains of Life, tr by Michael
Lu Xun’s Diary of a Madman // [FULL TEXT]
The Reincarnated Giant - CUP’s Chinese sci-fi anthology
Translation, Disinformation, and Wuhan Diary - Michael’s meta-book
‘If you lived in one of the lanes of Puxi, the moment you stepped out your door, you would find yourself in the thick of urban life in all its boisterous variety.'
In the eighty second episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are paying a visit to The Sanctimonious Cobbler (骄傲的皮匠 / Jiāo'ào de Píjiàng), a novella by Wang Anyi which can be read in By the River: Seven Contemporary Chinese Novellas. Wandering with me down the longtang to cast an eye across the little affairs and petites affaires of shopkeeper Shanghai is friend of the pod and Malta-based scholar Lehyla Heward.
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(中篇小说 - zhōngpiān xiǎoshuō - novella/novelette)
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A star’s coming of age was the process of slowly getting uglier.
In the eighty first episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, writer/researcher Yen Ooi and I are gazing up at The Stars We Raised (逃跑星辰 / táopǎo xīngchén), a short story by Xiu Xinyu featured in the all-women + nonbinary anthology The Way Spring Arrives. Once more, a Chinese science fiction story is taking us down to the countryside for melancholy reflections on the pains of growing up. Yen and I dig into the pains of publishing too, from gender to generation and from style to synthesis.
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(仁 - rén - human kind(ness))
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‘In the same spot where Father died, the dead body of a deer lay prostrate in the rain.’
In the eightieth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, it’s Raining Zebra Finches (斑胸草雀 / bān xiōng cǎo què). Blame for this troubling meteorological occurrence falls upon Taiwanese author Chiou Charng-Ting; it’s her story. Under the weather with me is her translator, May Huang. In our discussion we’ll be testing the limits of our earthly knowledge and dreaming of other philosophies. When nature stops hiding and springs the inexplicable upon us, where else is there to turn?
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Balestier Press publishes The Pidgin Warrior, David Hull’s translation of a kung fu satire written in the 1930s by Zhang Tianyi
A horror followup to Sinopticon, titled Sinophagia, is on the way
Can Xue’s Mystery Train published by Sublunary Editions on Oct 18th
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(梅雨季 - méiyǔ jì - plum rain season)
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Angus’ musical pairing: The Alien from the Annihilation OST
May’s musical pairings: Ivy by Taylor Swift & Mother’s Daughter by Miley Cyrus
Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise by Lin Yi-Han
Jeff Vandermeer’s Area X/Southern Reach Trilogy
Owlish by Dorothy Tse (tr. Natascha Bruce)
Quantum entangled communication in His Dark Materials
Plato’s allegory of the cave
‘History is nothing more than a complex construction of records and observations’
In the seventy ninth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction podcast, we’re riding the Express to Beijing West Railway Station (开往西站的特别列车 / kāiwǎng xī zhàn de tèbié lièchē), and I’ll be buying my ticket from none other than the author herself, Mu Ming. En route we’ll be passing by the scenic works of William Blake and Christopher Nolan, and pondering whether Shakespeare and Lu Xun would make good Netflix writers (see Patreon feed). Long-time TrChFic listeners will also already know all-too-well: you’re going to hear me enthuse about trains. Sorry.
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(想象力 - xiǎngxiànglì - imagination)
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‘Then each Boxer lad who loves fighting and fun, let him follow the bonnets of bonnie Prince Tuan’
In the seventy eighth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are riding to war behind Bonnie Prince Tuan, a poem by a Chinese Scotiaphile that draws a parallel between two sets of rebels: the Jacobites of the Scottish highlands and the Boxers of northern China. Here to lend some Boxer brawn to my Jacobean jesting is Lee Moore of the Chinese Literature Podcast – a show that has already devoted an episode to this madness.
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Bad Kids by Chen Zijin, a new Michelle Deeter translation, is out!
Shaanxi Opera by Jia Pingawa, a new Nicky Harman + Dylan Levi King translation, is out!
Found in Translation - Nicky Harman considers the state of translated Chinese lit
Why do China books all look the same? - an article from The China Project (formerly SupChina)
A third translation of Lu Xun’s Wild Grass enters the world
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(廣記不如淡墨 - guǎng jì bùrú dàn mò - the best memory is not as good as the palest ink)
(雅各布派 - yǎ gè bù pài - Jacobite)
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Angus’ musical pairings: Wolves of Winter by Biffy Clyro, and I’m Shipping up to Boston by Dropkick Murphyd
Lee’s musical pairing: Ride my Monster by Enter the Haggis
My episode with Sinoist Books’ Daniel Lee on A Looking-Glass World
The Jacobite risings led by Bonnie Dundee and Bonnie Prince Charles
多少恨 - the novella that Eileen Chang apparently based on Jane Eyre
Can Xue and Kafka - here discussed by Stella Zhu
“You can give me your empty words if you like; I’ve come to fill out the forms permitting us to withdraw from society.”
In the seventy seventh episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are turning our cheek to Lenin's Kisses (受活 / shòu huó) by Yan Lianke. Yes, I’m finally dealing with him – and not alone. Piotr Machajek is here to show me how to Liven, as we look into the pros and cons of entering and retreating from a society that just cannot leave things be.
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(狗带 - gǒu dài - go die)
(入世，出世 - rùshì, chūshì - enter society, withdraw from society)
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“Unmasking a universally accepted lie or overturning an irreplaceable idol will produce something akin to a mental collapse.”
In the seventy sixth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are hitting Zero (零 / líng). Joining me on deck are The Hugonauts, as we navigate a dystopian world that might be a postmodern riff on 1984 by amorphous author Huang Fan, or might be something far more sinister. All seasoned rebels know: sometimes you crash the system, and sometimes the system crashes you.
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(理 - lǐ - reason)
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“Are you going to let your son die for nothing?”
In the seventy fifth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are surviving The Curse (杨村的一则诅咒 / yáng cūn de yī zé zǔzhòu). My partner for this investigation is literary Sinologist Jeffrey Kinkley. What exactly are we dealing with here? A tale of a backfiring curse, or a backfiring society? For realist writing to penetrate our often nightmarish world and scratch The Real, does it have to get weird first? Detective K and I are on the case. Don’t expect comforting answers.
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// NEWS ITEMS //
Next London Chinese Sci-fi Group meeting on July 31st: The Strange Girl by Xiu Xinyu, tr Emily Jin
Caroline Jortay announces publication date for HK Lit anthology from Editions Jentayu
Chinese woman wrote her own alternate history of Russia on Wikipedia
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(游离 - yóulí - to disassociate)
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The Woodpecker, the Chinese justice ministry’s literary journal
L'Étranger, by Albert Camus
Two Lives - a recent A Yi short story collection
Jeffrey’s own Corruption and Realism in Late Socialist China