2021: The Year in Translation from Chinese

A round-up of reviews of works in translation from Chinese, including fiction, story collections, poetry, biographies, classics and philosophy. Click on the title for the review.

Novels

The Wedding Party, Liu Xinwu, Jeremy Tiang (trans) (Amazon Crossing, November 2021)
The Wedding Party, Liu Xinwu, Jeremy Tiang (trans) (Amazon Crossing, November 2021)

The Wedding Party by Liu Xinwu, translated by Jeremy Tiang

 

It is somewhat inexplicable that it has taken more than 35 years for Liu Xinwu’s The Wedding Party to show up in English. The book was serialized in 1984 and published the next year, winning the Mao Dun Prize and adapted into an 8-episode series for television. Popularity can be the result of hitting a particular zeitgeist that may not always translate across periods, cultures and languages, but The Wedding Party is a marvelous story of a single December day in the life of an atmospheric Beijing compound populated by sprawling cast of quirky and all-too-human characters, all-written with style and wit. All it was missing was a pitch-perfect translation by Jeremy Tiang.

 

Whisper. Chang Yu-Ko, Roddy Flagg (trans) (Honford Star, October 2021)
Whisper. Chang Yu-Ko, Roddy Flagg (trans) (Honford Star, October 2021)

Whisper by Chang Yu-Ko, translated by Roddy Flagg

 

Wu Shih-sheng is a taxi driver, sinking in debt and living in a cockroach-infested metal shack in the outskirts of Taipei with his wife, Hsiang-ying. When she dies in a mental hospital, after claiming to have been hearing the voice of a ghost threatening her life and that of their daughter, Shih-sheng decides to dig deeper. His journey will lead him to consult with a deranged Taoist priestess, and eventually to embark on a dangerous hike on the top of Mount Jade, in central Taiwan, with the purpose of destroying the evil creature.

 

Strange Beasts of China, Yan Ge, Jeremy Tiang (trans) (Melville House, July 2021; Tilted Axis, November 2020)
Strange Beasts of China, Yan Ge, Jeremy Tiang (trans) (Melville House, July 2021; Tilted Axis, November 2020)

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang

 

The unnamed narrator of Yan Ge’s novel Strange Beasts of China, a former zoology student-turned-fiction writer, resides in the fictional city of Yong’an, somewhere in southern China, described as “a huge, filthy, ungovernable city, full of all sorts of beasts of unknown origin, and secrets, likewise.” Yong’an perhaps resembles the concrete jungles of nearly every provincial Chinese capital, save for the fact that it is also home to a number of exotic creatures, each species of which resembles homo sapiens, save for certain afflictions and anomalies.

 

The Membranes: A Novel, Chi Ta-wei, Ari Larissa Heinrich (trans) (Columbia University Press, May 2021)
The Membranes: A Novel, Chi Ta-wei, Ari Larissa Heinrich (trans) (Columbia University Press, May 2021)

The Membranes by Chi Ta-wei, translated by Ari Larissa Heinrich

 

The 1990s was the decade when public discussion began in earnest about the potential for the Earth to become uninhabitable in the near future. These future-focused anxieties were more sobering than the sensationalist theories about what might come to pass when the world entered the year 2000. A large hole in the ozone-layer over Antarctica, caused by human pollution, was of particular concern. Scientists made dour prophecies about a future where the Earth would be stripped of this protective, gaseous casing—with ultraviolet levels soaring as a consequence. The Membranes, Taiwanese author Chi Ta-wei’s 1995 novella, brings that ozone-less future to life.

 

The Secret Talker, Geling Yan, Jeremy Tiang (trans) (HarperVia, May 2021)
The Secret Talker, Geling Yan, Jeremy Tiang (trans) (HarperVia, May 2021)

The Secret Talker by Yan Geling, translated by Jeremy Tiang

 

Qiao Hongmei is being stalked over e-mail and she’s not sure what to think about it. Tucked away in the comforts of her northern California college town, she receives e-mails from an unnamed sender and finds herself drawn in even as the messages become creepier and creepier. Yan Geling’s new novel, The Secret Talker, is a short psychological thriller that looks into the many ways marriages can go wrong.

 

The Drunkard, Liu Yichang, Charlotte Yiu (trans) (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, July 2020)
The Drunkard, Liu Yichang, Charlotte Yiu (trans) (Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, July 2020)

The Drunkard by Liu Yichang, translated by Charlotte Yiu

 

A novel set in capitalist Hong Kong in the 1960s and steeped in alcohol, prostitution and stream-of-consciousness narration might not suggest a controlled work of fiction. Yet Liu Yichang’s classic The Drunkard, in Charlotte Chun-lam Yiu’s new translation, is measured, uninhibited and very good.

 

Monkey King: Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en, Julia Lovell (trans) (Penguin, February 2020)
Monkey King: Journey to the West, Wu Cheng’en, Julia Lovell (trans) (Penguin, February 2020)

Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, translated by Julia Lovell

 

Centuries ago, in an empire far far away, an anonymous journeyman scribe authored and assembled a picaresque that became one of China’s most revered and influential literary works. “Assembled” because Monkey King, or Journey to the West (c 1580), is in substantial part a collection of the folk tales of many previous centuries, based on the legendary journeys of a T’ang Dynasty (618-906) monk, Tripitaka.

Stories

Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror, Ian Rowen (ed) (Cambria Press, April 2021)
Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror, Ian Rowen (ed) (Cambria Press, April 2021)

Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror, edited by Ian Rowen

 

“Violence composes a fundament of modern Taiwan history,” opens Ian Rowen’s introduction to Transitions in Taiwan: Stories of the White Terror. In the almost forty years during which Taiwan’s authoritarian ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT), kept the country under martial law and suppressed any form of political dissent, thousands of citizens—including alleged proponents of Taiwan’s independence from China or presumed communist collaborators—were abducted, imprisoned, or executed. This violence has undoubtedly left a scar on a generation of Taiwanese, and the stories that make up this volume, penned by some of Taiwan’s most notable writers, explore the mechanisms of power during that painful—and indeed violent—time. There isn’t however much gore or literal brutality in these stories, which rather reconfigure the violent trauma of history in its most subtle, almost mundane, aspects, displaying how authoritarian power effectively manages to infiltrate every aspect of people’s lives.

 

Purple Perilla, Can Xue (Isolarii, December 2020)
Purple Perilla, Can Xue (Isolarii, December 2020)

Purple Perilla by Can Xue, translated by Karen Gernant and Chen Zeping

 

A desire to love, befriend, and uncover characterize Purple Perilla, a short collection of three stories from acclaimed Chinese author Can Xue. The book offers a poetic reckoning for our present moment, while the COVID-19 crisis continues to shape our lives.

Poetry

Karma: poems, Yin Lichuan, Fiona Sze-Lorrain (trans), (Tolsun Books, June 2020); Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays, Yu Xiuhua. Fiona Sze-Lorrain (trans) (Astra House, September 2021)
Karma: poems, Yin Lichuan, Fiona Sze-Lorrain (trans), (Tolsun Books, June 2020); Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays, Yu Xiuhua. Fiona Sze-Lorrain (trans) (Astra House, September 2021)

Karma: Poems by Yin Lichuan and Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm: Poems and Essays by Yu Xiuhua, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

 

Fiona Sze-Lorrain, a distinguished poet herself, is also a busy and prolific translator of Chinese poetry, which is very fortunate both for the poets themselves, who get exposure to a readership outside China, and for readers, whose literary horizons are expanded thanks to her sensitive and careful work. Here are two volumes of poetry written by people whose backgrounds and experiences are completely different; Yu Xiuhua (b 1976) is a single mother with cerebral palsy, and Yin Lichuan (b 1973) a Beijing-based multi-disciplinary artist and founder-member of what Chinese critics call the Lower Body Movement of poetry, of which more later.

 

Green Mountain: Poems, Yang Jian, Fiona Sze-Lorrain trans) MerwinAsia, November 2020)
Green Mountain: Poems, Yang Jian, Fiona Sze-Lorrain trans) MerwinAsia, November 2020)

Green Mountain: Poems by Yang Jian, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

 

Fiona Sze-Lorrain has done a masterful job of translating these poems by a major voice in modern Chinese literature. She thoroughly understands the background and the spiritual side of Yang’s work, and has produced sensitive versions of the poetry, making sure that, as she tells us in her informative introduction, she doesn’t follow in the footsteps of “certain Sinologists and unauthorized translators,” who had a habit of “mythifying Yang as a monk or vagrant or a spiritual authority.”

 

Sunday Sparrows, Song Lin, Jami Proctor Xu (trans) (Zephyr Press, October 2020; Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, December 2019)
Sunday Sparrows, Song Lin, Jami Proctor Xu (trans) (Zephyr Press, October 2020; Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, December 2019)

Sunday Sparrows by Song Lin, translated by Jami Proctor Xu

 

The poems of Song Lin, born in Fujian in 1959, are, according to his translator and personal friend, the poet Jami Proctor Xu, “weavings of history, myth, nature, city, everyday life, melancholy, joy, story, image, and classical and modern Chinese.” This would be a formidable range for any poet, but reading Sunday Sparrows leaves little doubt that Xu was completely accurate in her assessment, which is made easier (for her) and perhaps more profound (for us) by its personal nature.

Non-Fiction

More than One Child: Memoirs of an illegal daughter, Shen Yang, Nicky Harman (trans) (Balestier, September 2021)
More Than One Child: Memoirs of an illegal daughter, Shen Yang, Nicky Harman (trans) (Balestier, September 2021)

More Than One Child: Memoirs of an Illegal Daughter by Shen Yang, translated by Nicky Harman

 

At the beginning of More Than One Child, Shen Yang writes, “I broke a law simply by being born.” She was her parents’ second daughter, and she is referring to the family planning laws which until recently saw China’s One-Child Policy strictly enforced. Her childhood was thus essentially intertwined with politics, but her memoir of that childhood does not serve a political narrative; it is instead a personal attempt to exorcise ghosts, heal old wounds, and secure recognition for “excess-birth children”, a community of young adults who are still suffering in China from their non-status.

 

Vessel: A Memoir, Cai Chongda, Dylan Levi King (trans) (HarperVia, July 2021)
Vessel: A Memoir, Cai Chongda, Dylan Levi King (trans) (HarperVia, July 2021)

Vessel by Cai Chongda, translated by Dylan Levi King

 

It was perhaps inevitable that Chinese memoirs in translation would move on from those whose authors date from the Chinese Civil War and the Cultural Revolution. Cai Chongda is a popular millennial writer and fashion executive who became the youngest editorial director in the GQ franchise. His memoir, Vessel, was a bestseller in China a half-dozen years ago and is now available in  English in a translation by Dylan Levi King.

 

The Analects: Conclusions and Conversations of Confucius, Moss Roberts (trans) (University of California Press, November 2020); Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucius Temple from Imperial China to Today, Chin-shing Huang, Jonathan Chin (trans), Chin-shing Huang (trans) (Columbia University Press, December 2020)
The Analects: Conclusions and Conversations of Confucius, Moss Roberts (trans) (University of California Press, November 2020); Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucius Temple from Imperial China to Today, Chin-shing Huang, Jonathan Chin (trans), Chin-shing Huang (trans) (Columbia University Press, December 2020)

The Analects: Conclusions and Conversations of Confucius translated by Moss Roberts and Confucianism and Sacred Space: The Confucius Temple from Imperial China to Today by Chin-shing Huang, translated by Jonathan Chin and Chin-shing Huang

 

Is Confucianism a religion, or is it a philosophy? “Confucius,” Moss Roberts tells us, “would address things present and manifest, that is, cultural presentations (wenzhang), but not things invisible and speculative, that is, human nature (renzhing) and the Way of heaven (tiandao).” However, in the years after Confucius’s death in 479 BCE, his followers made “things invisible and speculative”  the principal parts of the Analects, which had hitherto been “earthbound” and contained “no gestures towards the divine.” Chin-shing Huang, on the other hand, regards Confucianism as a real religion, basing his argument on Wittgenstein’s observation that religions have a “family resemblance”, thus suggesting, as Huang puts it, “the diverse and variegated nature of religion” rather than some monolithic or all-embracing definition. And, of course, the fact that there are Confucian temples certainly suggests that Confucius’s teachings, much like Buddhism and Daoism, are more than just “philosophy” to many people. Reading Roberts’s new translation of the Analects along with Chin-shin Huang’s study of Confucianism as a religion is instructive because Confucius himself stands between two interpretations—readers can make their own conclusions from a clear and concise translation which is also interpreted by Roberts as he proceeds.