The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast

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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Tongueless by Lau Yee-wa
• Helen Wang interviews Sabina Knight
• Mourning a Breast by Xi Xi

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(酒量 – jiǔliàng – capacity for liquor)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• The Diary of a Madman - Lu Xun
• Lapvona - Ottessa Moshfegh // (plus her stories set in Yunnan, Xinjiang, and Jiangsu)
• UK's Eat Out to Help Out & Japanese govt’s Sake Viva! drive
• Cannibalism in Joyce and Mo Yan
• Postsocialism and Cultural Politics

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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• My Cat Hates Me bags gold graphic novel prize in the 2023 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards
• TaiwanPlus News speaks to Jenna Tang about First Love Paradise
• Chengdu Worldcon happened – seems to have gone well!

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(复杂 – fùzá – complexity)

(壮美 – zhuàngměi – magnificent)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Parallel episode on Mu Ming’s Express to Beijing West Railway Station
• Shanghai’s strange ‘foreign towns’
• Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie

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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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• A new fiendish rival? The China Books Review launches
• Cambria Press publishes translation Liu Na’ou’s Urban Scenes
• Avant garde champion Can Xue doesn’t get the Nobel Lit Prize… this time
• READ: Heart by Shuang Xuetao (tr. Jeremy Tiang)

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(樂園 – lèyuán – paradise)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• The pedophile art teacher from Angus’ secondary school
• Black Box by Siori Oto
• The Discomfort of Evening by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

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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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• 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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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• The Rover Incident and the Hengchun Peninsula

• 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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• New short Chen Qiufan interview on AI
• Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes optioned for film adaptation(!)
• Intriguing academic book: Strange Tales from Edo by William D. Fleming

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(心识不死 – xīn shì bùsǐ – the spirit never dies)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Chloë’s paper: Shi Tiesheng and the Nature of the Human
• The Cultural Christian movement in China
• What We Owe the Future by Willam McAskill
• Life on a String (1991, Chen Kaige) - an adaptation of Shi Tiesheng’s 命若琴弦

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In the space marked ‘pregnant’, the machine had quite clearly printed the word ‘no’

In the ninety fourth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are entering election season. The heroine of Li Er novel Cherries on a Pomegranate Tree (石榴树上结樱桃 - shíliú shù shàng jié yīngtáo) is defending her seat, and that will mean enforcing various policies (including a certain one child policy) while keeping the people sweet. Canvassing with me on this one is the translator, spitting dog himself Dave Haysom.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• LISTICLE: Paul French’s TrChFic beach reads

• WATCH: a one hour interview with Yan Ge

• JOIN IN: help TrChFic (v1) end in style

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(狗 - gǒu - dog)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Wen Zhen short story collection: Nothing but the Now

• JT’s Li Er translation, Coloratura

• Pathlight magazine

• Village elections

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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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• 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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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• the glorious Beijing hukou

• Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen, tr. our guest Eric & Jeremy Tiang

• performative DVD crushing, lol

• the analog and digital history of Zhongguancun

• The Diary of Miss Sophie (and my ep on it)

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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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• READ: 'The Sacred Clan': Liang Hong turns to fiction to explore rural China

• READ: The Bug Princess by Yang Shuangzi

• 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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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• 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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• 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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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Dear Chrysanthemums: a novel in stories

• 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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// Handy TrChFic Links //

Help Support TrChFic // Episode Transcripts

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