The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast

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Ep 73 - A Que and Farewell, Doraemon with Eero Suoranta

June 7, 2022

‘This cartoon will never end’

In the seventy third episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, Eero Suoranta and I are saying Farewell, Doraemon (再见，哆啦A梦 / zàijiàn, duōlaAmèng). This is the second time a story by A Que has appeared on the show, and I feel that I now know the writer’s soul: tender in spirit, thoughtful in action, of limpid and eerie atmosphere, and shy about everything except postmodern intertextual showmanship. Pass with us through a loop in time hidden in a lonely river, to drown in nostalgia (from the Greek nostos ‘return home’ + algos ‘pain’).

// NEWS ITEMS //

READ: a review of Zhang Yueran’s Cocoon, tr. Jeremy Tiang
WATCH: Ma Yuan: The Chinese Avant-garde, Metafiction and Post-postmodernism
ATTEND: the Festival of Chinese Translation at Aberdeen Uni
META NEWS: I’ll be hosting an event on Empires of Dust

// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(动画 - dònghuà - animation )

(90后 - jiǔ líng hòu - 90s kids)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Eero’s musical pairing: Moonmin Took My Head by Ritual
Angus’ musical pairing: Roads by Portishead
Video CDs
Cara Healey’s theory of generic hybridity
Flower of the Other Shore
Ye Yonglie’s Little Smarty
Finnconn 2022
Sadan aaveen öinen paraati - Xia Jia’s A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight, in Finnish

// Handy TrChFic Links //

INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD // HOMEPAGE

Ep 72 - Han Song and My Country Does Not Dream with the London Chinese Science Fiction Group

May 5, 2022

‘Because of sleepwalking, over one billion Chinese people have awakened’

In the seventy second episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast I’m facing down a bleak reality: My Country Does Not Dream (我的祖国不要做梦 / wǒde zǔguó bù zuò mèng). But I’m not doing it alone! The London Chinese Science Fiction Group have deployed a team of Han Song aficionados (and one critic) to console my exhausted brain as the daytime hours fall away, revealing a sombre somnambulant city behind the city: Beijing.

// NEWS ITEMS //

Article in Sixth Tone: Infinite Scroll: The Making of China's Web Fiction Epics
Words from Shen Yang in Telegraph article: What life's really like in locked-down Shanghai
Short story Meta-Shanghai by Angus himself is published in Ab Terra 2021
Watch/Listen as Jack Hargreaves reads from Chen Chuncheng's Submarines in the Night

// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(梦游 - mèngyóu - sleepwalking)

(吊儿郎当 - diào'er lángdāng - sloppiness)

(躺平 - tǎngpíng - lie flat, as resistance to the 996 work system)

(闭眼 - bì yǎn - eyes closed)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Jin’s musical pairing: Space - Just Blue (1978) (the theme tune from CCTV’s Animal World 动物世界)
Scarlet’s musical pairing: 我们走在大路上 - We Walk on the Great Road [Cultural Revolution version]
Terminator (Danny C remix) from Mark Fisher’s accelerationism mix
New wave scifi, and emergence of the New Weird in the 90s
Guangzhao’s writeup of his group’s event on this story
24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan Crary
The forthcoming English translations of Han Song’s Hospital trilogy
China 2185: Liu Cixin’s cyberpunk novel

// Handy TrChFic Links //

(from the 60 year cycle of the Chinese calendar)

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Ep 71 - Feng Jicai and A Looking-Glass World with Daniel Li

April 24, 2022

All the magic lay within their own bodies

In the seventy first episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are stepping into A Looking Glass World (单筒望远镜 / Dāntǒng Wàngyuǎnjìng). This is our second encounter with Tianjin’s bard Feng Jicai, and our first (sort of!) with his publisher-in-translation, Daniel Li of Sinoist Books.

// NEWS ITEMS //

Generations of Voices in Chinese Literature: a panel hosted by The World of Chinese
New Sino-SF just dropped: New Voices in Chinese Science Fiction
Shenyang in translation: Rouge Street by Shaung Xuetao tr. JT himself

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(庚子年 - gēng zi nián - gengzi year AKA the year of the metal rat)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Skedaddle - a font with Victorian hotel vibes
Sinoist Books’ new subscription package
Paul Richardson & Chu Xiaoying’s 2015 market report on Chinese publishing
the post cultural-revolution scar literature movement
the Feng Jicai institute 天津大学冯骥才文学艺术研究院

// Handy TrChFic Links //

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Ep 70 - The Adventures of Ma Suzhen with Paul Bevan

March 26, 2022

‘There is never anything so difficult that it cannot be resolved’

In the seventieth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are taking part in The Adventures of Ma Suzhen (马素贞复仇记 / Mǎ Sùzhēn Fùchóu Jì). From the backwaters of Shandong to the criminal dens of Shanghai, stout man of Oxford Paul Bevan leads me on a quest for vengeance that is little known in the west, yet part of an entire extended universe of Sinophone multimedia culture.

// NEWS ITEMS //

PODCAST: Sabina Knight on Daoism, Confucianism & Anti- War Poetry
INTERVIEW: My Crime, Being Born Illegal - Shen Yang in Conversation with Nicky Harman
FICTION: The Old Cicada by Can Xue - now readable online, for free
EVENT: Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds: translations from Ancient China with Brian

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(女 - nv - woman)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Paul’s musical pairing: Mulian Rescues his Mother from Hell
Angus’ musial pairings: Shit Can Happen - D12 and The Round Sun and Crescent Moon in the Sky - Kronos Quartet
The much-derided Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literary genre
Ma Yongzhen, a real life Shandong badass
Wuxia and Jin Yong
Central Shanghai’s artsy street: Fuzhou Lu
Cai Guoqiang 蔡国强 - Fujian firework artist

// Handy TrChFic Links //

INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD // HOMEPAGE

Ep 69 - Xue Mo and The Women, the Camels, and the Dholes with Sarah Lam and Nicola Clayton

March 9, 2022

You couldn’t get to grips with fate, but the enemy you could see and touch was your own body

In the sixty ninth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are riding with The Women, the Camels, and the Dholes, one of the stories contained within the Selected Stories of Xue Mo (雪漠小说精选 / Xuěmò Xiǎoshuō Jīngxuǎn). Two women are joining me on this trek: audiobook producer Nicola Clayton and voice actor Sarah Lam. In this tale we get material, we get Buddhist, we get into self-help, we get really close to death, and we take up a rifle loaded with... weirdly sentient bullets. It will make sense when we explain it… maybe…

// NEWS ITEMS //

BUY: The Paper Republic Guide to Chinese Literature
LISTEN: Craig Clunas on Sigmund Freud’s Chinese Collection
LISTEN/WATCH: Jing Tsu & Dan Russell on Kingdom of Characters
READ: Ecocriticism and Chinese Literature: Imagined Landscapes and Real Lived Spaces

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(生存 - shēng cún - to exist, to survive)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Nicola’s cinematic pairings: All is Lost (2013, dir. JC Chandor) and Tracks (2013, dir. John Curran)
Angus’ musical pairing: 万物生 Alive - 萨顶顶 Sa Dingding
Gansu - Xue Mo’s home province
The Holy Monk and the Spirit Woman - the book Xue Mo wrote about a figure from Tibetan history who inspired him. Note that this link leads to a page on Xue Mo’s own website
The Inspector Chen Mysteries - the BBC Radio 4 series featuring Sarah!
The Leeds Centre January 2022 Author of the Month (it’s our guy XM)
Xue Mo’s: Twitter, and Instagram, and Pinterest, and his entry on Paper Republic

// Handy TrChFic Links //

INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD // HOMEPAGE

Ep 68 - Amang and Raised by Wolves with Steve Bradbury

February 21, 2022

In-your-face. I want more in-your-face, if you please.

In the sixty eighth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are being Raised by Wolves (狼養的 / Láng Yǎng De), just like Amang and her translator Steve Bradbury. Revel in trash. Bound down a mountain. Take a ride on a nuclear sub. Argue furiously in favour of your preferred adverb. Do all these things, and you will channel the spirit of the wolf.

// NEWS ITEMS //

READ: Tiffany Troy talks to author Sheng Keyi about Death Fugue
LISTEN: Sinica’s Kaiser Kuo interviews author Megan Walsh about ‘what China is reading’
MY FIENDISH RIVALS… are running an amazing Lu Xun series, with awesome guests
META-NEWS: I have restored a VPN-off option for listeners in the PRC

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(狼養 - láng yǎng de - raised by wolves)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Steve’s music choice: Lisa Rose - Hook and Eye - (w/ music video by Amang herself!)
Angus’ music choice: Potty Mouth - The Gap
New Directions - publishers of poetry
Hong Hong - a poet
Alastair Reid - a translator
Ezra Pound - a Tim Budong
Vermont - a poetry fortress
Trident - London govt’s nukes, in Scotland

// Handy TrChFic Links //

INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD // HOMEPAGE

Ep 67 - Lo Yi-Chin and Faraway with Jenna Tang

February 12, 2022

Maybe I would only begin to understand these things when I became fatherless too, having no-one to lean on, the bitter solitude of not knowing what you ought to say before the world

In the sixty seventh of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are going Faraway (遠方 / Yuǎnfāng) with Lo Yi-Chin. Lighting lamps with me as time, memory, and family dissolve into an indistinct fog is the writer, translator, and mega-linguist Jenna Tang.

// NEWS ITEMS //

Paul French is back on British radio with A Chinese Odyssey: Artists, Poets and Exiles in Interwar London - streaming online for 1 year+
Sinoist Books’ Longevity Park bags a spot in the Dublin Literary Award Runlist
Sinoist Books announce lineup of 4 new titles
Chinese language podcast Loud Murmurs goes dark
Jennifer Feeley translates Xi Xi’s concrete poem Thicket of Green Grass for the new Tiger Year

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(遠方 - yuǎnfāng - far away (or should it be ‘faraway’?)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Wintry Night 寒夜 by Li Qiao 李喬
Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu
1988: I Want to Talk with the World by Han Han
Bo Ke Lai 博客來 - International Taiwanese bookstore 海外專館
Taiwanese writers Jian Zheng 簡媜 and Qi Jun 琦君

// Handy TrChFic Links //

INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD // HOMEPAGE

Ep 66 - Ba Jin and Hong Kong Nights with Luo Tianqi

January 24, 2022

The rocking of the boat created the illusion that all the lights were moving

In the sixty sixth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are adrift in Hong Kong Nights (香港之夜 / Xiāng Gǎng Zhīyè), as fleetingly recollected by Sichuan’s long-surviving left-anarchist writer, Ba Jin. Joining me in the constellations is fellow Sino-lit podcaster Luo Tianqi – here to talk about revolution, regret, and responsibility. Grab a seat on deck, comrade, brush up on your Bakunin, and let go of your transient identity as sights become sounds, and sounds become sights.

// NEWS ITEMS //

Lu Xun’s The True Story of Ah Q to broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on January 26
The Sons of Red Lake and Chinese Elemental Philosophy - Sinoist Books’ blog
The Way Spring Arrives gets a beautiful Chinese edition
A dialogue between past and future show guests Mike Fu and Jenna Tang
KakaoEntertainment buys Wuxiaworld - plus thoughts from the translators

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(家 - jiā - home/family)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

Tianqi’s podcast
Various translated Ba Jin essays available on Anarchy Archives
Tianqi’s musical pairing: Hong Kong Nights 香港之夜 by Teresa Teng 鄧麗君
Angus’ musical pairing: Hieroglyph by Cynic
Dissenting from Ba Jin by Geremie Barmé // Available on DOUBAN and GDOCS
Family by Ba Jin (trans by Sidney Shapiro)
Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez
Social Class in the 21st Century by Mike Savage
The Meaning of Life: A Very Short Introduction by Terry Eagleton

// Handy TrChFic Links //

INSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD // HOMEPAGE

Ep 65 - Ge Fei and The Invisibility Cloak with Giray Fidan and Rauno Sainio

January 5, 2022

The best attributes of anyone or anything usually reside on the surface, which is where, in fact, all of us live out our lives

In the sixty fifth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are swathing ourselves in The Invisibility Cloak (隐身衣 / Yǐnshēn Yī). Languishing with me in the peace and pain of relative obscurity are Giray Fidan and Rauno Sainio, two translators of the book’s author: Ge Fei, an imperceptible fabulist and three-time subject of this very show. I still haven’t figured him out, and I’m sure he’d be glad of it.

// NEWS ITEMS //

ACA Publishing/Sinoist Books bags an English PEN translation grant for The Sacred Clan by Liang Hong
New book: The Artisans by Shen Fuyu, translated by Jeremy Tiang
Chinese student writes Marxism dissertation on Warhammer 40K
Lemony Snicket’s new book has a cameo from Pu Songling and John Minford

// PHRASES OF THE DAY //

(太阳还好端端的在天上挂着呢! - Tàiyáng hái hǎoduānduān dì zài tiānshàng guà zhene - And the sun is still hanging right up there in the sky!)

(安居乐业 - Ānjūlèyè - To live in peace, and work happily)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

I Found My Mind in Connecticut - Cage
La Follia - Vivaldi
Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami
The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tampinar
Naked CEO Grant Horsfield and his Moganshan resort
The Altaic language family and its syntax

// Handy TrChFic Links //