Ep 81 - Xiu Xinyu and The Stars We Raised with Yen Ooi

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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• I will be hosting Sinoist Books’ November 2022 Book Club on Li Peifu’s Graft
• Yan Ge’s next book Elsewhere is incoming – and it’s not a translation
• New academic anthology Readings in Chinese Women’s Philosophical and Feminist Thought could make for a decent Christmas present, if you’ve got a spare £90

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(仁 - rén - human kind(ness))

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Yen’s musical pairing: Debussy - Suite bergamasque, L. 75 - I. Prélude
• Angus’ musical pairing: Breaking Benjamin - Had Enough (live, acoustic)
• Rén 仁 by Yen Ooi
• UFO in Her Eyes by Xiaolu Guo
• How to Catch a Star by Oliver Jeffers
• A Prayer for the Crown Shy by Becky Chambers
• The Beijing of Possibilities by Jonathan Tel
• We Could Not See the Stars by Elizabeth Wong
• Early publications of translated Chinese sci-fi: Han Song’s The Wheel of Samsara & Zhao Haihong’s Exuviation
• Chaohuan 超幻 articles: [The “Ultra-unreal” in Chinese Literature - China Channel] // [Modern China is So Crazy It Needs a New Literary Genre - LitHub] // [Nine sci-fi subgenres to help you understand the future - Quartz]
• Brain Mill Press’ Ab Terra series - joint-edited by Yen and featuring my short story Meta-Shanghai
• The Leeds Uni Chinese Genre Fiction Symposium & Essence of Wonder Chinese Sci-fi virtual event
• A Journey to the Narrative Design in ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ by Yen Ooi & Christy Deno
• China’s (now somewhat kibosh-ed) 996 working hour system

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Ep 80 - Chiou Charng-Ting and Raining Zebra Finches with May Huang

‘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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• 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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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(梅雨季 - méiyǔ jì - plum rain season)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• 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

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Ep 79 - Mu Ming and Express to Beijing West Railway Station

‘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. 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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• WATCH: Qiufan Chen on How Chinese Science Fiction Imagines Our Future
• WATCH: Gloria S Tseng on Biblical Imagery in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Literature
• READ: a new issue of Chinese Literature and Thought Today with a newly translated Han Song story & an essay on Little Smarty Travels to the Future

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(想象力 - xiǎngxiànglì - imagination)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Mu Ming’s musial pairing: The Grandmaster OST
• Angus’ musical pairing: The End Where We Start by The Black Queen
• The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard Hemming
• The Dragon by Ray Bradbury
• Good Hunting by Ken Liu
• The Serpentine Band 宛转环 by Mu Ming herself
• The Snow of Jinyang 晋阳三尺雪 by Zhang Ran
• Vital: The Future of Healthcare - a sci fi anthology
• Kaili Blues 路边野餐 (2015, dir Bi Gan)

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Ep 78 - Gu Hongming and Bonnie Prince Tuan with Lee Moore

‘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. There’s no point denying it – this is some pretty weird stuff. 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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• 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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// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(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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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• 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
• The Boxer rebellions of 1899-1901
• Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death
• 多少恨 - the novella that Eileen Chang apparently based on Jane Eyre
• Can Xue and Kafka - here discussed by Stella Zhu
• The Hook - Richard Stark AKA Donald Westlake

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Ep 77 - Yan Lianke and Lenin’s Kisses with Piotr Machajek

“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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Wang Xiaobo’s Golden Age gets a retranslation & a spot in the NYT
• Mildly interesting: a 2005 poll comparing expert & popular rankings of Chinese authors
• Wang Shuo appears to enter Twitter and announce a new book
• Paper Republic profiles Fujianese poet Wu Ang

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// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(狗带 - gǒu dài  - go die)

(入世，出世 - rùshì, chūshì - enter society, withdraw from society)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Angus’ musical pairing - Nevergreen by Emancipator
• Piotr’s musical pairing - The Perfect Revival Plan by Zhang Ling - 我是老张BIG JOHN
• Jiayang Fan in the New Yorker: Yan Lianke’s Forbidden Satires of China
• the concept of ‘habitus’ in Bordieu’s thought
• the concept of ‘biopolitics’ in Focault’s thought
• Karl Marx’s thoughts on division of labour
• Reference News - a heritage PRC newspaper covering ‘the outside world’
• the commodification of Mao Zedong & Maoism
• Recommended readings: Dream of Ding Village & Happy Dreams & Death Fugue & Northern Girls

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Ep 76 - Huang Fan and Zero with The Hugonauts

“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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// NEWS ITEMS //

• READ: Cao Kou’s The Wall Builder, translated by a pair of familiar names
• Can Xue’s Mystery Train now available for preorder in the US
• Yan Ge nears the end of draft 1 of a new (in a sense) Chinese language novel
•  SFRA publishes Xi Liu’s Stories on Sexual Violence as “Thought Experiments”: Post-1990s Chinese Science Fiction as an Example
• East Asian astroturf: a flood of “books” on Taiwan, China, and Nancy Pelosi hits Amazon

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(理 - lǐ  - reason)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Angus’ musical pairing: Way out of Here by Porcupine Tree
• The ‘four industrial revolutions’ theory
• The PRC’s blocking of Wikipedia and efforts to ‘delete’ Tiananmen 1989 from collective memory
• Postwar Taiwan as a US-backed, far-right dictatorship
• Hao Jingfang’s Folding Beijing and its win at The Hugo Awards

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Ep 75 - A Yi and The Curse with Jeffrey Kinkley

“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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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Rudolph Wagner on Chinese Scifi as Lobby Literature
• 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

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Ep 74 - Zou Tao and The Fox Spirit of Bluestone Mountain with Timothy Gouldthorp

There is a saying that accurately describes Young Master Zhou’s state of mind: “Willing to die beneath the flower and linger as an amorous ghost”

In the seventy fourth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are dallying with The Fox Spirit of Bluestone Mountain (狐狸緣全傳 / húlí yuán quánchuán). Arriving just in time to save us from the spirit’s wiles is translator Timothy Gouldthorp. Straighten your tails, grab a Taoist 不可以色色 bonk stick, and line up for battle as the creatures of the forest (rabbits included) take on the gods!

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• See Angus in the (pixelated) flesh in a recording of Sinoist’s Empires of Dust book club meeting
• Fragments of Bogna Konoir’s writing on Three Body Theory buried as Easter Eggs in a spooky virtual exhibition
• Sheng Keyi’s The Wombs of China in I Know What's Best For You All Over the World
• The 8th Bai Meigui Translation Competition is now open!

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(缘分 - yuánfèn - karmic affinity)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Journey to the West and its various adaptations 
• Dracula and his kind’s fiendish predilections
• Also from Camphor Press: The Flock of Ba-Hui and Other Stories
• The Fujian/Taiwan/LGBT rabbit cult

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

‘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’).

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// 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

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// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(动画 - dònghuà - animation )

(90后 - jiǔ líng hòu - 90s kids)

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// 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

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

‘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.

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// 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

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// 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)

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// 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

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