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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Ep 64 - Chen Qiufan and Coming of the Light with Francesco Verso

‘Suppose the universe is a program. Everything that we can observe is the result of the machine-executable code. But the cosmic microwave background can be understood as the record of some earlier version of the source code.’

In the sixty forth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we bear witness to the Coming of the Light (开光 / Kāiguāng), penned by the shaman-consulting Google graduate himself; it’s Stan, it’s the man, it’s Chen Qiufan. And hark – what’s this? Waves and photons in the shape of noted publisher Francesco Verso surge from the underscreen to puncture my cybernetic solipsism, but will our agile enterprise decode the universe before its unravelling, or are all digital startups nought but the initiation of the end?

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• READ: A Ramble Through the Heart: A Semi-Coherent Attempt at Self-Justification by Chua Chim Kang, tr Tan Dan Feng, from Renditions Issue 96
• LISTEN: My Scandinavian nemesis strikes again - Owlish and Other Translated Languages with Natascha Bruce
• ROUNDTABLE: Can Chinese Science Fiction Transcend Binary Thinking?
• REVIEW: TrChFic named ‘Shiver-Worthy Runner-Up’ in: {Scary’s Voices} Sound Bites for November 26th

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(云 - yún - cloud)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Ether by Zhang Ran - Francesco’s recommendation
• Chan/Zen Buddhism
• Zhongguancun - the Silicon Valley of Beijing
• duang - a rather old meme - and here it is in a That’s Shanghai meme review
• Solarpunk - according to the BBC
• Wired’s article on Silicon Valley Buddhism
• And…Wired’s brilliant article on Chen Qiufan - some more evidence of his interest in the shamans of China’s periphery
• the PRC's internet/gaming addiction camps

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Ep 62 - Liu Cixin and The Wandering Earth with Jairo Morales

Before us stood the long abandoned skyscrapers of Manhattan, the Sun's weak light casting their long shadows across the quiet ice of the New York Harbor. In my tipsy haze, tears began to gush down my cheeks. 

In the sixty second episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are setting sail on The Wandering Earth (流浪地球 / Liúlàng Dìqiú), drawn up and captained by Liu Cixin himself. Calling into the show from the Peruvian Engine Bunker is Jairo Morales. We get deep into postnationalism, censorship, cultural transmission, and the sublime spectacle of the utter annihilation of our planet’s fragile surface. Goodbye solarpunk, hello solardoom.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• The Tyranny of Neutrality - Virginia L Conn reviews AI 2041 
• TrChFic Meta News: The Leeds Centre Taiwan Literature Symposium
• HKKH interviews Dorothy Tse
• Announced by Tweet: Amazon Crossing will publish a translation of Han Song’s Hospital Trilogy

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(短暂的 - Duǎnzànde - ephemeral/efimero)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Jairo’s musical pairings: Gymnopédie No 1 by Erik Satie & 消愁 - Xiao Chou (Drown One's Sorrows) by Mao Buyi 毛不易
• Angus’ musical pairing: Black Light Machine by Frost
• Magical realism from Latin America
• The Emerging Japanese Superstate by Herman Kahn - 70s think tank guy does a yellow peril, history buries him
• Chuang article: The Wandering Earth: A Reflection of the Chinese New Right
• 200 Drones Fall Out Of The Sky In China’s Zhengzhou
• Ken Liu’s anthology of Chinese sci-fi: Invisible Planets
• The Cultural Revolution as ‘partially denouncable’

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Ep 58 - A Que and Flower of the Other Shore with Xueting Ni

The moment I was bitten, I died and became another thing. Now I am loitering on the other shore of the Styx, listening to the past from beyond its waves.

In the fifty eighth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are picking Flower of the Other Shore (彼岸花 / Bǐ'àn Huā), a romantic(!) zombie short story by A Que. Here to help me find sympathy for the undead is the tale’s translator, Xueting Ni. The story will feature in her anthology of translated Chinese sci-fi: Sinopticon.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Hao Jingfang’s Vagabonds shortlisted for the 2021 Arthur C. Clarke Award
• Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing launches new journal & calls for papers
• TrChFIc Meta News: Ximalaya feed censored, stoopid Lu Xun meme blows up

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(丧尸 - sàngshī - zombie)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Intertextuality - big word for a simple concept
• World War Z - the book & the film
• Xueting’s From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao: The Essential Guide to Chinese Deities
• The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction
• Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

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Ep 55 - Wu Ming-yi and The Man with the Compound Eyes with Cara Healey

‘Only if you go to places nobody’s ever been can you see the colours nobody’s ever seen’

[ this is episode 3 of our Taiwan Season ]

In the fifty fifth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are meeting The Man with the Compound Eyes (复眼人 / Fùyǎn Rén). Brace yourself for the impact of an ecological, apocalyptic, and internationalist vortex of literary weirdness. Joining me to weather this storm at the limits of anthropoid cognition is Sinophone-sci-fi-studier Cara Healey.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• The Secret Talker by Geling Yan
• Queer Taiwanese Literature: A Reader By Howard Chiang
• The Rainbow of Time by Jimmy Liao

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// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(涡流 - wōliú - vortex, whirlpool)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan
• the Indigenous people of Taiwan
• David Mitchell and impending doom
• The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction

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Ep 53 - The Membranes with Chi Ta-wei and Ari Larissa Heinrich

‘Two peach trees, two entirely different universes.’

[ this is episode 1 of our Taiwan Season ]

In the fifty third episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are peeling back The Membranes (膜 / Mó). Joining me at their respective computer terminals in the ocean floor biodome are its author Chi Ta-wei and translator Ari Larissa Heinrich. 

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• PANEL: Exploring Chinese Science Fiction Multi-Dimensionally
• PREORDER: Vessel - a memoir by Cai Chongda
• UPCOMING: The London Chinese Science Fiction Group to have Han Song on as a guest 

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// WORDS OF THE DAY //

(赞 - zàn - ‘like’, as in Facebook, Wechat etc)

(情 - qíng - emotion, affection, sentiment)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• 80s & 90s sci-fi and cyberpunk: should it be left behind?
• the hole in the ozone layer
• chickens with teeth
• queer parenting in Taiwan

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// Episode Sponsor //

Buy Paul French’s Destination Peking here:

https://www.blacksmithbooks.com/books/destination-peking/

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Ep 49 - The TrChFic Megacrossover Part 2: Moderns

'One morning, Salinger was woken from sleep by deafening noises. Dazed, he gazed outside the window and saw a row of gleaming Baekdu bulldozers, which had been modified from Chonma-ho battle tanks, bearing down on his cabin.'

In the forty ninth episode we continue our megacrossover, this time tackling modern literature. Once more unto the jazz hall, dear friends, once more, as we tackle: lamppost sexuality, mantou typography, disposable(?) wuxia, and the philosophy of chicken nuggets. No, really. I'm not joking. Wait, come back!!!

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Taiwan Year at the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing - Egoyan Zheng Excerpt
• Jeremy Tiang - The World Is Not Enough - is world literature just a ‘spice rack’ for lazy Westerners?
• Lost in Translation: What’s the Problem with Chinese Literature in the West? - Zoom talk w/ Jianan Qian, Nicky Harman, and Eric Abrahamsen
• Reading "The Story of the Stone" with 白先勇 Pai Hsien-Yung and 陳毓賢 Susan Chan Egan - a superstar Zoom talk!

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// PODCASTERS & THEIR CHOSEN STORIES //

Rob and Lee of The Chinese Literature Podcast chose Sealed Off by Eileen Chang

William and Kevin of Rereading the Stone chose Shanghai Foxtrot by Mu Shiying

Yifan of 文化土豆 Culture Potato chose A Bond Undone, Chapter 1 by Jin Yong

and your host Angus chose Salinger and the Koreans by Han Song

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Eileen Chang's time in Shanghai and Hong Kong
• Distortion of time during lockdown
• Mu Shiying, a somewhat forgotten Shanghai modernist
• Modernism & 'mechanophilia'
• Jin Yong & the origins of modern Wuxia
• Chinese pen names
• China’s Image in Han Song’s Science Fiction
• the concept of the 'observer' in quantum physics

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// Episode Sponsor //

Buy Jeremy Bai AKA Deathblade's The Heretic Peacekeeper here:

Amazon: http://mybook.to/9h10eTHP

Kobo, Nook, etc: https://books2read.com/u/mgzxxx

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Ep 41 - Lao She and Cat Country with Molly Silk

It is not often that one has the opportunity to observe the extinction of an entire civilisation

In the forty first episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are venturing into Cat Country (猫城记 / Māo Chéng Jì), a science fiction oddity of the Republic of China. Helping me save the nation and stay off the damned reverie leaves is Molly Silk, a doctoral researcher of Chinese Space Policy.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Little Smarty Travels to the Future comic now available in translation
• Chinese Science Fiction Goes Global by Regina Kanyu Wang
• Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction by Nathaniel Isaacson

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(迷叶 / Mí Yè / reverie leaves)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• The Wandering Earth: A Device for the Propagation of the Chinese Regime’s Desired Space Narratives? by Molly herself
• The Trial by Franz Kafka
• Lao She in London
• I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki
• The Cat Returns (2002, dir. Hiroyuki Morita)

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Ep 40 - Liu Cixin and Death’s End with Keith Justice Hayward

The ultimate fate of all intelligent beings has always been to become as grand as their thoughts.

Episode 40 is no ordinary episode! This time TrChFic is crossing over with Couch Command and its esteemed host Keith Hayward to jump right down the Chinese sci-fi wormhole of Liu Cixin's haymaker-punch ending to his Three Body Problem trilogy, Death's End (死神永生 / Sǐshén Yǒngshēng). Hell yes.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Feng Jicai event: Tales of Old Tianjin w/ XINRAN, Guanghwa Bookshop & Sinoist Books
• What's Going Wrong With Translated Chinese Literature? by Dylan Levi King
• On UFOlogy with Chinese Characteristics and the Fate of Chinese Socialism

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(警告 / Jǐnggào / warning)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese? by Xia Jia
• The Roman and Chinese Empires
• The London Chinese Scifi Group and their discussion of The Lighthouse Girl by Baoshu
• The Cultural Revolution, Fanaticism and Rationality in The Three-Body Problem - a Master's thesis that gets into some of what Keith and I discuss

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Ep 36 - Gujian with Emily Jin

'I think there is no brother in this world as strange as you'

In the thirty sixth episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are looking at a video game(!) series called Gujian (古剑/ Gǔ Jiàn). Helping me level up and face my shadow self is Emily Jin, a highly active Chinese science fiction translator, and better yet: a hardcore Gujian fan!

Gujian isn't a Western Tolkeinesque RPG, nor is it a JRPG Final Fantasy-style affair. It's made in China, set in China, and played (mostly) by Chinese gamers. You may not be shocked to learn that it's a Wuxia RPG, with a little Xianxia magic thrown in for good measure.

// NEWS ITEMS //

• a new interview with Murong Xuecun
• Land Wars and Xi Jinping's father
• 2021 Newman prize nominees announced

// WORD OF THE DAY //

(剑 / Jiàn / a straight, double-edged Chinese sword)

// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Paladin - Gujian's predecessor
• Fable - Angus' beloved teenage RPG
• ancient Yanling 鄢陵 - a 'flower city'
• 'the Shadow' in Jungian thought
• Philip K Dick, other realities, and the hero's journey
• Bi Xie 辟邪 - the mythic animal Emily described
• C语言修仙 - the Chinese hacker/xianxia webnovel Emily recommended

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