Ep 47 - Ma Jian and Beijing Coma with Ronald Torrance

When you've stared at the past for so long that time dissolves, you'll be able to wake from your slumber

In the forty seventh episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are falling into Beijing Coma (肉之土 / Ròu Zhī Tǔ). Avid Ma Jian reader Ronald Torrance is here to guide me from perimeter to epicentre of this colossal novel, and the weighty events it reckons with. Even without politics, stakes are high here: life/death, time/memory, flesh/history, and the intimate bonds that can exist between translators and writers.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• Pen Fairy

• Lost in Translation: The World of Chinese Literature in English

• ‘The atmosphere has become abnormal’: Han Chinese views from Xinjiang

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(地标 - Dìbiāo - Landmark)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• The People's Republic of Amnesia by Louisa Lim

• Beijing from Below by Harriet Evans

• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien

• What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear by Baoshu

• Prisoner of the State by Zhao Ziyang

• Death Fugue by Sheng Keyi

• The loneliness of Yan Lianke

• Mo Yan & censorship

• How China's censors are taught about 'restricted topics'

• Meng Po and her memory-erasing soup

• Cui Jian, rock, and socialist/patriotic anthems at Tiananmen