The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast

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!-// NEWS ITEMS //See Angus in the (pixelated) flesh in a recording of Sinoist’s Empires of Dust book club meetingFragments of Bogna Konoir’s writing on Three Body Theory buried as Easter Eggs in a spooky virtual exhibitionSheng Keyi’s The Wombs of China in I Know What's Best For You All Over the WorldThe 8th Bai Meigui Translation Competition is now open!-// WORD OF THE DAY //(缘分 - yuánfèn - karmic affinity)-// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //Journey to the West and its various adaptationsDracula and his kind’s fiendish predilectionsAlso from Camphor Press: The Flock of Ba-Hui and Other StoriesThe Fujian/Taiwan/LGBT rabbit cult-// Handy TrChFic Links //Episode TranscriptsHelp Support TrChFicINSTAGRAM 🦊 TWITTER 🦊 DISCORD

‘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 TiangWATCH: Ma Yuan: The Chinese Avant-garde, Metafiction and Post-postmodernismATTEND: the Festival of Chinese Translation at Aberdeen UniMETA 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 RitualAngus’ musical pairing: Roads by PortisheadVideo CDsCara Healey’s theory of generic hybridityFlower of the Other ShoreYe Yonglie’s Little SmartyFinnconn 2022Sadan aaveen öinen paraati - Xia Jia’s A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight, in Finnish

‘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 EpicsWords from Shen Yang in Telegraph article: What life's really like in locked-down ShanghaiShort story Meta-Shanghai by Angus himself is published in Ab Terra 2021Watch/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 //New wave scifi, and emergence of the New Weird in the 90sGuangzhao’s writeup of his group’s event on this story24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep by Jonathan CraryThe forthcoming English translations of Han Song’s Hospital trilogyChina 2185: Liu Cixin’s cyberpunk novel

'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 ChineseNew Sino-SF just dropped: New Voices in Chinese Science FictionShenyang 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)(from the 60 year cycle of the Chinese calendar)-// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //Skedaddle - a font with Victorian hotel vibesSinoist Books’ new subscription packagePaul Richardson & Chu Xiaoying’s 2015 market report on Chinese publishingthe post cultural-revolution scar literature movementthe Feng Jicai institute 天津大学冯骥才文学艺术研究院-// Handy TrChFic Links //Episode Transcripts // Help Support TrChFicINSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD

‘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 PoetryINTERVIEW: My Crime, Being Born Illegal - Shen Yang in Conversation with Nicky HarmanFICTION: The Old Cicada by Can Xue - now readable online, for freeEVENT: Hard Roads an Cauld Hairst Winds: translations from Ancient China with Brian Holton-// WORD OF THE DAY //(女 - nv - woman)-// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //The much-derided Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies literary genreMa Yongzhen, a real life Shandong badassWuxia and Jin YongCentral Shanghai’s artsy street: Fuzhou LuCai Guoqiang 蔡国强 - Fujian firework artist-// Handy TrChFic Links //Episode Transcripts // Help Support TrChFicINSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD

You couldn’t get to grips with fate, but the enemy you could see and touch was your own bodyIn 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, and we get really close to death...-// NEWS ITEMS //BUY: The Paper Republic Guide to Chinese LiteratureLISTEN: Craig Clunas on Sigmund Freud’s Chinese CollectionLISTEN/WATCH: Jing Tsu & Dan Russell on Kingdom of CharactersREAD: Ecocriticism and Chinese Literature-// WORD OF THE DAY //(生存 - shēng cún - to exist, to survive)-// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //GansuThe Holy Monk and the Spirit Woman - note that this link leads to a page on Xue Mo’s own websiteThe Inspector Chen Mysteries - the BBC Radio 4 series featuring Sarah!The Leeds Centre January 2022 Author of the Month-// Handy TrChFic Links //Episode Transcripts // Help Support TrChFicINSTAGRAM // TWITTER // DISCORD

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 FugueLISTEN: 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 guestsMETA-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 GapNew Directions - publishers of poetryHong Hong - a poetAlastair Reid - a translatorEzra Pound - a Tim BudongVermont - a poetry fortressTrident - London govt’s nukes, in Scotland

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 worldIn 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 RunlistSinoist Books announce lineup of 4 new titlesChinese language podcast Loud Murmurs goes darkJennifer 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 Pasaribu1988: I Want to Talk with the World by Han HanBo Ke Lai 博客來 - International Taiwanese bookstore 海外專館Taiwanese writers Jian Zheng 簡媜 and Qi Jun 琦君

The rocking of the boat created the illusion that all the lights were movingIn 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 26The Sons of Red Lake and Chinese Elemental Philosophy - Sinoist Books’ blogThe Way Spring Arrives gets a beautiful Chinese editionA dialogue between past and future show guests Mike Fu and Jenna TangKakaoEntertainment buys Wuxiaworld - plus thoughts from the translators-// WORD OF THE DAY //(家 - jiā - home/family)-// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //Tianqi’s podcastVarious translated Ba Jin essays available on Anarchy ArchivesDissenting from Ba Jin by Geremie Barmé // Available on DOUBAN and GDOCSFamily by Ba Jin (trans by Sidney Shapiro)

The best attributes of anyone or anything usually reside on the surface, which is where, in fact, all of us live out our livesIn 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 HongNew book: The Artisans by Shen Fuyu, translated by Jeremy TiangChinese student writes Marxism dissertation on Warhammer 40KLemony 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 - CageLa Follia - VivaldiMen Without Women by Haruki MurakamiThe Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi TampinarNaked CEO Grant Horsfield and his Moganshan resortThe Altaic language family and its syntax