A podcast about English translations of Chinese fiction, hosted by Angus Stewart. All eras, all genres, all ideologies.
In the one hundredth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are throwing a goodbye party! Friends, listeners, and past guests joined me for a little reminiscing and musing. I drank precisely one beer. The show is going on hiatus, exactly as I’ve been warning you for the past ten episodes or so.
The feed will stay up indefinitely, and it’s likely that I will be migrating the hosting to a free service to make that permanent online presence economical.
I expect I will return to the show, though it will probably be years from now.
再见!It has been a pleasure, pengyous.
--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘I wrote the asinine words ‘liquor is literature’ and ‘people who are strangers to liquor are incapable of talking about literature’ when I was good and drunk, and you must not take them to heart.’
In the ninety ninth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we’re taking a lengthy holiday with Mo Yan in The Republic of Wine, so get your visa stamped and your baijiu in hand. This time there are two discussions. First, sober, with returnees Dylan Levi King and Michelle Deeter. Then, drunk with DLK and poet/translator Martin Winter. Listen all the way through, comrade, to hear two of us curse then proclaim our love for a prominent figure in the field. This is the penultimate episode; the time for tomfoolery is almost over.
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(酒量 – jiǔliàng – capacity for liquor)
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I supposed every last one of this country’s 1.3 billion inhabitants all had their own obsessions with the giant germ cell.
In the ninety eighth episode of the Translated Chinese fiction podcast I am joined by two fine fellows, Shi Yifeng and contributing translator Carson Ramsdell. All a-puff with imperial gusto, we leaf through The Book of Beijing to discuss three of the stories collected within: Han Song’s Reunion ( 北京西站,春节之前 - běijīng xī zhàn, chūnjié zhīqián - tr. Ramsdell 先生), Xu Kun’s Dogshit Football (狗日的足球 - gǒurì de zúqiú), and Mr Shi’s own Is Mr Zhang Home? (张先生在家么 - zhāng xiānshēng zàijiā me). Prepare to shiver, to snicker, and to squeal – but not necessarily in that order.
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(复杂 – fùzá – complexity)
(壮美 – zhuàngměi – magnificent)
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘Starting to write a suicide note would be too melodramatic. If she wrote it, it would only contain one line: This love makes me so uncomfortable.’
In the ninety seventh episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are passing the gates of Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise (房思琪的初戀樂園- fáng sī qí de chūliàn lèyuán), an all-too-real #MeToo novel by the late Lin Yi-han, centred around the titular girl and the cram school teacher who abused her all through her teens. Reflecting with me on the troubling nature of the text and the dark realities it holds a mirror to is its translator, Jenna Tang.
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(樂園 – lèyuán – paradise)
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘the man spun instinctively to face them, both hands covering his chest, looking almost sorrowful as blood glazed his fingers’
In the ninety sixth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are entering into dialogue with bioscientist-turned-historical-fictioneer Chen Yao-chang and translator Chen Tung-jung to learn how they cultivated Puppet Flower: A Novel of 1867 Formosa (傀儡花 - kuǐlěi huā), to see if we can arrive at a peaceful settlement between the native people of southern Taiwan, their absentee Qing administrators, and the diverse Western powers creeping ever closer. Oh, and the other people on the island. You know – the Hakka, the Hokkien, the Han… have you lost count yet?
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Sinoist Books is hitting the road for a UK tour
The Book of Beijing is coming to Manchester
The Little Red Podcast does a Chinese sci-fi episode
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(真 – zhēn – truth)
(Formosa – 福尔摩沙 – Portuguese for ‘beautiful’)
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Chen Yao-chang’s place in stem cell history
The efforts of Le Gendre and other westerners to map southern Taiwan
The TV adaptation: Seqalu: Formosa 1867
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/messageTrembling hands seem to check for the forgotten secret language. Withered bodies, like finding some long-forgotten receipt. Where have you been all these years? The mountains echo again, spring’s call is finally answered: I am the secret language you forgot. You are my lost credentials.
In the ninety fifth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are embarking on My Travels in Ding Yi (我的丁一之旅 - wǒ de dīng yī zhīlǚ). This is one of the later works in the life of Shi Tiesheng, an idiosyncratic writer best remembered as being a ‘disabled writer’ but better remembered as something far more multifaceted. Peer in from another mind, another world, as academic Chloë Starr and I confer with Christ and become embodied with Budda. Perhaps, somehow, we’ll puzzle out our brief roles on the stage play of existence.
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(心识不死 – xīn shì bùsǐ – the spirit never dies)
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/messageIn the space marked ‘pregnant’, the machine had quite clearly printed the word ‘no’
In the ninety fourth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are entering election season. The heroine of Li Er novel Cherries on a Pomegranate Tree (石榴树上结樱桃 - shíliú shù shàng jié yīngtáo) is defending her seat, and that will mean enforcing various policies (including a certain one child policy) while keeping the people sweet. Canvassing with me on this one is the translator, spitting dog himself Dave Haysom.
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LISTICLE: Paul French’s TrChFic beach reads
WATCH: a one hour interview with Yan Ge
JOIN IN: help TrChFic (v1) end in style
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(狗 - gǒu - dog)
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Wen Zhen short story collection: Nothing but the Now
JT’s Li Er translation, Coloratura
Pathlight magazine
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘It’s just life, right? One place is as good as another’
In the ninety third episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are Running through Beijing (跑步穿过中关村 - pǎobù chuānguò zhōngguāncūn) in the loping style of 70后 hero Xu Zechen. At the fabled finishing line – observing us wryly, beer and chuan’er in hand – is the translator, Eric Abrahamsen of Paper Republic fame. Insert your porn DVD, stamp your hukou, and - most importantly – find somewhere to sleep tonight.
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WATCH: Two queens discuss their translation of Lu Min’s Dinner for Six
BORROW: University librarians take note: new tome incoming
READ: A Sailor on the Ferry 🇭🇰 by & tr Jasmine Tong
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(跑步 – pǎobù – running)
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the glorious Beijing hukou
Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen, tr. our guest Eric & Jeremy Tiang
the analog and digital history of Zhongguancun
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘I’ve never broken any rules, not even rules at school. Why would I blackmail someone?’
’In the ninety second episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are getting duped by Bad Kids (坏孩子 - huài háizi). Fleeing the proverbial orphanage with me is the book’s translator, Michelle Deeter, here to mark a breadcrumb trail through the dark children’s palace that author Zijin Chen has constructed for the benefit and perturbation of all.
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READ: 'The Sacred Clan': Liang Hong turns to fiction to explore rural China
VISIT: an exhibit on poet Su Shi at West Lake Museum in Hangzhou
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(骄傲 – jiāo'ào – pride)
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Children’s palaces of China and the Soviet Union
The Untouched Crime, also by Zijin Chen
Amazon Crossing’s translated Chinese titles
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘The “exquisite bridges and flowing water” one finds in poetry are not written by real farmers, but those who claim to love rural life when they most fear it.’
In the ninety first episode of the Translated Chinese Podcast, we are travelling half across China to pod you. The writer in question is rural/online star Yu Xiuhua and my guest is her translator, the thoughtful and particular Fiona Sze-Lorrain. The art in question is Yu’s collection of poems and essays Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm (月光落在左手上 - yuèguāng luò zài zuǒshǒu shàng), but spare also a thought for my guest’s recent release, Dear Chrysanthemums: a novel in stories.
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the Qiu Jin affair - a #namethetranslator incident
Machine Decision is Not Final - new theory-fiction sci-fi allstar text
a Xu Xiaobin reading from Paper Republic
Sinoist Books northern expedition incoming, keep your eyes peeled
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(悟 – wù – understand, enlighten, awaken)
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In Manchuria: A Village Called Wasteland and the Transformation of Rural China
Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Li Juan, another rural writer
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/message‘I felt that in action and in lore, one and all were far above me; that in spite of the majesty of my manliness, I could not, in point of fact, compare with these characters of the gentle sex’
Share your feedback by email: thetranslatedchinesefictionpodcast@outlook
As this show draws only ten episodes short of its ascent to heavenly hiatus, let us call down from those lofty vapours a sad and beautiful tale, a story of a stone, The Dream of the Red Chamber. Musing with me in the aristocratic compound is another host: Annie Qu, a genuine Bilibili literati. Much like Cao Xueqin, I considered myself lucky to be in the presence of such a refined lady, as we discussed the continuing relevance of this classic of classics to ideas concerning high culture, gender norms, and all the frivolous imaginings we spend our brief lives upon.
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Zijin Chen’s Bad Kids, translated by Michelle Deeter, gets a shortlist spot
Lu Xun short story Kong Yiji cited in PRC education/employment discussions
Watch: Jing Tsu’s Asia society talk on Kingdom of Characters
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(美 – měi – beauty/aesthetics)
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The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
Family by Ba Jin
Qing/Qi/Shu Hua: the four arts
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--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/angus-stewart1/messageYour feedback is valuable to us. Should you encounter any bugs, glitches, lack of functionality or other problems, please email us on [email protected] or join Moon.FM Telegram Group where you can talk directly to the dev team who are happy to answer any queries.