Language: Chinese

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest from Germany, Bulgaria, and China!

This week, our team members report on poetry and performance art, multilingual panel discussions, and inventive book events. From a cinematic book launch in Bulgaria to a night of diasporic literature in Berlin and a poetry installation in Shanghai read on to find out more!

Michal Zechariah, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from Berlin

I have moved countries twice—once when I moved from Tel Aviv to Chicago for my graduate studies in English literature, and the second time when I moved from Chicago to Berlin for a postdoctoral fellowship. One thing I hadn’t anticipated about that second move was how it would affect my relationship not with my first language, Hebrew, but with English, my second. I started questioning the place of the language that has become so important to me, even though it wasn’t my mother tongue, in my new life.

For this reason, I was immediately drawn to an event titled Literature in Diaspora hosted by the Berlin Center for Intellectual Diaspora at the Katholische Akademie Berlin last week (the choice of location is interesting; perhaps for those of us who look forward to the afterlife, the earthly world presents a diasporic experience of sorts). READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Frontlines of World Literature

The latest in letters from Hong Kong, Palestine, and Kenya.

This week, our editors are reporting on the intersection between literature and social movements. In Hong Kong, writers reflect on the June 4 protests at Tiananmen Square, in light of  the continual tensions between China and the island. In Palestine, a new podcast features writers orienting their own work within the \ body of Palestinian literature. And in Kenya, the country mourns the loss of revolutionary playwright Micere Mugo. 

Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong

Since the National Security Law in Hong Kong came into effect in June 2020, the annual candlelight vigil for commemorating the June Fourth Tiananmen Square protests have not been organized for four years; the event’s host, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, was also dissolved in September 2021. Additionally, the event’s traditional venue, the Victoria Park in Causeway Bay, was under renovation and not available to be booked this year.

Although public commemoration was forbidden, remembrance could still be possible through writing; Cha: An Asian Literary Journal called for short submissions of reflections written about June 4, 2023—which could be directly, indirectly, or even not related to the event. The project, “Just Another Day”, also welcomed written works accompanied with photos or artwork. Fifty-four submissions were published on Cha’s blog, presenting a wide range of reflections from local and overseas writers. Translator Lucas Klein contemplates on the protest culture in Hong Kong and what he witnessed outside of the Victoria Park in his post, while Hong Kong poet Jennifer Wong contributed a prose poem on the importance of memory. Asymptote’s assistant editor of fiction Michelle Suen interweaves childhood nostalgia and postcolonial politics in her reflection, and I also tell a brief story of my personal experience of June Fourth over the years. Varied as they are, the texts testify to the unstoppable impact of the historical event, in both people’s mind and reality.

Meanwhile, as issue 72 of local bilingual poetry magazine, Voice & Verse, was just published, the magazine is organizing a reading session in collaboration with Cha, a crossover that echoes the issue’s English section theme: “Crossings”. The reading session will take place on July 12, hosted by Tammy Ho and Matthew Cheng. Local and international contributors to both journals have been invited to read their works. READ MORE…

Extinction: Missing a Whole Other World

. . . storytelling does not attempt to recover what has been lost, but creates another world that dreams of conservation. . .

In the second essay of a series considering ecological literature and writings on animal life, as collected in our Spring 2023 special feature, Charlie Ng examines the pressing issue of species extinction through Wu Ming-yi’s poignant story of grief and resurrection, “Cloudland”. By connecting an intimate loss to the broader losses caused by the Anthropocene, Wu equalises human relationships with the less visible connections between individuals and their landscape, illustrating vividly the consequences of absence to consider how storytelling and an return to indigenous knowledge can activate empathy and our impetus to preserve.

Earth is no stranger to mass extinction; the most recent, the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, was caused by a major asteroid collision, wiping out seventy-six percent of living species. In consideration of these great cycles of birth and death, it seems that lifeforms are destined to come and go—so why should we care about extinction?

Perhaps because we’re causing it. Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History has drawn public attention to the fact that the titular extinction we are currently experiencing is, unlike the previous five, attributable to human activities. As such, the sixth mass extinction has come to be referred to as the Anthropocene extinction, the consequences of which have been well-documented across the globe. One such case is Taiwan, which, despite being just roughly the size of twice that of Hawaii, has a remarkably diverse range of flora and fauna due to its forested mountains and oceanic surrounding. However, many of its native animal species have become endangered or extinct due to adverse impacts of human development such as deforestation, pollution, habitat loss, and overhunting.

Cloudland,” Taiwanese writer Wu Ming-yi’s short story in the animal-themed feature of our Spring 2023 issue, has an extinct animal at its center: the clouded leopard. Despite occasional reported sightings of the animal, experts generally believe that the leopards have been gone for decades—and such is the case in “Cloudland”, where the animal is only present through its absence. The nonexistent leopard is simultaneously a denotation of the extinction’s sad reality and a literary symbol, acting as a mythical figure and a stand-in for the protagonist’s deceased wife. In tackling grief and loss, Wu tells the story of a man named Shutter as he searches for the already gone, trying to heal by reconnecting to nature and the indigenous wisdom of intimacy between people and their environment. READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: June 2023

New work from Shumona Sinha, Dorothy Tse, and Berta Dávila!

In this month’s selection of the best in translated literature, our editors present a selection of texts that range from the intimate, to the surreal, to the furious. From Galicia, a mother writes a poetic rumination of abortion and post-partum depression. From Hong Kong, a love story unfolds between two unlikely characters as the city clamours in protest. From France, an interpreter gives a searing account of the immigration system and its many failures, in the aftermath of her own violent act.

the dear ones

The Dear Ones by Berta Dávila, translated from the Galician by Jacob Rogers, 3Times Rebel Press, 2023

Review by Samantha Siefert, Marketing Manager

Five years after becoming a mother, a woman chooses to have an abortion. This uneasy duality forms the premise of Galician author Berta Dávila’s intimate, probing exploration of motherhood in her memoir, The Dear Ones, now available in an excellent English translation by Jacob Rogers. “It takes nine months for a child to form in the womb and be born, but no one knows how long it takes for a mother to do the same,” Dávila muses, never pretending to know or even seek a precise answer to the unstated question, instead dedicating this short but intense novel to articulating plainly the spaces between the themes of motherhood—the ones discussed openly, and the ones that are not.

READ MORE…

What’s New in Translation: May 2023

New translations from the Spanish, Portuguese, and Chinese!

This month, our editors feature three titles that showcase what’s possible when a writer fully showcases a firm and brilliant insight into their reality. From a collection of short stories that investigate the violence of Latin American society, to a multifaceted depiction of colonial Mozambique, to essays that focus on the intimate dailyness of human lives in twentieth-century China, these works educate, provoke, and enthrall. Read on to find out more!

ampuero

Human Sacrifices by María Fernanda Ampuero, translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle, The Feminist Press, 2023

Review by Rubén Lopez, Editor-at-Large for Central America

In Human Sacrifices, a collection of short stories, María Fernanda Ampuero traces the deterioration of individuals who have survived an overwhelmingly violent reality. With guts, blood, and a dense anger, she escorts us to a precipice with each story, strips us naked, and delivers us to a place where the wounds of Latin American are made real, and thus can be dissected. Published by Editorial Páginas de Espuma in 2021 and now appearing in English translation by Frances Riddle, the collection contains twelve stories that question our reality as one occasionally resembling more a traitorous deception.

The stories in Human Sacrifices are profoundly Latin American, but more specifically, they describe the experience of vulnerable Latin American women: a unique kind of hell. Gendered violence is present in almost all the narratives—a bone that vertebrates the monster: “Desperate women,” states one of the protagonists, “serve as meat for the grinder. Immigrant women are bones to be pulverized into animal fodder.” The opening story, “Biography,” is perhaps the most intimate, narrating in first person the terror of being a migrant woman in a foreign country. The narrative implants the dehumanizing panic of crossing invisible borders in pursuit of a less harsh horizon, as well as the fear of becoming an anonymous number, a disappeared woman, a name written on a wall. As the narrator states: “I remember someone once told me that the stars we see have been dead for a long time, and I think that maybe the disappeared women might also shine on like that, with that same blinding light, making it easier to find them.”

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest in literary news from China, the Philippines, and Bulgaria!

This week, our editors are rounding up some exciting new developments in the word of language, from the annual edition of one of China’s most noteworthy literary awards, to cinematic adaptations of Filipino writing, to an urban festival digging into the intersections of literature and science in Bulgaria. Read on to find out more!

Xiao Yue Shan, Blog Editor, reporting for China

In one of the stories from her collection, Ba bu ban (Eight-and-a-Half), Huang Yuning writes about the private, sometimes-sacred communion that a sharing of language initiates, as with two tourists sitting together in a Frankfurt subway: “There’s at least one good thing about two Chinese people riding the subway together in a foreign country: the walls are ready-made, and language is the thing that builds a transparent cubicle all around you.”

Huang’s stories won the Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize in 2019, and this year, the prestigious award is again taking in submissions to find the next powerful young writer of Chinese-language fiction. Held jointly by the Beijing publishing house Imaginist and the Swiss brand Blancpain, the annual competition is known for seeking out original voices with an intricate attention to language, profoundly developed themes, and an outstanding voice and style that embodies the unique adventure of Chinese writing. Open to writers under the age of forty-five who have published a book between April 2022 and 2023, the winner receives a cash prize of 300,000 yuan to help develop their work. The theme of this years prize is “The Necessity of Complexity”, and in the submissions call, the prize committee asserted the essentiality of literature that addresses the present moment with a fine eye on the past and a rejection of overloaded media narratives. As they state, there is a role in writing that aims always towards truth and its complexity: “. . . because complexity is the point of origin of everything new and the commencement of everything we call the future.” Literature has the role of paying close attention to the strange, the unspoken, and the vast depths of internality; the jury aims to find a work of Chinese fiction that speaks to this task. Since the prize’s inauguration in 2018, I’ve found its selections well deserving of accolade, celebrating work from some of the most bold and talented writers working today, and like many readers of the Chinese language, I am greatly looking forward to see which titles will be spotlit this year.

The jury includes lauded Chinese writer Yiyun Li, who interestingly has gone the way of Nabokov to “renounce [her] mother tongue”, writing and publishing only in English. The writers who have chosen to taken such a path usually speak of a feeling of entrapment within their native language, and Li explained her choice by stating that English is her “private language”she has to actively think her way towards every word. Now that she has become a crucial element in deciding who is to be awarded this esteemed award of Chinese-language literature, it’s tempting to note that reading fiction is not only a way to explore the world through narratives and characters, but through the innate imaginations and freedoms that exist when words are put together in new and regenerative configurations. That is the liberation that styleevidence of that actively thinking mind behind the pagegifts to us: an encouragement to think again about tired words, those beleaguered little artifacts of human history. I think often about the writers of China, all the individuals that are constantly reaching out to embroider, reweave, and patch the fabric of that wonderful, ancient, fraught language, and I remember that words are alive. That they are always in the process of making something new, and that they are protectors and safeboxes for our wildnesses, our freedoms, and all the things that one dreams might be spoken, one day. READ MORE…

Spring 2023: Highlights from the Team

Don’t know where to begin with our latest issue? Here are some personal recommendations from our amazing staff!

I read the Spring 2023 edition of Asymptote as the NBA playoffs began in the United States, and Damantas Sabonis (son of legendary Lithuanian player Arvydas Sabonis) and the Sacramento Kings faced the defending-champion Golden State Warriors in a first-round matchup. I was immediately drawn to the nonfiction piece “Liberating Joy” (tr. Delija Valiukenas) which centers the 2003 European Basketball Championships and the collective joy that the Lithuanian team, Žalgiris, inspired in their fans all over the country. Author Julius Sasnauskas, also a priest and monk, approaches the topic from his unique perspective, incorporating Catholic doctrine into his narrative which intertwines sports, culture, and national identity.

 —Mary Hillis, Educational Arm Assistant

Alaa Abu Asad’s interview with J Carrier, for the very nature of its form, felt at times reductive of his rich investigations into the everyday, but the poetry in Asad’s visual pieces aptly captures the sentiment of (un)belonging.

Resonating very much with Hannah Arendt’s quote “it wasn’t the German language that went crazy,” Yevgenia Belorusets’s interview with Eugene Ostashevsky begins with her love of the Russian language. It’s only right that “no language can be mobilized against the tremendous violence offered by war […],” and this renders many writers and artists hopeless especially in times of insurmountable physical and linguistic violence. Yet it is still, somehow, language that rebuilds one’s voice and keeps one conscious. Ostashevsky’s question is also very apt in this regard when he argues “the idea that any language can’t express the full range of human relations and emotions is false.” Belorusets’s answer, “maybe it’s easier for us to think that it is the language that is under threat,” is at once the most poignant critique of and piercingly emotional charge against the “easier” indictment of language.

—Megan Sungyoon, Assistant Editor (Poetry)

A highlight of our animal-themed Special Feature, Yolanda González’s “Song of the Whale-road”(tr. Robin Munby) is so dense and weighty in meaning that I feel the reader cannot but be transformed; the original piece, as well as the translation, so deftly compresses eons of whale-years and experience into an exceptionally moving and eloquent and elegant piece. I particularly love the ambiguity of the pronouns—it takes a few readings to wrap your mind around the narrative voices and personages, which further adds to the ‘darkness’ of the piece and the impression of coming out into the ‘light’ of mental clarity with each read.

 —Michelle Chan Schmidt, Assistant Editor (Fiction)

Let it Go by Mariana Berenice Bredow Vargas, has an urgent, propulsive rhythm in Forrest Gander’s translation, and, in the stunning audio version by the author, feels almost like a hymn, each mesmerizing, sweeping me into the vision of the poem. After reading the dazzling Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug (trans. Kari Dickson), I was thrilled to see “But Out There—Out There—,” a nonfiction piece by Øyehaug, this time in Francesca M. Nichols’s translation, and this essay is similarly, satisfyingly interior, funny, inviting, and surprising, although it is itself focused on the quality of “incompleteness,” which, for Øyehaug, makes writing a novel so difficult. The excerpt from Wu Ming-Yi’s Cloudland, translated by Catherine Xinxin Yu, is concerned with a relationship between text and life, which is similar to the relationship between dreams and experience. This delicate story of a man, following the traces of his late wife’s short story about cloud leopards, into a mountain forest, where he uploads mapping data and images into a cloud of a different sort, was one of the most memorable pieces in the issue, and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for the English publication of the novel. I’ve been intrigued by what I’ve heard of Mircea Cărtărescu’s Solenoid, but even if I hadn’t, Alex Lanz’s review would have been well worth the read for Lanz’s kaleidoscopic descriptions and grapplings with the book’s allusions and form, and with Cărtărescu’s “Bucharest, that ‘open-air museum’ of melancholia.”

 —Heather Green, Visual Editor

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To Save My Own Life With Experimentation: A Conversation with Yan Jun

[I]t's about doing something, anything, or nothing in a mundane environment—and treating it as everything.

 Yan Jun is a poet, experimental musician, impresario, critic—and, notably, a creative driving force in Beijing’s experimental music scene since the early 2000s. In his illustrious career, he has published not only his own poetry and music, but also the work of colleagues who might not easily be seen elsewhere. A local fixture with global presence, he’s been featured journals of both literary and sound culture, played in venues from Beijing to Berlin, and has collaborated with many international musicians. His work stands out for spanning genres and straddling media, and his perspective is important not only as an artist, but also as someone negotiating different traditions.

I first came to know of Yan Jun through his Sub Jam label, and subsequently through his Waterland Kwanyin experimental music night, which featured different musicians every week for improvised performances. Much later, I had the pleasure of co-translating (with Haiying Weng) his 2018 sequence of irreverent poetry, 100 Poems of 10,000 Elephants, and then his new book of prose, Berlin Reflections, a collection of reminiscences and reflections on aesthetics and the function of art. In this following interview, I spoke with him on his various writerly and musical projects, which span intimate experiences of ritualized sound-making to large-scale installations of ambient imagination. 

Matt Turner (MT): To begin, can you say a little bit about your poetry, as well as the relationship of your music to poetry?

Yan Jun (YJ): I started writing poetry when I was thirteen years old, when around half of my classmates were also writing it—it was a bit of a trend in school for a while. Back then, I thought I would be a poet, but I just spent many years pursuing the phantom of being a poet, complete with romantic cliches like being drunk on stage, having a chaotic personal life, that kind of thing.

When I began making music around 2003, the way I wrote changed, and I slowly adopted a rather quiet and reflective style. Of course, my music had already been already going that way; eventually, I no longer wanted to scream out in public as either a musician or poet. After some turns musically, I arrived on a new stage—where I no longer concerned myself with reputation, but instead allowed myself to make stupid, or even failed music.

At the time I didn’t know what that meant, but I felt I could be a stupid musician making my own sounds and performing my own way. The poems then, also changed—from feigning a quiet Buddhism to writing from my tiny and odd mind. I’ve been away from the poetry scene long enough that I write only for myself now. It’s really wonderful to give up on being a good poet or a good musician. Of course, I’d still say that my poems deal with my past, and its phantoms.  READ MORE…

Our Spring 2023 Edition Is Here!

Featuring Fernando Pessoa, Franca Mancinelli, Wu Ming-Yi, and Yolanda González in our animal-themed special feature

Experience the world anew through non-human eyes in “Vivarium,” our Spring 2023 issue! From macaques to marmots, muntjacs to mosshoppers and microscopic prokaryotes, a superabundance of literary life overflows from 30 different countries. In this thriving biosphere, you’ll find work from Estonia and Oman flowering in the same soil as Alaa Abu Asad’s Wild Plants and our first entry from Bolivia via Pulitzer Prizewinner Forrest Gander. The same Pangaean ecosystem sustains our animal-themed special feature headlined by Yolanda González, recipient of the 2001 Premio Café Gijón Prize, and 2018 Booker International longlistee Wu Ming-Yi. Alongside these, there are the always thought-provoking words of Italian poet Franca Mancinelli, which bloom in both the Interview and Poetry section—the latter also shelters Fernando Pessoa, whose brilliant co-translators Margaret Jull Costa and Patricio Ferrari have rendered him in one of his most mordant heteronyms, Álvaro de Campos.

announcement READ MORE…

Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

Literary news from Palestine and China!

This week, our editors are bringing news of exciting readings, groundbreaking publications, and community events. From Palestine, a new poetry publication brings translations to the forefront, and in China, a renowned playwright debuts work and honors her community. Read on to find out more!

Carol Khoury, Editor-at-Large for Palestine and the Palestinians, reporting from Palestine

In the month of Ramadan, life in Palestine is relatively quiet, with reduced working hours, afternoons devoted to preparing iftar food, and evenings reserved for prayer or social/familial activities. However, the Ramallah Municipality is making the most of this time; from mid-March to mid-October, the library is holding bi-weekly talks with authors and creative writers to explore and discuss their achievements, enriching the social dialogue on various issues related to the worlds of writers and creators they interact with. The program, titled “The Meaning”, will host sixteen renowned and beloved Palestinian poets and novelists in person. All guests will be speaking in Arabic, though Ramallah Library is considering posting recordings with English subtitles. Keep an eye out for these exciting events!

Just across on the side of the Jordan River, the Palestinian/Jordanian poet Tahseen al-Khateeb surprised everybody this week with publishing the first notebook (daftar) of Dafaater al-Shi‘er (poetry notebooks). Described as “an electronic magazine specialized in poetry and the surrounding arts,” the whole project is the sole effort of al-Khateeb’s. On its Facebook page, he introduces the publication as follows: “Poetic notebooks, made according to the mood of Tahseen al-Khateeb, who translates the notebooks’ pages.” READ MORE…

Principle of Decision: Translation from Chinese

This column is an exercise in transparency, an effort to lift the curtain and show the undercurrents of the translator’s mind.

The second edition of Principle of Decision—our column that highlights the decision-making processes of translators by asking several contributors to offer their own versions of the same passage—demonstrates translation’s capacity to reveal shades of meaning in the source text—here a passage from Chinese writer 林棹 Lin Zhao.

轻而又轻的一天。时隔多年,那轻而又轻的一天生机犹在。如果你推却一切责任,对他人的痛苦视而不见,去拥抱巨大的明亮、明亮的寂静、寂静的自我,你就能短暂地占有那种轻而又轻。

qīng ér yòu qīng        de yī tiān            
轻而又轻                     的一天。
A light and light         day.

shí gé duō nián
时隔多年
After many years,

nà qīng ér yòu qīng de yī tiān     
那轻而又轻的一天
that light and light day

shēng jī yóu zài
生机犹在。
still exists.

rú guǒ nǐ tuī què                 
如果你推却
If you push aside

yī qiē zé rèn
一切责任,
all responsibilities,

duì tā rén de tòng kǔ         
对他人的痛苦
to the pain of others

shì ér bù jiàn
视而不见,
turn a blind eye,

qù yōng bào          
去拥抱
go to embrace

jù dà de míng liàng, míng liàng de jì jìng
巨大的明亮、明亮的寂静、
the enormous and bright, bright silence,

jì jìng de zì wǒ
寂静的自我,
the self of silence

nǐ jiù néng duǎn zàn dì zhān yǒu   
你就能短暂地占有
you can also briefly possess

nà zhǒng qīng ér yòu qīng
那种轻而又轻。
that kind of light and light.

This passage is taken from the Chinese writer 林棹 Lin Zhao’s debut novel, 流溪 Liu xi, published in 2020. Its narrative takes place throughout Lingnan, a region on China’s southeast coast, weaving through dense urbanities and viridescent ruralities, the subtropical heat and myriad languages, to tell the story of a young woman whose daily life, from its very earliest days, is inextricable from violence, metamorphosis, and fantasy. A tribute to high Nabokovian style, Liu xi is a stunning, inimitable example of what is possible in the Chinese language—the music it pronounces, the visions it conjures, the delicacy and intricacy that can be excavated from its logograms.

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest from China, Sweden, and Kenya!

This week, our editors-at-large report on recent science fiction adaptations in China, the Sámi National Day in Sweden, and the passing of literary icons in both East Africa and China. From a revived book festival to the runner-up of the Safal-Cornell Kiswahili Prize, read on to learn more!

Jiaoyang Li, Editor-at-Large, reporting for China

Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award-winning novel Three Bodies was recently adapted into a TV series and streamed more than 3 million times in a week on Tencent Video, making it the most popular TV series in China. In addition to the live action, Bilibili, the largest animation website in China, also launched an animated series of the novel.

Although we must recognize it as a milestone in Chinese science fiction literature for IP adaptation, there is one thing to question: Why is it always Three Bodies? There are plenty of other wonderful sci-fi collections written by female Chinese writers needing our attention. For example, New York-based bilingual sci-fi writer Mu Ming’s fiction collection 宛转环 (The Serpentine Band), an excerpt of which was published by Clarkesworld Magazine in 2021, will be fully released in Chinese by One Way Books in 2023. 

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Weekly Dispatches From the Front Lines of World Literature

The latest from Hong Kong, Guatemala, and the Czech Republic!

In this week’s roundup of literary news, we are paying tribute to the legacy of monumental writers. As Hong Kong mourns the recent loss of one of the country’s emblematic authors, Xi Xi, the Czech Republic commemorates the 100th anniversary of Jaroslav Hašek’s passing. In Guatemala, beloved writer of personal and continent-spanning histories, Eduardo Halfon, takes a new step into global recognition. Read on to find out more!

Charlie Ng, editor-at-large, reporting from Hong Kong

Renowned Hong Kong writer Cheung Yin, more commonly known by her pen name Xi Xi, passed away on December 18, 2022 from heart failure. Originally born in Shanghai, Cheung came to Hong Kong in 1950 at the age of twelve. She was educated at Heep Yunn School and the Grantham College of Education, and became a primary school teacher after graduation. Among her most prominent works are My City and Flying Carpet, both urban novels that reflect everyday lives and the transformation of Hong Kong. Another acclaimed novel, Mourning a Breast, is a semi-autobiographical work based on Cheung’s own experience of fighting breast cancer. Cheung also wrote poems and was prolific in essays, often published as articles for newspaper columns. Her most recent publications include the historical novel The Imperial Astronomer and the poetry collection Carnival of the Animals.

Loved by all generations of readers, Cheung is known for her playfulness, imagination, and experimental techniques. Blending real and fantastic elements, some of her works are described as embodying a style of “fairy-tale realism.” The Chinese characters of her pen name, Xi Xi 西西, represents the image of a little girl in skirt playing hopscotch. Cheung was awarded the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature and the Cikada Prize in 2019, and the Life Achievement Award of the 16th Hong Kong Arts Development Awards in 2022. A memorial service was held at Cheung’s alma mater, Heep Yunn School, on January 8 to commemorate her literary achievements, and on January 14, another memorial meeting was organised in Taipei, in which Hong Kong and Taiwan writers gathered to recite her works. Her translator, Jennifer Feeley, who translated Not Written Words and Mourning a Breast, also wrote a memorial, “A Translator Like Me” (available in both English and Chinese) to honour the lauded writer.

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Tunnel of Forking Paths: On Can Xue’s Dystopian Moral Fable, Mystery Train

For the author, the deconstruction of language allows her to explore themes close to her oeuvre, but also to her personal experience.

Mystery Train by Can Xue, translated from the Chinese by Natascha Bruce, Sublunary Editions, 2022

To board Can Xue’s novella, Mystery Train, the reader must surrender entirely to a world plunged into eternal night, where characters give themselves up to be devoured by wolves and execute perfect needlework in pitch-black darkness, where fear and worship surround a power figure known only as the conductor, and where many are unable to make any sense of the cruelties perpetrated upon them. Can’s Matrix-style text offers little answers, opening up instead a multitude of unsettling questions about the body, induced guilt, and the illusion of choice.

In her introduction, Can (the pseudonym of Deng Xiaohua), is generous enough to provide a warning to the unsuspecting reader: “We might decide that the life the artist is describing belongs to someone else, and has nothing to do with us. But it does have to do with us—because, for us, the people of the new millennium, the body-soul contradiction is vitally important.” Indeed, Mystery Train can be read as a fable on the struggle between the presence and demands of the body—down to its most basic instincts such as sex or bowel movements—and the incessant inquiries of the soul, which demand explanation yet continually fail to culminate in satisfying answers. The author goes on to explicates the purpose of this work in the short introduction: “Mystery Train characters suffer, but never in vain. Hardship forces each one to grow, and mature, and to become tougher than they were before. Gradually, they form themselves into responsible, creative individuals. The veiled yet nevertheless intense longing for death that pervades the story is in fact a longing for performance—for a death-defying stunt played out on a clifftop.”

As promised, Can is not tender with her characters. The protagonist, Scratch, has been working on a poultry farm; the train is taking him on a business trip to a remote city in the north of China, bordering Russia. He soon discovers after boarding his train, however, that he has most likely been fired—but nothing is clear. He recalls a strange send-off by the farm’s boss: “At the bus stop, the manager grasped Scratch’s hand in his own callused one and said, with strange formality, ‘I’m sorry. I haven’t taken good enough care of you. Please forgive me.’ Not yet sixty and already going senile, thought Scratch. It made no sense. Why all the emotion? He was hardly being sent to his death.“ In such short, sharp sentences, Can builds an atmosphere of oppression—a sense of imminent danger in a forest of undecipherable symbols and signs.

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