Just in time for fall in the northern hemisphere, we have a special treat for nature lovers this Translation Tuesday: Yao Yao’s “Colourful Fruit Trees“ is in essence a paean to a wonder of nature and the conduit through which the warmth of the sun reaches into the sometime troubled lives of its myriad characters—some friends of the author in real life, others fictional. This is a living, breathing tapestry that is more than the sum of its parts. Thanks to translator Samuel Liangxing Luo, this marvel of a creative nonfiction that uses the list so well is now accessible to English readers.
University teacher Frances Mayes, who had left San Francisco for a vacation in Tuscany, discovered a fascinating old house named “Yearning For The Sun.” There were hazel trees in front of the steps, fig trees by the well, and, on the surrounding hillside, 20 plum trees, 117 olive trees, along with countless other apricot, apple, and pear trees. These fruit trees were strikingly colourful and the scenery magnificent. Enchanted, she dug deep into her savings and put everything on the line to buy the house. Flooded with sunshine, her days there were brilliant and happy.
Cao Jie, who came to the city of Fuzhou to teach animation, connected frame-by-frame the images of the sky above the university city and the trees along the Minjiang River to create a Fuzhou version of Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The farm-style lychee and longan trees planted in the past were kept at the new campus. Every time she proctored for final examinations and looked out of the windows, she would see fresh lychee fruits shining in red on the branches, where two or three boys would be climbing and passing the fruits on to beautiful girls.
Cao Jie climbed all kinds of trees in her hometown of Chuandong. As a child, she fell from a red pomelo tree and pierced her eyelid on coal debris on the ground. There was a big yellow fig tree near the dormitory building at her middle school campus. Sometimes, she climbed up the tree and stayed alone quietly or had a nap there. Other times, she and three or four other classmates would sit and chat on branches more than ten metres high, just like the aliens living in the Hometree in Avatar. Cao Jie painted the best gouache for many trees. She was familiar with painting the details of the yellow fig tree, the winding branches, the tender yellow bud tips, and the little red fleshy fruits. There was also a big yellow fig tree at the university campus. Disguised by the fig tree, students turned over the wall, merged into the night, and played outside.
Joy mentioned that after self-studying in class one night, a boy waiting by the roadside gave her two mangoes. She brought them back to the dormitory and put them on her pillow to smell the fragrance, only to find a little mouse had bitten through the mosquito net and was walking across her feet with its sharp paws. Aili once talked to a girl softly under a mango tree at campus. After graduation, their love was like a mango core, sticking to veins interwoven with each other. Aili acknowledged that he felt moved by Shu Ting’s poem Farewell. “You open the blue notebook / Overnight sound of rain under the mango tree / Write two lines of poetry and you leave.”
By contrast, the farewell Reeves gave to the talented writer Carson McCullers was both violent and joyful: “One day Reeves made a serious suicide attempt by hanging himself from a pear tree in their orchard . . .The limb broke under his weight and she went out to investigate the cracking noise, the thud . . . After she cut him loose, she reportedly admonished him: ‘Please, Reeves, if you must commit suicide, do it somewhere else. Just look at what you did to my favorite pear tree.’” Whether the pear tree is worth her forgetting or remembering is not known. But what is known is “those memories bathed in the bright sunlight / [reappear] on quiet days / from time to time.”
Kaixiong often thinks of the jujube trees in his hometown of Gutian. On the hillside opposite to the ancestral house grew tall jujube trees. He used bamboo to make a bow, cut a hemp stem to make an arrow, and used a small bamboo piece to make an arrowhead. With his self-made bow and arrows, he shot down the jujube fruits. Later, the tree was uprooted by a typhoon. The orchard, with loquat and pear trees, in Yishi’s hometown of Lianjiang also lit up his childhood. After he climbed onto the tree, he realised the pears were too high and failed to reach them. He could not fulfil his wish of picking fruits until his classmate invited him to pick their peaches. The next day, however, he was called by the head teacher because a girl had accused him of stealing them.
In the children’s picture book, The Giving Tree, a boy never feels guilt for taking. The apple tree, on all occasions, exerts all efforts to give him abundant and colourful love and is even willing to sacrifice itself to be a stump so that he can sit and rest when he returns as a tired, elderly man. Emotion nourished by colourful fruit trees will always send forth radiant warmth.
Translated from the Chinese by Samuel Liangxing Luo
Watch this space for a Q&A with Yao Yao this Saturday.
Yao Yao (摇摇), the pen name of Yao Qingqun (姚青群), is a senior editor and writer in China. She is also a registered member of China Writers Association. Yao Yao resides in the city of Fuzhou, Fujian Province. Her published literary works include the collection of her short stories 玫瑰灰 (Dried Roses) and the collection of her essays 说好不说名字 (As Mentioned, No Names Are Mentioned), out this year. She is the executive editor-in-chief of the Editorial Office of the Journal of The Open University of Fujian.
Samuel Liangxing Luo is based in Gisborne, New Zealand. He worked as a translator and interpreter in China after his graduation from Anhui University with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1992. He obtained the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University in 2021 and is now a PhD candidate in Literary Translation Studies at The University of Adelaide, Australia.
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