Category Archives: Fiction in translation

Truth really is stranger than fiction

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When I post in ShortStops, it’s usually about short stories that the folk at Paper Republic have translated and posted online. But this month, we’ve branched out into non-fiction, and we’ve found a stunning piece of reportage. “Searching for Bodies” by Ma Jinyu, translated by Kate Costello, explores the art of corpse preservation. Here’s just a taster: ‘I first saw old man Liang’s ads pasted under the “gonorrea, syphilis” and “cure impotence” ads at the mine. “Corpse preservation.” Followed by old man Liang’s telephone number….The most difficult bodies were the ones that needed to be stitched back together. The leg bone needed to be sewn back into the muscle, or the organs needed to be put back in place and the stomach skin stitched back over them. Old man Liang said that after death your skin becomes very hard, and a normal needle couldn’t pierce through it. He made the big needle that he used himself, grinding down the spoke of a bicycle wheel into a point. ….Old man Liang said that when he was young and working in the mine, there would be flies and coal dust in his lunch. His two companions might be chatting one moment, but when he turned to look they’d been crushed to death by falling coal. He couldn’t see the blood in the dark, and he lay by their sides for an afternoon nap, thinking to himself, “They are also having a rest.” ‘

Set in and around the coal mines, Ma’s essay speaks of resilience and courage, stoicism and humanity. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

“Searching for Bodies” is the second instalment in our Read Paper Republic: China Dispatches series. Our three-way collaboration between Paper Republic, One-Way Street Magazine (单读) and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ China Channel focuses on the best non-fiction coming from China right now. Check back next month for the next essay.

Ever heard of Singles Day? New series of Read Paper Republic short stories

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11.11: November 11th, originally a day for singletons in China to either bemoan or celebrate their unattached status, but increasingly an excuse for unbridled consumerism under the auspices of the various online shopping behemoths. At Paper Republic we’re going to be stripping back the commercial self-indulgence and marking the occasion with a new run of four short stories about love, longing, and loneliness. We’re very happy to have Michelle Deeter as our managing editor for the series, which is entitled “Bare Branches” (a literal translation of the Chinese name for the occasion, 光棍节); starting this week, you can look forward to seeing a new story appearing on the site every Thursday for the next month!

Here’s the link to the first story in the series, “Forty-Nine Degrees” by Song Aman, translated by Michelle Deeter: https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/49degrees/

 

Autumn Chronicles: Speed-Book Clubbing with four shorts translated from Chinese

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Are you within reach of London and interested in contemporary Chinese fiction? Come to “Autumn Chronicles: Book Clubbing with Britain’s Most Loved Translators” at the Guanghwa Bookshop, 112 Shaftesbury Ave, London W1D 5EJ, on Tuesday, 5 September 2017 from 19:30 to 21:00 (BST). Join us for face-to-face discussions with four award-winning Chinese literature translators: Nicky Harman, Natascha Bruce, Emily Jones and Helen Wang. Themed “Autumn Chronicles”, our forthcoming speed-bookclub will present four tales in which four women are coming to the end of their lives. Liu Ting’s Autumn Harvest Chronicles, a woman reflects on a grim past as she harvests the family’s buckwheat; in Ho Sok Fong’s The Wall, a giant wall drives an old woman to search obsessively for a cat; In Fan Xiaoqing’s Ying Yang Alley, a surprise visit from a stranger brightens an old lady’s afternoon; in Jia Pingwa’s elegiac Back-flow River, a childless woman makes the bravest decision of her life. These elegantly-written stories, by both male and female authors, are both sad and funny but always readable. There will be plenty to discuss! Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/autumn-chronicles-book-clubb…

“Dragonworld”, an evening of short stories at London’s Free Word Centre, Monday 12th December 2016

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If you love exploring the world, storytelling and books, join us on our next fictional journey that’s just as rewarding as the real thing. Whether you’re a London local or new to the city, come and connect with others who want to see the world with fresh eyes and open minds.

Free Word Centre, and Paper-Republic.org translators , are running a speedbookclubbing evening at Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA, Monday 12th December 2016. We’ll be presenting four short stories translated from Chinese. Sign up, read the stories in advance (or read the Cheat Sheet, if you don’t have time to read them all) and come along for some brilliant discussion.

“Dragonworld”: In these tales of death, desire, and despair, a police officer investigating a brutal murder interrogates his chief suspect, but the details of the crime itself are constantly shifting. A woman hopes a knight in shining armour will offer her an escape from the road she seems destined to pace forever. A dispute between two witnesses to a killing results in a fatal duel. A teenage gamer must find a way to deal with the concrete-hungry dragons that are somehow taking over his town.

Here’s the link: https://www.freewordcentre.com/whats-on/dragonworld-china?spektrix_bounce=true. Do come if you can. The last time we ran a speedbookclubbing event, it was a big success, a sell-out in fact.

Afterlives, when death is just the beginning… Read Paper Republic new series of shorts

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Following the first year of Read Paper Republic weekly stories, we present a new mini-series of six stories, “Afterlives”, in which death is merely the beginning of the story.

On 27.10.16, we posted Dragon Boat, about ghost sex! The protagonist, Yuye, wanders around coastal areas of Hong Kong at Dragon Boat Festival, encounters a ghostly girl, and meets an unfortunate end when he sleeps with her.

On 3.11.16, the story was Dragonworld, in which video games addict Zhaishao finds his town has been infested with concrete-guzzling dragons – but is unsure whether they actually exist, or are figments of digitally-stimulated imagination.

Next Thursday, 10.11.16, our story will be Where Did I Lose You? Wang You reflects on how that ubiquitous item of social intercourse, the name card, can take on a weird life of its own. He is contacted by an old lady who says that her deceased husband often talked about him. Wang has no memory of him whatsoever, but he invents some stories to satisfy her….Go online to read what happens next.

We at Paper Republic are a collective of literary translators, promoting new Chinese fiction in translation. Read Paper Republic is a free online publication initiative for readers who wonder what new Chinese fiction in English translation has to offer and would like to dip a toe in the water. The first run of 53 stories, posted June 2015 to June 2016, are still available to read. You can download a full table of contents as a PDF here.

Paper Republic celebrates Women in Translation month, August 2016

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From June 2015 to June 2016, the Read Paper Republic team published a short story(or essay or poem) translated from Chinese, one a week for a year. For last year’s #WITmonth we published four pieces written by women and translated by women (nos 7-10). The rest of the time, we didn’t pay too much attention to the gender of the writer. So it’s cheering to see that over the entire year, of the 53 pieces we published, 22 were written by women. They are all available online – free to view here: https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/. We’d like to thank all our authors and translators, and hope that you, the readers, enjoy the stories.

Also, in May 2016, we drew up a list for The Literary Hub, of 10 CHINESE WOMEN WHOSE WRITING SHOULD BE TRANSLATED: WRITING FROM MAINLAND CHINA, HONG KONG, AND TAIWAN. Read it here: http://lithub.com/10-chinese-women-whose-writing-should-be-translated/.

Read Paper Republic: Season One, and Survey!

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So, it’s rather gone by in a whirlwind, but we’ve reached the end of our first year of Read Paper Republic. Starting June 18 of last year, we’ve published 53 short pieces online, one each Thursday (there’s 53 weeks in a year, right?), and today’s publication of Li Jingrui’s One Day, One of the Screws Will Come Loose marks the end of what we’ve come to think of as “Read Paper Republic, Season One”.

We’re taking a short break! Nicky Harman, Helen Wang, Eric Abrahamsen and Dave Haysom have done a remarkable amount of work over the past year, and it’s time for a breather while we think about where to go from here.

Apropos of that, we have a request to make of you! We’ve created a very short online survey that we very much hope you’ll take a moment to fill out. It’s only a page, and will be invaluable to us as we look back over the past year of publications, and think about the future. Please take five minutes and help us fill it out!

So what will be next? We’re not sure yet. Over the next six months, we’re likely to make some more additions to the RPR lineup, probably based around events and author visits in various parts of the world. “Season One” was done with no funding whatsoever (thanks to all our editors, translators and authors!), and we’re very aware that we could make a hypothetical “Season Two” a lot better with a bit of support.

Got any good ideas for doing that? Please let us know in the survey!

READ PAPER REPUBLIC presents four short stories about women in China, in a “speed-bookclubbing event”

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“That Damned Thing She Said” Part of the Wanderlust series, at Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London EC1R 3GA, Telephone: 020 7324 2570
on Monday 14 March, 18.45 – 20.45; Tickets £5/£3 from https://www.freewordcentre.com/events/detail/tdtss-china

With International Women’s Day (8 March) in mind, we have selected four short stories from China, focussing on hot issues such as sexual freedom, political disappearances, “left-over” women, compromising situations. Sign up and read the stories in advance, then come along for some speed-bookclubbing. Four experienced translators will lead four groups simultaneously. Discuss one story for 20 minutes, then move on to the next. Discuss the subject matter, the style, the writing, the authors (does it make a difference that two of the stories are written and translated by women, and the other two by men?). You’ll get a chance to ask any questions you like. But most of all, this is an interactive event: we want to hear what you think, which ones you liked (or not) and what intrigued or puzzled you.

Story 1: “That Damned Thing She Said” by FU Yuli, (Tr. Nicky Harman). A woman trapped in a loveless marriage has an awkward, but ultimately empowering, one-night stand.

Story 2: “Missing” by LI Jingrui (Tr. Helen Wang). A wife comes home to find her husband has disappeared, or rather “been disappeared”.

Story 3: “Mahjong” by FENG Tang (Tr. Brendan O’Kane). The colleagues of a career woman apply their engineering expertise to the intractable problem of finding her a worthy husband.

Story 4: “The One Who Picks Flowers” by LIU Qingbang (Tr. Lee Yew Leong). A young woman refuses to sleep with the boss, with catastrophic consequences to her family.

Visit the Free Word Centre website, Events page to download the stories in advance and to buy your ticket. Join Read Paper Republic translators to discuss the stories and the depiction of women in contemporary China at Free Word Centre on 14 March 2016.

READ PAPER REPUBLIC, an ambitious project committed to publishing one free-to-view short story (or poem or essay) a week for a year, June 2015 – June 2016. Follow us on
Facebook: Paper Republic. Twitter: @PaperRepublic
Wechat: PaperRepublic 微信号 : PaperRepublic
and on our website: http://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/

READ PAPER REPUBLIC celebrates half-way mark with a story co-published in The Guardian and Asymptote magazine

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READ PAPER REPUBLIC, as some of you shortstop readers will know, is a project run by four of us on Paper-Republic.org, with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary Chinese literature. We’re publishing a short story (or essay or poem) every Thursday for a year, until June 2016, so that means we’re now at our half-way mark. Our aim has been to reach the general reader, to enable them to dip a toe in the water, so we have chosen as broad a range of stories as possible, something, we hope, to suit all tastes. You might like to read Chad Post’s review about us on his Three Percent blog on 11th December.

This week we’ve collaborated with Asymptote Journal and The Guardian newspaper: our story, “Venus”, by Taiwan’s queer writer Chen Xue, translated by Josh Stenberg, appeared simultaneously on Read Paper Republic and Asymptote (and, through Translation Tuesdays by Asymptote) in The Guardian newspaper). Asymptote have also run an interview with me about Read Paper Republic on their blog.

Our project is really gaining momentum, as more people hear about it. But don’t take my word for it. Go read the stories themselves, 27 now to choose from, free-to-view on https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/. We’ve posted some great reads!

A Very Topical Story

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Read Paper Republic hasn’t posted on Short Stops for a while, but we’ve haven’t stopped publishing our weekly short stories translated from the best of contemporary Chinese fiction. I hope you’ve managed to catch some – there’s something there for all tastes.

Well, today’s a bit of a red-letter day. At the beginning of the week, the Chinese government announced the ending of its One-Child-Per-Family policy. At the same time, a talented young woman writer called LU Min wrote a thought-provoking, and thoughtful, story about her own family’s experiences during the years when the policy was at its most draconian. We’ve translated it and posted it here: https://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/a-second-pregnancy-1980/ . Here’s how Lu Min begins: ‘We often tease my little sister – “Your life’s worth 56 yuan” – so many years have passed that we no longer feel the pain, and we can see a funny side to it.’

Read, and enjoy.

A Second Pregnancy-LuMin-HWang:

Read Paper Republic: New short stories in Translation

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We at Read Paper Republic are a collective of literary translators, promoting new Chinese fiction in translation. Between 18th June 2015 and 16th June 2016, we are publishing a complete, free-to-view short story (or essay or poem), every Thursday (that’s #TranslationThurs) for a whole year. As part of Women In Translation Month, we have focused on four hugely talented and very different women writers (all the translators are women too!) for our short stories in August, 2015.

  • First up, Regurgitated by Dorothy (Hiu Hung) Tse, translated by Karen Curtis. A disturbingly [sur]real tale about a city that devours its children.
  • Then we have Missing by Li Jingrui, translated by Helen Wang. What would you do if your husband went missing for a few months? And then turned up as randomly as he disappeared?
  • Third comes A Woman, at Forty by Zhang Ling, translated by Emily Jones, who writes in her introduction: ‘Is there a word that means a sort of gentle, everyday disappointment? The kind that isn’t a crushing bolt from the blue but something that wears you down gradually over time?’
  • Then, Sissy Zhong by Yan Ge, translated by Nicky Harman: ‘Yan Ge’s stories of small-town life are full of acute comments on human relationships. She has a wonderful ear for the things that remain unsaid, as well as the way people actually talk to each other.’
  • And for the final story in our clutch of five, on Friday 28 August, there’s a story by author and poet Wang Xiaoni, translated by Eleanor Goodman. Yes, it will be one day late, but it’s worth waiting for!

Challenging, weird, funny, characterful, dark, beautiful, poignant, tragic, our stories are all of these and more. Don’t delay: dip a toe in the water, and start reading our short stories now! http://paper-republic.org/pubs/read/ or follow us on Facebook (Paper Republic) or Twitter @PaperRepublic.

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