Ethnic ChinaLit

You’d hardly know it, but in late December 2012, the Committee for Promotion of Creative Writing by Zhuang Authors (壮族作家创作促进会) announced the 5 winners of its Zhuang Literature Awards (壮族文学奖) for original writing in Chinese:

Novels

• 《搁浅在夏天的雪》by Ming Mei (明媚)
• 《跨越门槛的一种姿势》by Pan Yingyu (潘莹宇)
• 《叶家老大是农民》by Lu Cheng (路成)

Essays

• 《根是一条河》by Liao Qingtang (廖庆堂)

Poetry

• 《芬芳飞翔的歌谣》by Huang Peng (黄鹏)

Four winners were also given awards for their works written in Zhuang. They are: Shi Caiyi (石才以), Ling Xingning (零兴宁) and Gan Shuowen (甘说文) for novels; Mo Keli (莫克利) for essays; and Meng Yanqun (蒙燕群) for a literary translation from Chinese into Zhuang.

With a population of around 18 million, the Zhuang (壮族) are second in number in China only to the majority Han. Concentrated in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, but also scattered throughout the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Hunan and Guangdong, the Zhuang are perhaps further along in the acculturation process than the Tibetans and the Uyghurs.

There is an ancient Zhuang script, and the language can be written in Latin letters. However, most Zhuang literature is now penned in Chinese characters. For a good backgrounder on the written language, see Gerard A. Postiglione’s China’s National Minority Education: Culture, State, Schooling and Development . Or check out this free excerpt: Zhuang Language and Literacy.

The 24-strong group of judges has announced the shortlist for the “National Literature Magazine Annual Awards” (2012 《民族文学》年度奖), as follows (eligible works must have been published in 2012 editions of the magazine):

“2012 National Literature Magazine Awards”

《民族文学》年度奖

Published in Chinese Edition

Published in Minority Language Editions Read the rest of this entry »

The 10th Junma Ethnic Literary Awards (骏马奖) have been announced. Open to works published in the PRC during 2008-11 by members of ethnic groups other than the majority Han, the competition is a politically correct affair co-organized—predictably—by the state-sponsored Chinese Writers Association, which claims more than 1,000 non-Han writers among its 8,000+ members, and the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. One of the judges is the omnipresent Li Jingze, editor-in-chief of People’s Literature (人民文学) and the new quarterly of Chinese literature in translation, Pathway (路灯), and also a long-time judge for China’s most prestigious literary competition, the Mao Dun Literature Prize (矛盾文学奖).

Here’s the list of the winners:

Published in 1908, a rare dictionary of the Buyi language—Essai de dictionnaire dioi-français reproduisant la langue parlée par les tribus Thai de la Haute rivière de l’Ouest (布法辞典)—compiled by two French missionaries (Joseph Esquirol & Gustave Williatte) has long been slated for translation into Chinese. Attempts were made to complete the project in the late 1970s and again in 1989, but according to a recent report published on the China Ethnic Literature Network (布依文化百科全书), for “certain reasons” they were not successful.

Propaganda Dep't official checks out the dictionary: will government support speed up or slow down publication?

According to Wikipedia, the Bùyī  “live in semi-tropical, high-altitude forests of Guizhou province, as well as in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, and speak a Tai language.”

The report doesn’t explicitly state the past or current obstacles to the dictionary’s translation and publication. One reason noted is the fact that it is written in “old French” (古法语), a somewhat bizarre claim given that 19th–century French is still quite understandable to your typical francophone.

Perhaps more insightful, in its own way, is this explanation offered by Guo Tangliang (郭堂亮), head editor at Guizhou Nationalities Publishing House (贵州民族出版社), who is taking part in the latest attempt to prepare this reference work’s first-ever appearance in Chinese (Italics are mine):

. . .publishing the French-Buyi Dictionary is a big project and should be undertaken with a scientific and serious attitude. Since this book was created by French missionaries who had penetrated deeply into ethnic minority regions, the culture and customs of China’s Buyi people are seen through foreign eyes, and therefore evidence a certain bias. If it were directly translated, published and distributed, there would be issues related to matters such as its authorship, copyright and relationships between different ethnic groups.

Put bluntly, it looks like we can expect the final copy to be “edited” to ensure that we get an “unbiased” view of the Buyi and their language.

Interesting. I wonder: has the same sort of “editing” been done on classics like the still widely-consulted Kangxi Dictionary  (康熙字典)—compiled  in 1716 when foreigners (the Manchu), not the Han, ruled China?

Liang Hanchang (梁汉昌), himself a Zhuang (壮族), reportedly visited over 500 hamlets in remote areas of Guangxi, Yunnan, Guangdong, Guizhou and Hunan (5 年拍摄) in order to document the dying art of weaving presented in the newly published Chinese-language <美丽的锦绣—壮族服饰> (Beautiful Brocades: Zhuang Attire).

Launched by Jieli Publishing (接力出版社) , the 312-page volume features more than 800 photos, including the steps involved in embroidery (刺绣), tapestry (织锦) and indigo dyeing (靛染工艺), and Zhuang wearing their traditional attire.

Some 205 projects proposed by 171 China publishers are set to benefit from some pretty hefty funding—a total of RMB346,000,000 (US$54.8m)—via the 2012 China Publication Fund (2012 国家出版基金), according to a March 6 report from cciv.com (出版基金资助项目评审结果公示). Calls for public comment on these projects ended yesterday.

They cover a wide variety of categories, including Communist Party History, Natural Sciences and Literature. Except where mentioned, I assume these books are to published in Chinese; to the best of my knowledge, the fund is not intended to subsidize translation into other languages per se. Below, I list the details of most of the proposed projects for the “Ethnic Minorities Category” (民族类):

I recently came upon what seems to be a fairly comprehensive look at novels by non-Han writers published since 1949 that deal directly with issues of culture and identity. Entitled Ethnic Minority Novels  (少数民族小说), the Chinese-language article is unfortunately not signed, but it appears to have been written by a scholar and published in one of China’s academic quarterlies.

I’d like to summarize parts of it here.

First, a few factoids:

• China officially recognizes 55 non-Han peoples as native to the PRC
• There are over 500 writers in the China Writers Association who consider themselves members of a minority ethnicity
• Since the 1970s, China has published over 300 novels by minority writers dealing with ethnic themes