“Translation isn’t a field anyone sensible would go into,” Goldblatt jokes. “Not literary translation. I have a friend who’s with the Justice Department translating Japanese legal cases. That’s a livelihood.”
(Howard Goldblatt, translator of some 50 books from the Chinese—including Mo Yan’s—speaking to Aimee Levitt in Life in Translation)
As the most influential genre in contemporary literature, the state of the novel in ethnic minority literature and Han literature is proof that separate ethnic identities have not resulted in disparities of literary imagination. In terms of their reflection of mundane life, nostalgia for their homelands, and pursuit of transcendence, all the novels [in "2011 Selected Ethnic Minority Writing"] convey that the living conditions of ethnic minorities are those of an ordinary Chinese; the former’s thoughts, hopes and longings are those of an ordinary Chinese.
(Comments on the content of 2011 Selected Ethnic Minority Writing (《中国少数民族文学 2011 年度选》) by Liu Daxian, member of the editing team of Studies of Ethnic Literature Magazine (《民族文学研究》编辑部的副研究员, 刘大先) )
The internet and mobile telephony provide tools for spreading news and anger nationally. The party has to work hard to make sure that they do not also help unite all these atomised grievances into a concerted movement. It has a lot of hammers and a lot of nails. But it is still hard to pin jelly to the wall.
(The Economist’s ”Banyan”, The Old Regime and the Revolution)
The popularity of the broadcast of “Empresses in the Palace” is a mere gust of wind in today’s China, and its artistic value falls far short of the classics that have been passed down over the centuries. It cannot represent mainstream Chinese culture.
( Hou Jianyu (侯健羽) argues this TV series (甄嬛传) that trumpets scheming in the Qing Court is not an ideal export item)
“ I wear a stab-proof vest now for book signings ”
(Li Chengpeng, author of The Whole World Knows (全世界人民都知道, 李承鹏著 ), whose “latest book tour saw him punched in the head, a packaged knife thrown at him, and scuffles between liberals and leftists.”)
I had to summon the courage to come and converse with Professor Liu Yu today. The Professor has imbibed quite a bit of ‘foreign ink’ (洋墨水). I’ve never tasted that, but I’ve ingested my share of ‘gutter oil’ (地沟油). I’m very sensitive to many issues facing today’s Chinese, and can generally figure out what’s going down—must be the ‘gutter oil’ effect at work.
(Author Murong Xuecun (慕容雪村) conversing (对谈) with Professor Liu Yu (刘瑜) of Qinghua University’s Political Science Dept.)
. . . the three great epics—the Tibetan “King Gesar,” the Mongol’s “Life of Jangger,” and “Manas” of the Kyrgyz—have all become the object of global studies in the genre. But there is not even a basic introduction to these three epics in our histories of Chinese literature.
Li Xiaofeng in his new piece on The Plight of Native Language Literature among Ethnic Minorities in China (“不在场的在场”：中国少数母语文学的处境，李晓峰著)
“Your mother tongue is Kazakh. For those of us Chinese-language readers, the fact that you’re a Kazakh—but use Chinese to write—it’s a bit like Ha Jin in America writing in English. ”
(Publisher Ou Ning (欧宁) interviewing Yerkesy Hulmanbiek (叶尔克西·胡尔曼别克), a Xinjiang-based Kazakh author)
Pratiquer le thé, de jour comme de nuit, pendant l’hiver et le printemps, en imaginant la neige dans son coeur.
(From Le Maître de thé by Inoué Yasushi (井上靖) as translated by Tadahiru Oku and Anna Guerineau)
“In the West…as China’s first legal winner of the Nobel Prize [for Literature], Mo Yan is more often accepted as ‘a critic of the system located inside that system’.” (From the cover story, 《世俗的，世界的》 , Oct 22nd edition of 《南都周刊》 )
Which makes you wonder: If Mo Yan was the “first legal” Chinese winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (“首位合法的诺贝尔奖得主”), then what about Chinese writer and Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian: was he an . . .“illegal” winner?
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