Chinese Movie Magazines: From Charlie Chaplin to Chairman Mao

 Chinese cinema has a long history, as well as the fandom around movies within China. Much like its Western and Japanese counterparts, the Chinese created magazines around film, stretching back to the 1920s. The book Chinese Movie Magazines: From Charlie Chaplin to Chairman Mao by Paul Fonoroff catalogs this unique and unexplored subculture.

Nicky Harman reviews two new translations of Lu Xun

Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881 - 1936) is the leading figure of modern Chinese literature of the early twentieth-century. He pioneered writing in vernacular Chinese (as opposed to classical Chinese, hitherto the written language for the educated), producing short stories, literary criticism, essays and poetry, as well as translations from Russian. 

Two translations of Lu Xun's collection of short pieces called, in Chinese, 《野草》(Ye Cao) dropped into my Inbox recently.

One is brand-new: Wild Grass and Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk, translated by Eileen J Cheng, edited by Theodore Huters, Harvard University Press (September 2022)

The other is recent: Weeds, translated by Matt Turner. Seaweed Salad Editions (2019)

Both of these are splendid volumes. The differences are largely that Eileen Cheng's includes many more pieces, as its title suggests. Matt Turner's is bilingual, useful for those who would like to consult the Chinese, which appears alongside the English. Both have detailed and informative introductions to the man and his work. Speaking as a translator, I am encouraged that two excellent versions of this collection should have appeared at almost the same time.

It is easy to see Lu Xun as a perpetually angry writer levelling savage criticism at the society he lived in. Geremie Barmé, in a piece that is well worth reading because it situates Lu Xun among his fellow writers, says, 'As with his fiction, Lu Xun used his essays to convey a message and to educate his readers, especially the growing youth readership.' Stories and novellas like The True Story of Ah Q come to mind; these were the ones that were on our university reading list, and are probably the most influential of his work, even today.

But the pieces in Wild Grass /Weeds are very different. Less polemical, more inward-looking and ruminative. (Sometimes they are even outright funny.) In these stories/essays, the narrators do not shout with rage. They hint, they meander, they tease, they dream. To understand the nuances, the reader has to concentrate hard (or read the introductions to both volumes, which are very useful).

One example is a powerful story translated by Cheng as Tremors on the Border of Degradation, and by Turner as Trembling Decay. This is how it begins:

[Cheng] I dreamed of myself dreaming.
I don't know where I am, but before me is a night scene inside a small, tightly sealed cottage. Yet I can also see the forest of dense greenery on the rooftop.
The lamp chimney on the wooden table, freshly wiped, lights up the room, making it exceptionally bright. In the bright light, on the dilapidated bed, beneath the unfamiliar, hairy, burly lump of flesh is a thin, frail body, trembling from hunger, pain, shock, humiliation, and pleasure.
The full figure's flaccid yet supple skin is smooth, both pale cheeks flushing lightly, like lip rouge coated on lead.

[Turner] I dreamt I was dreaming. I didn't know where I was, before my eyes, late night, the confining interior of a small hut ó and I could also make out a dense forest of stonecrop on the hut's roof.
On the rough-hewn table the lampshade had just been wiped clean, and the room was bright. In the glare, on the broken couch, under an unknown yet familiar hairy, fierce chunk of meat ó a thin body trembling from hunger pangs, shock, humiliation, and ecstasy. Yet the skin was relaxed, radiant and smooth; the pale cheeks reddened like liquid rouge over lead.

As Cheng describes it in her Introduction, '[The] woman sells her body to buy food for her young daughter. Jolted awake, the I-in-the-dream enters a second dreamscape, a continuation of the earlier dream, but after many years have elapsed. The now grown daughter, ashamed of her mother's sordid past, heaps scorn and abuse on the old woman. Amid the jeers of her daughter and her family, the old woman walks out of the shed at night, deep into the boundless wilderness.' This story is hauntingly beautiful but requires attentive reading to understand that the first paragraph is describing a prostitute and her client. Those words never appear anywhere in it.

This is also the moment, since I have quoted the two versions side-by-side, to say that the translators have done a very fine job. You will see significant differences in the paragraphs quoted above, from the use of the present tense and the past tense, to the specific term 'stonecrop' and the more general 'greenery'. I think it proves the point that I regularly make to students, that there is no such thing as a single definitive translation from Chinese. There are always several excellent and perfectly correct ones.

To return to the interpretation of the stories in Wild Grass/Weeds, one that I found most enjoyable is called After Death. This is the musings of a man who is definitely dead but is still able to think, and be annoyed with an importunate bookseller and a ticklish ant. I loved it and highly recommend it but I confess I still have no idea if it has any deeper meaning.

As you will have gathered, I am not a Lu Xun scholar -- my knowledge of his work has been largely limited to his appearance on our university syllabus. But I am going to take this opportunity to mention the piece which does not appear in these volumes, but which drew me to Lu Xun decades ago, when Ah Q simply depressed me. It is the speech entitled 'What Happens after Nora Walks Out, A talk given to Literature and Arts Society at Beijing Women's Normal College, December 26, 1923'. In it, Lu Xun introduces the students to Henrik Ibsen's The Doll's House in these words, 'At the outset, Nora is living contentedly in a supposedly happy household, but eventually she is awakened: she is her husband's puppet, and her children are her puppets. So she walks out, and the play ends with the sound of the front door slamming shut.' And he comes to the bleak conclusion that 'Logically, Nora really has only two options: to fall into degradation or to return home.'

What I found most appealing about his talk, and still do, is the effortless, conversational tone, and the many issues he touches on in a mere couple of pages. I was also struck, re-reading it again this week, by his ending, which reads as ominously today as when it was written ninety-nine years ago. He writes, 'Unfortunately, it's too difficult to change China: blood will flow just by moving a table or mending a stove. And even if blood does flow, the table isn't necessarily going to be moved or the mending carried out. Unless a great whip lashes her back, China will never consider budging. I think such a whipping is bound to come. Whether for good or bad is another question, but it is bound to come. When it will come and how it will come, however, I cannot exactly tell.'

 

Khairat Kita: Interview with Fauzy Ismail and Zakaria Zainal

A collection of interviews, photographs, essays and personal reflections, Khairat Kita is a project documenting the last few remaining Malay/Muslim Mutual Benefit Organisations (MMBOs) providing aid and charity to their deceased members' families. Known as badan khairat kematian, they are volunteer, community-led initiatives based on a centuries-old tradition of mutual aid. 

Khairat kematian organisations are social anchors in the community and custodians of intangible cultural heritage in Singapore’s Malay/Muslim community. 

With around 20 such organisations left, declining membership and ageing committee members, the future looks uncertain for these MMBOs.

Courtesy of Ethos Books

About the Authors:

FAUZY ISMAIL researches Singapore’s architecture and urban heritage. He completed his masters in architecture at the National University of Singapore, investigating heritage and thirdspaces in architecture, and dealt with gazetted buildings as a government conservation architect. He was an artist-in- residence at The Substation from 2018 to 2019, and was also a fashion designer in Paris.

The Fringe and the Fabulous: (Personal) Highlights from the Singapore Writers Festival

Poet Ng Yi Sheng (front row) snaps a photo as Claudia Rankine and Nate Marshall share a lighthearted moment during their dialogue at the National Gallery

For the first time this November, the Singapore Writers Festival served up a three-weekend extravaganza of readings, workshops, launches and discussions that seemed even longer for being the first (almost) fully in-person edition since 2019. 

The Festival has always been special to me – a time of friendships minted and renewed in the snaking queue for a Jeanette Winterson panel, of ideas seeded and watered on the grass outside The Arts House – and I've written elsewhere about how my first taste of this in 2009 turned out to be one of the formative experiences of my writing life. This year, even as I joined the ranks of seasoned festivalgoers pacing ourselves through the initial excitement (all the better to muster up energy for last night's closing party), the Festival made good on what it does best: making room both on- and off-stage for new voices, daring and more than deserving to be heard. 

Bridging two cultures. Nicky Harman interviews London-based, Beijing-born Alicia Liu of SingingGrass

 

NH: Can you tell me briefly where you come from and how long you've been in the UK?

Alicia Liu: I was born in Beijing and moved to the UK to study in 2003. Although I considered myself a Beijinger, my family was a mixture of northerners and southerners from China. My dad was born in Inner Mongolia and my mum was born in Shanghai and grew up in Beijing. My grandmother was originally from Guangzhou and grew up in Hong Kong in the 1920s. I have fond memories of hearing her speaking a mixture of Cantonese and Mandarin while growing up. Since moving to London as a teenager, I've managed to spend an equal amount of my life in the East and the West.

NH: What is your company SingingGrass? (where did the name come from?) and what are its main activities

AL: My company name was inspired by the book The Grass is Singing by the British author Doris Lessing. My grandfather, a renowned literary critic and translator in China, had written the preface to the book when it was first translated and introduced to China in the 1950s. One of my favourite quotes in the book is "he knew how to get on with natives; dealing with them was a sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying game in which both sides followed certain unwritten rules."

I set up Singing Grass Communications in 2013 with the aim of guiding our clients in their engagement with China through arts, culture and lifestyle. We provide in-depth market research and insight, advise on business strategy and local partnerships for content brands such as the LEGO Group and international publishers such as Hachette Children's Group to maximise their potential in China. We also support international PR for important trade fairs such as Beijing International Book Fair and Shanghai International Children's Book Fair. (https://www.singinggrass.com)

Indie Spotlight: Returning East - from life to a story

Indie Spotlight is a column by WWII historical fiction author Alexa Kang. The column regularly features hot new releases and noteworthy indie-published books, and indie authors who have found success in the creative world of independent publishing.

As someone who had lived overseas and traveled in many different countries, I know first hand one can fall on love with places we visit to the point of wanting to become part of that world. When we are fortunate enough to have a chance to actually do that, the experience is a deep and transformative one that we wish to share with the world. In her debut novel Returning East, author Lauca took her experience of living abroad in China, used it as her inspiration, and created a historical fiction story that follows a young man's journey to the East. Today, she tells us in her own words her own journey in turning life into a story. 

Dinner at the Cathay, a Memoir of Old Shanghai, guest post by Lara de la Harpe

Dinner at the Cathay, a Memoir of Old Shanghai, draws together the diverse threads of the author’s family history. Shanghai-born Maureen de la Harpe was eight months old when, in 1937,  as part of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the city was attacked by Japanese forces and two thousand people lost their lives. At the age of seven, her family and close relatives were interned in a Japanese concentration camp (Lunghua) where they were held until the end of WW2. The family left China a year later.