‘If you lived in one of the lanes of Puxi, the moment you stepped out your door, you would find yourself in the thick of urban life in all its boisterous variety. You could go around wearing a blindfold and earplugs, and you still wouldn’t be able to block out the sights and sounds of the city or shield yourself from the onslaught of knowledge.’
In the eighty second episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are paying a visit to The Sanctimonious Cobbler (骄傲的皮匠 / Jiāo’ào de Píjiàng), a novella by Wang Anyi which can be read in By the River: Seven Contemporary Chinese Novellas. Wandering with me down the longtang to cast an eye across the little affairs and petites affaires of shopkeeper Shanghai is friend of the pod and Malta-based scholar Lehyla Heward.
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// NEWS ITEMS //
- Sign up to Louise Law’s Ark E Newsletter for updates on Hong Kong lit
- Durham University’s Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies joins Twitter (at this late hour)
- Former Lu Xun haunt Uchiyama Bookstore reopens (Sources: Ting Guo, China Plus, Shine)
- Two Lines Press announces translation of Xu Zechen’s Beijing Sprawl, plus a reissue of his Running Through Beijing
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(中篇小说 – zhōngpiān xiǎoshuō – novella/novelette)
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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //
- Kirk Denton’s Modern Chinese Literary Thought
- the foreign graveyard in Jing’an & Xujiahui’s Catholic history
- the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature
- One Evening in the Rainy Season by Shi Zhecun
- Comma Press’ The Book of Shanghai and my episode on it
- The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 