Trembling hands seem to check for the forgotten secret language. Withered bodies, like finding some long-forgotten receipt. Where have you been all these years? The mountains echo again, spring’s call is finally answered: I am the secret language you forgot. You are my lost credentials.
In the ninety fifth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are embarking on My Travels in Ding Yi (我的丁一之旅 – wǒ de dīng yī zhīlǚ). This is one of the later works in the life of Shi Tiesheng, an idiosyncratic writer best remembered as being a ‘disabled writer’ but better remembered as something far more multifaceted. Peer in from another mind, another world, as academic Chloë Starr and I confer with Christ and become embodied with Budda. Perhaps, somehow, we’ll puzzle out our brief roles on the stage play of existence.
–
// NEWS ITEMS //
- New short Chen Qiufan interview on AI
- Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes optioned for film adaptation(!)
- Intriguing academic book: Strange Tales from Edo by William D. Fleming
–
// WORD OF THE DAY //
(心识不死 – xīn shì bùsǐ – the spirit never dies)
–
// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //
- Chloë’s paper: Shi Tiesheng and the Nature of the Human
- The Cultural Christian movement in China
- What We Owe the Future by Willam McAskill
- Life on a String (1991, Chen Kaige) – an adaptation of Shi Tiesheng’s 命若琴弦
–
The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 