Hey guys! This is an auto-generated transcript for Episode 5, on The Wild Great Wall by Zhu Zhu. I haven’t taken the time to tidy it, so bewarned: it’s messy and will absolutely mangle almost every Chinese word spoken!
One day, somewhere over the rainbow, I’ll tidy it up manually.
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Hey, I’m Angus Stewart and you’re listening to the translated Chinese fiction podcast. Just something I wanted to say before we kick off episode five. I think that in previous episodes, there was a point I fumbled slightly, where I was trying to express my feeling that how Western readers or a particular section of Western readers are perhaps Westerners in general, when it comes to literature from parts of the world that are less Western, liberal capitalist democratic than they are, they expect that every author is going to be in rebellion mode, talking about how awful and how, how awful things are, how oppressed they are. And, you know, that’s, it’s hard for me to properly get that point across, because I’m not someone from that part of the world. So I just like to give you the words of a Chinese poet who I think said it better than I did. So the quote starts here, wherever people praise our ancient art, yet insist that the Chinese today should only write political poetry in their imagination aside from the bloodshed, we do not deserve to seek beauty, like artists before us. Nor do we have the right to indulge in the mundane and song. In sharp spasms of morality. In the endless folds of history. A life’s touch becomes estranged from itself, and is reduced to footnotes, about hardships and inhumane colonies. So those were two stanzas from the poem Florence by the Chinese poet, Drew Drew. And, yeah, everything I wanted to say about that little niggly point, he said much better. And he’s actually Chinese. I’m just a Scottish guy. That’s why we read translated fiction to get perspectives that, you know, we wouldn’t have access to unless someone translated them. That’s what’s that’s why it’s called translated fiction. Anyway, as you may have guessed, we’re looking at the poet Juju today, his newly published collection of poetry, the wild Greatwall, translated by an awesome guy called Don Lee. So here we go. So before we launch right in, I’ve got a few plugs to do. First ones, this podcast Instagram account at TR ch FDIC. So that’s the place where you can find out exactly what’s going on. Up to date, you can find out what episode I’m filing next and how far through I am the kind of the process of putting it together. The other place I’d like to point you towards is our new patreon account, which is going to be linked in the show notes. So the reason I’m launching a Patreon is because with the launch of this podcast, we’re going to have gone over the minimum, sorry, the maximum free number of minutes that SoundCloud allows for audio uploads. After this, I’m going to have to start paying a subscription to keep putting off episodes up on the same cloud servers. So if you enjoy the show, and you can afford it, it’d be fantastic if you could contribute. The way Patreon works, it’s a monthly donation, or a monthly contribution, I’m going to probably open up a PayPal to to live for people to give one off contributions. But in the meantime, for the Patreon, if you can contribute $2 per month, I’ll give you a shout out at least once if you want a monthly shout out. I think that’s fair. If you want a shout out pressure. Well, there’s none so far. So you know, there’s no an acute fighting for shoutouts. If you can contribute 20 USD, you can just dictate what what we can talk about, you can tell me a translated Chinese work of literature, I will make an episode about it. Obviously, if a tonne of people jump on that, I might have to attract that offer or dial it back or make it more expensive. But I’m not you know, I’m not expecting it to be a hot ticket. So anyway, at least the first few people who stick into any USD on Patreon bang you have an episode that you’ve dictated guaranteed the first few although you know few is not a strict legal term. So I reserve all rights to be stingy. So there’s my plugs. What you can expect later on in this episode, which I’ll just plug now so that I keep you listening throughout is that we’ve got an interview I do we talk with Yesenia of funny media, which are the publishing house who published our book for today, the wild Greatwall Jews collection of poetry. So keep listening all the way through and you can hear me chatting with you sanea.
Disclaimer, I come up I come across as really quite awkward for like the first few minutes and then No, actually not just the first few minutes all the way through. I’m an awkward fool. But you already know that if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, so don’t worry about that. So who are phoney media Well, in the PDF proof copy of the wild Greatwall This is what their copyright Paige had to see it said funny media is a nonprofit media company dedicated to promoting cross cultural understanding, connecting people and ideas through translated books and films. I think, Phil sorry. I think translated books are more their forte just now. They’ve got a whole catalogue of books with exclusively stunning, modern covered cover designs. Honestly, if you have any reason to go to phoney media’s website, just have a look at their list of books have a look at the cover designs. They’re gorgeous. So it’s the wild Great, well, the first Chinese book on funI media’s list Well, the answer is yes. And perhaps no. It’s certainly the first book translated from any variation of the Chinese language. But they do have a book very early on in their list called Uighur land the frailest exile. So if you’re a China watcher, like me, you’ll know who the wiggers are. If not, here’s a very quick, very, very quick explanation. So there’s a in modern China, there is a province and it’s far northwest, quite a geographically large Province, which China is Chinese name is shinjang, which means new frontier. It’s a region which through Imperial China’s history fell in and out of the Chinese Empire’s influence. But since well, for most 20th century, it’s belong to the Chinese Republic or the Chinese People’s Republic. But the indigenous people there who’s still make up more than half the population, the largest, or at least the largest indigenous population, there are the weaker people. And they are a Turk ethnically Turkic group. So they are ethnically quite distinct from the Han Chinese. And the majority of the other ethnic minorities in China. They’re Turkic, so they’re more central Asian. At present, the weaker people of shinjang are to call a spade a spade. They’re under quite a high degree of oppression from their government. So the question of whether or not we call Uighur land a Chinese book is whether we like it or not a political question, but it does. It does have an interesting thematic link at the very least with the world Great War. Because in the subtitle of vigour land, it is the fire list exile an exile is a term that pops up a lot in the wild Greatwall. Now quite a lot of Chinese authors who do get international fame do end up being exiles because they’re, you know, they’re they’re in danger if they continue to stay in China. So they go abroad, often to Western countries, or to perhaps Taiwan. Our author today Judo he is still living in China, but on the on the topic of or in the theme of exile. Let’s have a wee look at our Word of the Day with a word of the episode a new little feature I’ve come up with for this show. So for this episode, I looked up the word exile in my Chinese dictionary, and it’s Leo Wang. And so that’s the verb to exile is Leo to Leo Wang, someone to exile someone the known as far as I could tell, as Leo Wang Drew. So if I exile you, if I Leo Wang, you then you have become the lounger you have become an exile. So basically adding drew makes it known. And that struck me as interesting, because Lele won it of course it rhymes with that word we used before in our previous episodes on Wang Shah and Mirage where son, Leo Hmong hooligan, and it is the same Leo, that same character Lel, so I haven’t haven’t gone in depth and checked out the connotations and full kind of scope of meaning of the character, Leo, but I just that struck me as interesting exile is Leo, Wang. hooligan, the Hmong.
So, the question we want to maybe ask ourselves here is Drew drew the author of the well, great, well, is he really a real one? Is he really an exile? So when I went looking for this kind of answers to this question online, there is an article on the website of the organisation world literature to date, which was written by Judas translator Don Lee, who translated the wild Greatwall into English. And Dan Lee describes Juju as a lone wolf, utterly on the periphery. So I went digging around to see you know, how much of a lone wolf how much of a guy on the periphery is Drew Drew. And what I could gather was that he’s he’s not banned from residence in China. He’s living In Beijing these days and he’s in the Western world. He’s like a widely awarded author. I think he has some prizes in China too. But the main, the main chunk of information I was able to get was perhaps tellingly the same. We author bio over and over again on different websites that toasted his poetry. So he exists in various different versions with minute differences. But here’s a fairly generic version of Judy’s many authors many bio that I could find. So it starts now. Juju was born in Yong Jo, in the People’s Republic of China. He’s the author of numerous numerous books of poetry, essays and art criticism, including a bilingual French edition, translated by Chantal Chen Andrew, he’s the reception. He’s the Oh my god. He’s the recipient of the Henry Luce Foundation, Chinese poetry fellowship, the Vermont Studio centre, and the Chinese contemporary art award for critics. He was also a guest of the Rotterdam and Val de Marne, International Poetry festivals. He lives in Beijing. So a few things to note. First of all, I believe that it was at the Vermont Studio centre that drew Drew and Dong Lee first met each other, although they first came into contact by phone call. Other things to note, so to Joe’s birthplace, is listed as Yong Jo, People’s Republic of China. So they’ve included both a local place in China, they haven’t just opted to only see China, and they’ve opted to see People’s Republic of China, not just China. So this guy has been writing in Chinese and his writing has been translated to English as specified in a specific geographic location. And in the People’s Republic of China. So not just China, but you know, the, the part of China, the greater Chinese nation, which is has a communist name, I think that is an interesting point. Another thing to note is that in this may offer bio, here’s a Cleveland connections that are mentioned are in Europe and North America. He has also had some recognition is in his home country. But I think a lot of this recognition, at least as far as I can gather has been in the English speaking world. As far as I could tell, he is not literally exiled from China. Although we should note that there are cool there have been in our Chinese artists, underwriters who live in tier one cities like Beijing and Shanghai who are perhaps at risk of censorship or, or deportation or being jailed for being outspoken. But so although we might think of Beijing as being the hub of power, in the cultural realm, it is quite a liberal city by Chinese standards. It’s like your Chinese part of your Chinese equivalent of the American eastern seaboard. I don’t really have any specific examples to compare to Juju with you. But I also don’t think Juju is the kind of having read this book of poetry. I really don’t think he’s writing anything directly critical enough to really put him in danger. But just because it says he lives in Beijing, please don’t go thinking that he’s, you know, totally, you know, mouthpiece of the of the status quo, because he’s absolutely not. Dong Lee’s World Literature Today article does have a few clues about to do who he is.
So Dong li mentions that the first time he met juju, as I pointed out before it was at the Vermont Studio centre, and he said that whilst they were staying together at this Vermont Studio for their read his rest residencies, Donnelly noticed that Georgia was pretty kind of extroverted. He was communicating through smiles and gestures, Vermont bars. So it’s not said outright, but you can maybe assume that Juju is not a fluent English speaker. He’s communicating more through like his body language, his expressions don’t we also mentioned he placed a lot of ping pong. Without jumping into this too far, you know, if you’ve been an expatriate, if you’ve been immigrant, you’ll know a little bit how that says. So yeah, good Andrija for getting out to the bars anyway, and not staying in his home when he was in Vermont. That’s pretty awesome. So here’s a quote from the Donnelly article. Here is a fearlessly independent poet who maintains his cool and observes the world with his whole eyes as the political horizon blurs and shifts. What matters to him is how words silently explode and become explosives, and how language sinks and rises. So as again, this emphasis on putting the beauty and sound and feel of your poetry before political imperatives and narratives, especially since
You know, how do you maintain your integrity and kind of a consistent position on things when, in this day and age? You know, politics is such a big hazy ever shifting mess. If you really care about poetry, how much can you care about geopolitics. I think if you’re, if you’re a poet writing in English, you are expected to think about your country’s rising or falling position in the globe, because your country’s identity doesn’t exist in opposition to others, where whereas if you’re a Chinese poet, your country’s entire national identity, in this day and age is that of a rising identity against the dominant powers. So good on Juju for, for saying, Yes, I’m going to use my poetry to refer back to Chinese history, Chinese culture, but as for expectations, about what I should write politically in, in my own country, and in the West, it’s only important if it makes my poetry more meaningful. And otherwise, screw all expectations. Right, so now we bit about Dong Li, the translator of the wild grey wall. So he was the guy who first reached out to Juju by telephone asking to translate his work to English. And Donnelly is no the holder of the English rights to the wild, great role, wild Greatwall that’s written inside the the book itself. So Dong Li was born in the People’s Republic of China. I haven’t learned where the information is not available and then his author BIOS online. Chinese, of course, is his first language. But he’s he’s trilingual, so he can translate, as far as I’m aware to and from Chinese, English and German. He’s based in Germany right now in Leipzig. If you look online, he’s got a profile on translators cafe.com, which is based on verts book, but I happen to know, through my own powers of speaking to people online by email, ie Dong li himself, he’s not in Wurzburg these days. He’s in Leipzig. And this man, he’s got a lot under his belt. He’s got degrees, undergraduate and postgraduate. He has published poetry, he has published translations, he’s won grants, he’s won fellowships, he’s held editorial positions. As far as I can tell, all in America and Germany seem to be used to kind of age cues for his literary career, he may perhaps have had positions in China that aren’t listed on these English language sites. But as far as I can tell, he’s a he’s a great translator of Chinese to English and vice versa, based in the Western world, that stongly I’ll be learning more about him when I speak to him. I’m probably going to release that interview in a kind of Episode Six bonus episode, which will just be me and him having a chat. But yes, excellent, cool, man. Okay, so we built on this edition of The Wild Great Wall, of course, it’s the first edition. This is a newly put together a collection of Jews poetry. So the Great Wall has a Chinese name. It’s yeah, Chang Chung. E. Chang Chang just means great. Well, you know, that’s, that’s a that’s a commonly translated Chinese word into English. Yeah, I learned the character. Yeah, and apologies if I’m not doing the tone correctly. But I learned to visually recognise this character. This is just an anecdote from my own life. So the word for Robert in Chinese is today. Here is yet who and two means rabbit. Yeah means wild. So a hair in Chinese is just wild rabbit. But wild Greatwall is Yeah, Chung, Chung. If you want to learn a little bit about how I’ve learned some Chinese vocab, there you go. I know the wild because I learned the word for hair because I have an obsession with rabbits. Anyway, the wild Greatwall is a bilingual book, The verso, our left page will have the Chinese words, the rectal or right page has the words in English. And I was reading a PDF proof. So this wasn’t ideal for me. Because, of course, PDFs aren’t laid out left page alongside the right page, it’s page by page on our laptop on your PDF reader that would be scrolling down and your your Kindle that would be click by click. But anyway, I was able to tell it in print, this book would be great because you’d have
the two page spread in front of you with both languages. So a great book for people who are, you know, fluent in lung, one language learning in the other or even you know, if you want to if you’re an English speaker, and you’ve got this book, and your Chinese friend doesn’t want to read the English at all, no problem because they can read the Chinese. So that’s cool. The book’s cover page is entirely in English. So that would possibly this be misleading? One possible room for improvement I might sneakily suggest is bilingual book covers. Although that said, funny media, I don’t know if I have any funny media’s books are bilingual on their internal pages. But certainly all their book covers are just English. So just a wee piece of book design publishing analysis for me there. So the internal of the book, it’s structured in four parts, part one covers, Scott, well, I’m sure it’s not the entirety of Judy’s poetry. But part one has his poems, poems of his ran from 1990 to 1989, prior to his performance of his from 2000, to 2005. Part three has poems of his from 2006 to 2011. And Part Four takes us from 2012 up to the present. And from what I can gather, Dong Li has kind of group he’s probably set those your boundaries based on what he felt were progressions in drew Drew’s writing. So as far as I can gather, it’s not JoJo who’s made these categories or these these boundaries, and it’s not funny media. This is translators work. It’s his interpretation of Jews, body of poetic endeavours. Yes, there is a. And in the end matter, there’s a translators note from Dong Li. It’s identical to was on Lee’s World Literature Today article that I previously mentioned. What I don’t know is which came first whether Dong li wrote the article for World Literature Today. And then finally, media pop that, as translators know, in their end matter, or whether Dong li wrote this as a translators note to be popped in the end. And then for publicity that was taken and used as an article for online, I don’t know, I will ask Dong li that, in my interview with him. Just an interesting thing to note. There’s also a list of acknowledgments in the end matter. And as a reader, that’s very interesting, because that shows you where do choose poems have been published before. And, of course, they’ve had a lot of success. But it’s all just kind of been spread about in these small literary and poetic publications. So hopefully, with this concentrated collection of poetry, Juju will find fame in the Western world, and perhaps the east, but certainly in the West as a poet, and hopefully Dong Lee’s name as a translator will be boosted, and perhaps attached to Juju for posterity. Who knows. So at this point in the show, I just like to read some excerpts of Judy’s poetry. For the record, I’m really not an expert in poetry, I’m certainly not an expert in reading it. So apologies if I’m not doing the poetry of great service. I’m also going to kind of suffix each we XOR with poetry with my own analysis. So I apologise for that indulgence these indulgences in advance. So the very first poem in this collection is just three lines, which I think is a deliberate choice. It’s just a quick bite before you get the main course. So the very first poem is called up the stairs. Here it goes. This moment, countless men up the stairs, upstairs, shopping already in the dark, downstairs, dying alone in a crowd. And something about this got me it’s, it feels like a flavour of everything to come. Because it’s pulsing. It’s poignant. And it’s vivid and alive. And that’s kind of how the rest of the poetry in this book feels. There’s a reference to high Western. Well, actually, the whole book is full of references to high culture, some western high culture. So 20th century figures, mostly people like Chopin, and there’s references to high culture in China. So the ancient classics, and also perhaps some of the 20th or 19th century greats as well. So here’s another poem. This one’s from, I think, the early period of Duty’s writing, I’m just going to read one little stanza. Sorry, two stances from the poem. I am Francoise, Milan. So write their French name. This is a European influence.
Poem starts here. Or I can teach you how to manage time with only a handful of dice, and a few, a few sprigs of parsley and the golden bowl. I can mimic the hiring of a storm to rekindle the fire in the chimney. My dear uncle is so hot in heaven that Angel’s feathers slow down yet, our saliva freezes to ice of the corners of our mouths. What about a sip of wine? Long long Winter, a wolf looks for the forest of words. So if I read that properly, you should get a feel for how vivid and magical Juju is poetry has. And you might have noticed that there’s a lot of imagery there, and it seems very culturally deep. But if you stop and analyse it, there’s only one image there that is culturally specific to east or west, you know, Europe or East Asia is, it’s the angel. As far as I’m aware, angels are purely an Abrahamic being so you find angels in Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but they’re certainly no angels in Chinese or it’s related cultures, but everything else. You could call it as Chinese or French, Eastern or Western or perhaps just universally human. So like dice, gambling games, golden balls, parsley, herbs, storms, glaciers, quite elemental, quite universal, quite humanistic. Anyway, an excerpt from the poem small town, another one of Jews from this collection, and it opens with a quote from Charles bordel Bueller, Bueller, yes. Buhler. Now on the left page, this quote is entirely rendered in Chinese, including Charles boozers name it’s his Chinese name. On the right hand page, it’s rendered in French. I’m not going to analyse that. I’m just going to present that effect as it is and let you draw whatever conclusions you wish. Anyway, here’s the excerpt from the poem. Early in the morning before the window, I drink coffee. Before my eyes, the hotel’s big garden, flowers in bloom. bushes, trimmed even beside a gravel footpath stands a statue of a half naked goddess, around me, soft murmurs of people talking. Their elegant manners closely resemble glassware on the table and reflective silverware. So this one is the star of a poor man, it starts off with a very like, well, wealthy, elegant European vibe, which is a wee bit of a stereotype, I think of what Chinese people felt like Europe is like, like it’s this romantic upper class place. They have some Chinese friends I had didn’t understand that. Yes, in the UK, we’ve got quite a lot of working class people. Anyway, I’m waffling. So this poem does begin with all this pleasant imagery, but it ends on strong feelings of homesickness. And the very last image in the poem is the image of like a peach blossom, spring peach blossom, which is, I would say, that’s a fairly East Asian image, nostalgic, beautiful and culturally specific. But it does, it does make me feel that Juju is from all his time spent abroad, he’s perhaps writing with reference to you know, as nostalgia homesickness, because just like plenty Westerners who go out to live in the east, and plenty of Chinese people who do go out, go out to live in the West, they’re out you know, you end up torn between two places, you end up feeling homesick, and I think that
doesn’t matter which culture you’re from if you go to live somewhere else in the world, this books going to vibe with you a bit if you’re feeling homesick, if you’ve if you’re not totally full of hate, for the your homeland and the culture you’ve come from, which I think very few people who leave form are, there’s always a part of you that wishes you were back home. Anyway, I’m definitely waffling. Now, here’s one stanza from the poem from the 2060 to 2011 era. The poem is called island in the sea. So here we go. He plants bamboo as if soldiers on the frontier bringing in lots of lovers here, Bruce, south of Yangtze and rice wine, and reeds Tao Yuanming reading him here like having a telescope push Orion out of the blue and into the heart. So this we stanza although it’s only four lines, this is a great example of different kinds of cultural references that Donley or any translator would encounter in things or trying to translate from one language to another. So bamboo, you know, any, if you’re a Western reader, you see the word bamboo, you know, this is a plant that grows in Asia. So this is a cultural or geographic reference that does not need any translation apart from direct translation. But South of Yangtze now, this one’s tricky. So I looked back to the original Chinese and I just two characters I could read here south of Yangtze is from Jiangnan Jang means river, none mean south, but this refers to the the Yangtze River, which I find Yeah, that’s in Chinese name is challenge young, which just means long river so it’s got that junk character in common. And the south of Yunxi or Jiangnan. Doesn’t Ness, it can mean literally all of China which is south of the Yangtze River. But more specifically and more accurately from as far as I’m aware, it refers to a particular region of China immediate, just the more immediately south of the Yangtze area. So, Jiangsu Province, Georgetown province, Anhui province, and it was a region which was put particularly kind of fertile, it’s a rice growing area with a temperate climate, which through Chinese history produced a lot of culture, a lot of poetry was more wealthy, more comfortable, not a northern barbarian region, not a southern tropical region. And it seemed like, in his writings, Drew Drew had some affection for Jiangnan or south of Yunxi. But this is something I’m going to ask strongly about when I talked to him. So watch this space. Anyway, the next cultural reference rice wine. So I think as Westerners we think we know what rice one is, we think it’s psyche, or, perhaps soldier, the Korean one, what we maybe aren’t aware of is Chinese rice wine is a thing called by Joe, which is incredibly strong, and will it’s like more fire than vodka. So even something like rice wine, although that seems like a very simple translation. I think someone who’s is well, you know, I’m not trying to sound snobbish here. But if you know what Chinese rice wine is, you know, if you just read about it and translate fiction, you might think it’s just the same as psyche, but you get the chance to try Bhaiji when you haven’t before, for curiosity sake, give it a go. Tao Yuanming I believe so this this, this was a name who might mean something to to check if you know, people with Chinese as a first language might not I honestly don’t know how well known he’s known. But he was listed as a footnote. So there is a little little asterisk or one after Italian Ming and then it tells you blow timing was a letter in the Ching Dynasty. So names can be a big thing, because who you know, as a name in one culture is not the same as the other especially something like the Chinese culture, which has 1000s of years of history and, and has lots of different provinces, lots of different people. Yes. So the last cultural reference there is Orion. So this is this is a West piece of Western culture. This is from classical Western culture. And you as a Western reader, you don’t necessarily know what Juju wrote here, because a translator might have thought taken, dude, you might have written a Chinese constellation. And Dong Li, the translator might have thought oh, Westerners will never know what this says. So I’ll convert it to a Western equivalent, Orion. But we can assume here because Juju has made so many other references to Western culture, he’s probably written Orion. And Dong Li is probably translated it directly. And thankfully, because this is a bilingual version, if you were really being anal and wanted to know, you could, you could match up the characters in the Chinese page with the word Orion on the English page and see if it’s a direct translation. I was not
careful, I was not techie enough to go back and check but you certainly could if that was the kind of thing that sparked joy in your soul. So a word on the very final poem in this collection, it’s one that is one of several tributes in the world, great world figures from Chinese literature and history. It’s called it comes to me that this is nylon xingjiang Cinder, oh my god, that it comes to me that this is nylon Xing does city. So for someone who’s not an expert, like myself, just reading this poem, was really educational because it prompted me to Google nylon shinda who is he? And I learned that he was a poet from the Qing Dynasty, which was a quite a long lived Chinese Dynasty and the final one, and it’s an interesting one because the the Qing leaders were not ethnically Han, they were kind of an invading ethnic minority conquered on China. They were the Manchu ethnicity. And Nanjing though was a man to himself, which kind of placed him in a superior position in the Imperial hierarchy. Not that there weren’t I think in the Qing Dynasty there were plenty Han Chinese who were right up there, but Anolon xingda was also up there but he was from the ruling ethnicity the formerly northern barbarian, Manchu. So anyway, now launching though he was a guy who wrote sir poetry. So, is a form of Chinese poetry was followed certain foreign arms. There were lots of these different forms, and they were called supply. supersymmetry titles. According to Wikipedia, the title of a SERP poetry poem doesn’t have to match the content. But what they do often do is express desire. And I don’t know if it comes to me that this is now launching the city is a poem, a poem that uses sir or if Juju is using to pie in it. And I would say that this, the title of the poem doesn’t match the content. But an interesting thing to bear in mind here, I’m just going to read one stanza from this poem, and then our kind of close up this section of the podcast. So here we go. When we wanted to cross the railings and embrace something, it would disappear. fated witness, we’re rare baritone, only he could break centuries of silence. Even his journeys to border passes were not to fight battles, but to bring back vastness and desolation to poetry. So closing note here, I think what Juju perhaps might see in the sky now, languishing dirt is poetry for poetry sake, not for you know, the glory of battle or for the pride of your nation. But to you know, he says here bring by vastness and desolation things that sound possibly negative. But it’s poetry for poetry sake, even if it is fast and desolate. It’s alive and it’s beautiful. Right. So hope you enjoyed my terrible poetry readings. Now we’re going to pop on to an interview I did with Forney media’s assistant editor editor is sanea who helped bring this episode about by agreeing to give me the PDF proof of Judas poetry collection. So I just took the chance to ask her some questions about the company and the book. And without further ado, let’s hear our little chat we had Oh, and I’m gonna preface this by saying I was pretty tired when I did this podcast. And I’m also just a very awkward human being. So there’s points where I come across like an alien from outer space. I apologise for those. I think it was still a good interview anyway. And I, you know, big thanks to Sonia for doing it. It’s very awesome of her. So let’s get on with it. So, exciting news, everybody. We’ve got your NESEA or yesI. That’s just what I’m going to call her. Yes. See here on the line from phoning the publishers off the wild, great wall. So I see. You’re the associated media associate producer with phoney media? That’s right, isn’t it?
Associate Editor. Yeah,
I’m sorry. It’s late. My brains not working? Yeah, the Associate Editor. You’re fine. Yeah. So is there anything you’d like to tell us about your company, first of all, and the kind of fiction that you guys publish, or the yes, the kind of fiction, or, rather, sorry, my brain is really not working.
So we are an LA based company started around 2013 2014. And the entire mission behind us is literature and translation. So we, you know, publish from all sorts of languages, but we try to put an emphasis on languages that aren’t really represented in an Anglophone market. We have a lot of novels translated from say, French or Spanish, and we do other languages as well. But we’ve also done you know, Hebrew, we’ve done ngala, we’ve done indigenous Mexican languages, like Celtic. And so that’s very much at the core of our mission, trying to bring stories that otherwise would have a hard time breaking into the English market, and trying to bring them to readers.
That’s cool. So I was you could see I was tripping up there on whether to say fiction or literature, because the book we’re doing today is poetry. And although I’ve looked at the book covers of your company’s list, I didn’t go nosing to see what’s of what’s a novel, what’s a poetry collection? Do you have any particular or does the company have any particular leanings to any particular form?
We’ve ended up publishing a lot of poetry just because it’s pretty convenient to try and do you know, bilingual format that way, right? But yeah, we’ve done graphic novels, we’ve done fiction. I mean, we’re open for submissions now. And we’re getting some like memoirs as well. So you know, really open to all. Okay, so that’s literature,
right? So if any, I suppose if any Translators are writers of non English languages are listening, then they could take that as a little plug right there, right.
Oh, yeah, shameless plug, go to only media.org. Look at our guidelines, always happy to take submissions. Cool.
So I’ll probably start asking some wild Greatwall specific questions now. The first one, and I have an inkling of how of what the answer to this question might be based on what I’ve read online. But how did this particular publication come about? Is there a grand story behind it or is it more of a mundane affair?
This was actually just a couple months before I joined the company. So I’ve been with them for almost a year. And from what I know, translater Donnelly, based in Germany and was, you know, came across his work, translated a couple of his poems for, you know, just journals. And eventually, that became this manuscript, this collection of, you know, just just poetry over the past 20 years. And that got pitch to us. We loved it. I particularly love like, all the imagery that it give. And so yeah, now we’re here.
Cool. So how much of the formatting had done we already worked out? And how much of the current product is kind of the work of phoneme? Do you know?
I don’t exactly. Um, I know, you’re going to be interviewing him as well. So I’m gonna give you a better answer.
Yeah. Okay, fair enough. So next question kind of leans into that. Have yourself or anyone else in the company had any in person contact with Donnelly or Juju himself? Or Has everything been kind of remote like how we’re talking right now?
Yeah, so the original pitch and everything that came across remotely, and then we’re actually going to be hosting Juju in LA, later in May. So yeah, just bringing across a couple of bilingual readings to the city. We’ve partnered with China week in order to, you know, try and get the largest audience possible here. We haven’t I haven’t met Dong me in person yet. It’s almost entirely remote. Sorry, let me meet that.
Okay, I’m back. Okay, cool. Cool. Cool. All right. So I think that’s that question answered there. So here’s another chance for you to plug the book. Where where’s the book? Or where are you aiming to have it distributed? And are there any particular kind of readers, you’re hoping to reach any pre existing groups of readers or new readers or whatever.
So I guess the good thing about just where we’re based LA is that you have, you know, over 120 languages represented in this city alone, all sorts of consulates, obviously, diaspora groups. And so San Gabriel Valley, Chinatown, all of that gives us a pretty good Chinese ask for and so we do reach that audience, you know, people who want to know what’s being published right now, in their home countries. But also, we just have people who maybe they’ve got into the whole literature and translation seen through one of our earlier works, or another diaspora work, and they just, you know, pick up the thread and go with it. So really good readers from all over the place. And it’s been really nice to see how poetry especially has been picked up recently, in the past couple years, how it’s growing. And there’s more of a theme for it.
Yeah, I, I noticed, or rather, I was thinking, as I was reading, just how well the poetry collection works as a bilingual book, although it does, you know, it’s front cover, it’s English. But I was thinking, like, who would I recommend this book to? And yeah, I would probably, if one of my Chinese friends saw it, and saw the cover, they might, and they weren’t comfortable with English, they might think it’s not for me. But of course, if they looked inside, if I remember correctly, the Chinese poem will be on the left page, the English is on the right. So technically, the Chinese is is coming first. Do you think funny,
we’ve gotten a plenty of we’ve also gotten plenty of, you know, people who are maybe learning one of the languages, maybe they’re still learning English, or maybe they’re trying to pick up Chinese things like that. And bilingual editions really allow you to, you know, strengthen yourself on both of those fronts. So also privacy that,
that that kind of made me think, would fullname ever try to sell the rights for these books to be published in other companies? Or do you? Would you ever try and get this book distributed with the Chinese cover in China? or something, one of your other titles? Or as I say, we’re
open to that. I mean, we we very much chose to be a nonprofit and not you know, yeah, not a for profit company, because we really want to devote ourselves to just getting these stories out there. So it’s always you know, if there’s an offer for distribution we’re always happy to consider.
Interesting. Okay, so I’m speaking again about the left page right page format. So obviously, the the copy I read, I think I will by the time in the podcast. By the time we get to this interview in the podcast, I will have discussed this but you guys give me a PDF proof just to save 1 million costs. So although I knew the Chinese pages would be on the left and the English would be on the right. It was approved. It was a PDF. So I was scrolling down through the whole thing on my laptop. But does. So anyway, that’s the preface to a question. Does this full name ever publish anything? ebook or ebook ish? Or is it on the cards? Are you going to stick to the print?
We have a couple of our earlier works up on Kindle. And we’re hoping to you know, as the company grows, get more of our works on there, just you know, for accessibility. You’re right, that it’s, it’s been a problem, especially with international mailings. Most of our distributors are here in the US. And so, for instance, our most recent book was a book of Kurdish poetry. We launched that in Iraqi Kurdistan. But if you say you’re in Europe, or Latin America, and you want it that then we’d be mailing it from the US. And so eBooks are, you know, clearly important for accessibility, and we’re trying to get that done. But so far, it’s been, you know, four or five of our earlier works on there, so you can look for them to have that promise in the future.
Okay, interesting. Next question I’ve got so in our previous discussions, I think a book was mentioned. But I wasn’t, I wasn’t entirely certain. So my question is, does dysphonia have any plans for more translations from Chinese further down the road?
Yes, so we’re gonna be releasing raised by wolves, collection of Chinese poetry later this year. And I know we had it set initially for a may launch and I think it’s been pushed back to June, disco, some issues with the proof, but so yeah, you can probably expect that from us this summer.
Okay. And, you know, don’t don’t tell me anything you’re not allowed to. But is this going to be a collection from one author? Or is it going to be multiple authors?
It’s gonna be one author. Okay. Yeah, that says that as much as I’m going to leak,
okay, I’ll not probe any further. But signs interesting, especially the wolves part. Makes me think of like the the north of China, maybe Mongolia, or Inner Mongolia. Sorry. Okay, second to last question. This is, this is a tricky one that has a fancy academic term in it. So preface to the question, I noticed when I was looking through the the phoneme, Wester books, there’s one called Uyghur land about the, the by a guy from the Uighur ethnic group. And although the page on the site didn’t, didn’t use the word China, it did us in the author bio, it used the name of that province in China where the weekers live shinjang. So I suppose whether or not that could be categorised as each Chinese book is up for debate. But would you consider anything? Actually no. Rewinding back a bit, I noticed that the subtitle of the Uighur land book had the word exile in it an exile i think is from what I could gather, so far this far. allistic. So thank you. And in the wild Greatwall, there was also quite a theme of exile. I use CTRL N F and saw the word popped up six times. So do you think given that there’s the theme of exile, and there’s a Chinese connection to both books, do you think there this is the academic term? Do you think they’re in dialogue with each other at all? Or do you think they’re quite separate entities?
Just saying because with riverlands, you have it translated from both Uighur and Arabic. And that’s both things that, you know, people aren’t gonna immediately associate with China. So in a way, I do think it kind of represents this movement to show a, you know, multifaceted country, an incredibly diverse country. And similarly, with the wild, great wall, you have a lot of writings from Judah when he’s in Beijing, but also usually when he’s in Venice, or, you know, elsewhere. So it’s
like a very continental book that one.
Yeah, so I think very much this next generation of Chinese writers, you know, obviously, they’re writing from home, but a lot of them are writing from outside and still getting this impression of, you know, the Chinese experience. So, in a way, yeah, I could say they’re kind of in dialogue there.
Yeah. I mean, there’s trickier political questions there. But definitely, definitely an interesting angle, especially the exhale thing.
Okay, I think this is my last question. Yeah. Last one. I’ve got my little document of questions anyway.
So it’s about it’s this one’s another one about full name. So on my course, my publishing masters I’m doing we’ve been while we’re on the finances side of things now and offered the course. We’ve been learning about the differences between the one the big five publishers and small and small and medium sized publishers and the kind of Hardcore sort of not survival, kind of sink or swim, economic situation smaller companies find themselves in and also like how profit seeking and ruthless some of the bigger ones can be. So that made me wonder, does being a nonprofit company is the kind of financial pressure on phoneme or increase it because on one hand, you’re not obliged to make a profit. But then on the other hand, you don’t I suppose revenue streams aren’t the same as you know, they aren’t your average publishing company.
Yeah, so I mean, this is definitely not something I can, you know, do as a full time job, I actually, I freelance journalism, and I work at a communications company. So officially on taxes back my earnings. And so for me was very much a passion project. And you’ll see that reflected in a lot of our team, you know, I had editor, you as well, does like freelancing and other things. And it just comes back to, you know, it’s not like the most profitable company, but we are able to fairly pay our translators and authors. And we are able to distribute, and we’re able to keep a lot of creative control over the process, which is, you know, that’s very crucial to us, especially when you see languages that have, you know, maybe even persecuted in their home countries, because they have a status as minority language or authors who, you know, otherwise, face political issues at home and have trouble publishing abroad, because they don’t write in English. And we’re able to fill that gap. So it’s been very rewarding. And yeah, I’d say the nonprofit side is pretty good, because, for instance, when we have another book coming up, we might be able to partner with a consulate or they asked us all sorts, so we might support coming out from all over the place whenever it’s a new book coming out.
Yeah. Cool. So one more question that pops into my head when you were talking about LA. So preface to this one is I was down in London recently for the London book, fair big publishing event. And I took the chance there was like an event after that. The Guangzhou bookstore, in London’s Chinatown. So a problem Britain has the America perhaps doesn’t to the same extent is low, we have one mega city, only one is London. It sucks everything in it has all the cool stuff. And if you’re from somewhere a lot further north like me, it costs cost an awful lot of money to go there. So on one hand, I was, you know, thrilled that in the world of Chinese books in the UK, there’s this amazing bookstore. But as far as I’m aware, it’s the only straightforward, you know, there are collections and community centres and this and that for Chinese fiction in the UK. But there’s one trade bookstore. It’s in London. That’s it. So the question I was wanting to ask was of in in the run up for promoting the wild, Great Wall? Have you come across any awesome resources or groups or bookstores, particularly for Chinese and Asian books in nearly because I can imagine if London’s got good stuff, Ellie must do too.
Yeah, I mean, that’s the wonderful part. We have, you know, all these like diaspore a pocket you have Koreatown, Chinatown, Little Bangladesh, everything. And within them, it’s still very diverse. And so you might find, you know, a Salvadorian bookstore in Koreatown, a Korean bookstore in Little Tokyo and like that, one of the ones that’s been really helpful to us who’s been the Political Research Bureau, in LA’s Chinatown, okay. So it’s partly a book resource, but it’s also a good event space, they’re actually going to be hosting one of juges readings in May. And it’s been very useful for you know, bringing together all sorts of audiences are trying to kind of actually right at the intersection of downtown, and Olvera Street, which is a traditionally Mexican area. So you have like this really good melting pot of audiences, and they’re all able to converge here in just like, learn all sorts of poetry.
Fantastic. And I don’t know if you would know this at all. But do you know if the and again, it’s not like there’s one set answer given what diversity is, but do you know if the predominant form of Chinese in LA would is Cantonese or Mandarin? I’m guessing probably Mandarin these days?
Yeah, especially in the San Gabriel Valley. You’ll have a lot more Mandarin speakers. So like that 66 area code. Within la Chinatown, the older crowd was a is actually mainly Hong Kongers. So they have some Cantonese. And now we also have, you know, we were coming in speaking of second generation, Chinese, so they’ve grown up in maybe Singapore or Some of them will come in from you know, London. Yep. And they’ll move to the side of town.
The lanes are busy. Oh, I am, how long we’ve gone on for how long have we gone on? It’s been 20 minutes. That’s about what I was aiming for. I don’t want to take up too much more of your time. And I want to, I want to unwind because it’s been a busy day for me. But thank thanks so much for talking. Yes, he thanks for giving such great answers to the questions. I’m sure the listeners. Yeah, sure. That was a really interesting thing for the listeners there. And yeah, hopefully, I’ll be able to talk to Donnelly and we’ll be able to pop him on the show. Are we bonus episode? Oh, thanks so much. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So there you go, guys, you got to hear me try and speak to another human being rather than just a microphone. And clearly I have some things to learn. But hopefully that was an interesting conversation for you all. So we’ve just about reached the end of the show some closing notes here. So I mentioned that Dong li article in World Literature Today. I’ll pop a link to that in the show notes. I’m also going to pop in a link to our Patreon and the fully Media website. And of course, my Instagram phonemes Instagram, and Instagram is a great, you know, you should be on Instagram. It’s cool. And if you follow the translated Chinese fiction podcasts, Treacher Fick, tr, CH fac, you can find out what’s going to be in the next episodes because I wouldn’t always tell you on the podcast, you know, you got to make an effort at your end. But most important thing if you enjoy the show, you do not have to give us money on Patreon, because you know, we all need our money for paying our rent. But you could certainly subscribe to the show. leave reviews on iTunes, you could share it with your pals spread the word share links, all of that is so so so appreciated. So just to remind you of what you can do on Patreon as well. If you give me two USD a month, I will give you a shout out on your internet profile wherever you like 20 USD, you can tell me any translated Chinese book, we’ll do an episode on it. Guaranteed until there’s too many for me to do then I will retract and be stingy. But for the meantime, say Jia, and thank you all. Bye bye. Zai jian!
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 