5/27/2005
In China’s Mao years you could be detained and persecuted for talking with your neighbor about your cat. The Chinese word for “cat” (mao, high level tone) is a near-homonym for the name of the Great Leader (mao, rising tone), and a tip to the police from an eavesdropper who misheard one for the other and took you to be disrespectful could ruin your life. Continue reading
IAN JOHNSON 05.08.14
Staff stand on a fishing vessel in Danzhou, Hainan province, setting sail for the Spratly Islands, an archipelago disputed between China and other countries.
Continue reading
Howard W. French, a professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, has spent years reporting about the massive migration of Chinese people to Africa. Alfred A. Knopf has just published the results of his work: China’s Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in China. French, who has served as the bureau chief in Japan, China, West and Central Africa, and the Caribbean for The New York Times, spoke with Columbia’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute about his new book.
Howard W. French discusses his new book about the massive Chinese migration to Africa已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews, Publications
Göran Malmqvists blogg
Från en sinologs skrivarlya 漢學家馬悅然書房
2012/12/29
馬悅然論：翻譯的藝術
There are four kinds of translators:
Firstly, there are the scholar/translators, to whom the translation of a text serves as the final argument in a piece of philological research. The structure of such translations normally strictly follows that of the original text, with the addition of square brackets, indicating words which the target language forces the translator to include. My venerated master professor Continue reading
Göran Malmqvists：On the Art of Translation已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews
Tagged Göran Malmqvists, Translation
May 14, 2014 | by bloglarb
By Megan Shank
Step out of the Beijing airport, and taste the tang in the air. For the remainder of your time in the capital, it will linger, metallic, on the back of your tongue. Is it burning plastic? Coal? The sweat of migrant workers who have come to chase dreams and money? The boozy breath of corrupt officials? The hot asphalt poured for wide boulevards? The lingering dust of razed neighborhoods, a powdery earthen scent that haunts like an odiferous
A Trip Back to Beijing — Courtesy of Xu Zechen and Eric Abrahamsen已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews
Tagged Eric Abrahamsen, Xu Zechen
“In The Same Boat,” cut paper by Bovey Lee. Photo by Eddie Lam@Image Art Studio.
By John Pomfret, Published: May 16
John Pomfret, the author of “Chinese Lessons: Five Classmates and the Story of the New China,” is working on a book about the United States and China.
‘Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China’ by Evan Osnos已关闭评论
Posted in Book Reviews, Headlines
Tagged AGE OF AMBITION, China
By EVAN OSNOS May 18, 2014
On a single day this spring – April 30, though it could be any – readers scanning the news on China had reason to be baffled: They learned that China is poised to vault past the United States on a measure of economic dominance, five years sooner than expected (unless it isn’t). They also learned that China is at risk of a grave economic slump, if property prices continue to sink. They learned that world-classgenetic researchers in Shanghai, flush with far-sighted government investment, have collaborated to produce new insight into aging cells. And, lastly, they learned that a Chinese journalist has vanished into detention for daring to acknowledge a date on the calendar that censors consider taboo: the 25th anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square on June 4.
JUNE 4, 2011 · 9:50 AM
In memoriam of those who perished on 4 June 1989 on Tiananmen Square. An accidental cross-examination with the Chinese exile author Ma Jian, who dares to remember China’s past in his novel Beijing Coma.
by Julie O’Yang © 2011
The first time when I met Ma Jian, it was two years ago on a wintry day in Brussels. We were both at Europalia, Festival biennal des Arts et de la Culture hosted by the European capital. It sounds better than it is. While a cold wind blew outside the large windows of Royal Museum of Fine Art, the vibes inside reminded me somewhat of Commissaire Maigret coloured haphazardly with a child’s felt pen set. Two days before my publisher had phoned to ask me if I could help a Chinese author named Ma Jian, who was on
the Continent to be interviewed by Dutch/Flemish media. “He needs an interpreter. You get paid for the job,” my publisher had said. Certainly, I had answered. The same afternoon I set out to do my research.
I knew Ma Jian from my high school years in China. His short story collection about Tibet, Stick Out Your Tongue, caused quite a stir at the time. “Stick out your tongue” is what a doctor says when you go to a hospital in China as part of forming a diagnosis. In his stories, the author portrayed a Tibet and Tibetan Culture in a harsh, unpretty but honest way, contrary to the popular, romantic version a la Heinrich Harrer. I don’t remember if I particularly liked the book, but back then I read China’s literary avant-gardists with gusto and devoured every letter that came my way. The fact that language became an enjoyable game, and the outcome excited me and brought me sensational shocks. Six months after the military crash on Tiananmen Square, I went abroad to study. Consequently, I lost track of the literary
scene from my motherland as I myself was left to the hand of fate. I needed to fill some serious gaps, that’s for sure.
