MCLC

announcements of MCLC book reviews, publications, etc.

A Novel Amusement

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Find below, and at its online home, my translation of Lu Ling’s (very) short story “A Novel Amusement” (1944). Last week, we published a translation of his “Autumn Night.” Enjoy.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

A Novel Amusement 新奇的娛樂

By Lu Ling 路翎

Translated by Kirk A. Denton [*]

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright February 2023)

Lu Ling, circa 1950s.

On the side of a muddy street in dark and dreary Chongqing, people began to form a single-file line at a bus stop. One by one the newly-arrived joined in, and the line got longer and longer. Most in the line were functionaries impeccably dressed in uniforms and overcoats of grey, yellow, and black; amongst this drabness were the pretty silk scarves, hairpins, and brightly colored jackets worn by young girls. Standing among them were also a few rather unsightly workers, troubled youths, and drifters.

They had been waiting for the bus for a long time and were bored, restless, and annoyed. Some among them read newspapers, some repeatedly tightened their belts to make themselves appear yet more impeccable; others—the young girls—forever under the impression that it had come undone, played continuously with their hair.

Cars and trucks rushed along the street splattering mud . . . Continue reading →

Imagining India in Modern China review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Adhira Mangalagiri’s review of Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895-1962, by Gal Gvili. The review appear below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/mangalagiri/. My thanks to our translation/translation studies book review editor, Michael Hill, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Imagining India in Modern China: Literary
Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895-1962

By Gal Gvili

Reviewed by Adhira Mangalagiri

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright February, 2023)

Gal Gvili, Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895-1962. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 264 pp. ISBN 9780231205719 (paper).

Imagining India in Modern China: Literary Decolonization and the Imperial Unconscious, 1895-1962 makes a compelling case for reading Chinese writers’ imaginations of India as constitutive of the makings of both Chinese anti-imperial discourse and the project of modern Chinese literature as a whole. Gal Gvili convincingly argues that during the early decades of the twentieth century—a period marked by vigorous contestation over literature’s forms and uses—the practice of seeking imagined connections to India proved a powerful strategy for Chinese writers to “undo imperialist knowledge structures” (2). The book’s conceptual framework hinges upon the seeming contradiction between, on the one hand, Chinese writers’ interest in the idea of India as a site for anti-imperialist thought and, on the other, the markedly imperialist and Orientalist character of those texts and discourses about India accessible in China at the time. The book’s central task lies in exposing the mediating force of “Western imperialism’s truth claims and structures of knowledge” in Chinese imaginations of India (4), what Gvili terms “the imperial unconscious” (9). The book argues that attending to the workings of the imperial unconscious does not diminish “the anticolonial critique and fervor with which Chinese writers turned to India,” but instead “makes clearer the immensely complicated epistemic untangling they undertook” (19). Although the idea of the “imperial unconscious” has been explored in other contexts,[1] Imagining India importantly introduces this concept to the study of modern Chinese literature, a field in which there still remains much to uncover regarding the role of colonial networks and hierarchies in shaping the literary sphere. Continue reading →

“Autumn Night” by Lu Ling

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I’ve been working on translations of a few short stories by Lu Ling 路翎 (1923-1994) that I will be making available through the MCLC Resource Center web publication series. Here is the first—”Autumn Night” (1944). It appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/autumn-night/.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Autumn Night 秋夜

By Lu Ling 路翎

Translated by Kirk A. Denton [*]

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright February 2023)

A young Lu Ling, circa early 1940s.

When Zhang Boyao, a clerk for the county government, heard the county magistrate hold forth that morning on the merits and rewards of strenuous study, it dawned on him how very young he still was and something stirred inside him. Before lunch, paging through some “Secrets to the Success of Great Men,” he had a noble presentiment that provoked a plan of great passion. He borrowed a copy of Selections from the Classics and an Introduction to Accounting and took an abacus from the office; first he read “Military Counsel” by Master Zhuge Liang, then he read some accounting, practiced the abacus, and drew some charts—hard into the wee hours of the morning. He felt contented, full of yearning. There was no one around; a cold fall wind blew outside, and the indistinct sound of dogs barking could be heard in the distance. He listened intensely and felt that this was the most beautiful moment of his life.

“How nice to sit here reading quietly, I didn’t even notice the time!” he said, pushing aside the abacus in front of him and stretching. Continue reading →

Rebel Men review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Jun Lei’s review of Rebel Men: Masculinity and Attitude in Postsocialist Chinese Literature, by Pamela Hunt. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/jun-lei/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Rebel Men: Masculinity and Attitude
in Postsocialist Chinese Literature

By Pamel Hunt

Reviewed by Jun Lei

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright February, 2023)

Pamela Hunt, Rebel Men: Masculinity and Attitude in Postsocialist Chinese Literature Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022, viii + 154 pp. ISBN 978-988-8754-05-2.

The exploration of masculinity presents a fecund field for investigating not only the interactions between individuals in the realm of gender relations, but also the interplay of individual agency and institutionalized power, as gender relations interact with various aspects of society. This is a seemingly inexhaustible field, requiring continuous scholarly investigation. In the 1980s, Anglophone masculinity studies emerged as a subfield in the sociology of gender in Australia, the U.S., and the U.K., mainly to address the limitations of the gender role approach. Today, it has evolved into an interdisciplinary field that attends to power, and to the social, economic, and emotional relations of gender. It complements studies of women and sexual minorities, allowing us to further understand heteropatriarchy’s multilayered effects, mostly regarding the conceptualization of manhood and male gender performances, although there have been limited studies also on female masculinities. Researchers generally agree that masculinities are not innate or universal traits of men; rather, they are a socio-cultural and psychological process actively under construction. Masculinities perceived as “authentic” are in fact difficult to achieve, easy to lose, and must be constantly re-proven. Continue reading →

New World Orderings review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Kelly A. Hammond’s review of New World Orderings: China and the Global South, edited by Lisa Rofel and Carlos Rojas. The review appears below and at its online home here: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/hammond/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, MCLC book review editor for literary studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

New World Orderings:
China and the Global South

Edited by Lisa Rofel and Carlos Rojas

Reviewed by Kelly A. Hammond

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2023)

Lisa Rofel and Carlos Rojas, eds. New World Orderings: China and the Global South Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022. vii + 268 pp. ISBN 9781478019015 (paper).

This interdisciplinary volume—New World Orderings: China and the Global South, edited by Lisa Rofel and Carlos Rojas—has a lot to offer. By focusing on circulations of global capital and challenges posed by China and the Global South to the neoliberal world order, the combined efforts of the twelve contributors deemphasize state-level diplomacy in favor of an approach that emphasizes “globalization from below” (96). In doing so, the book concentrates mostly on movements of individuals, non-state actors, and economic intermediaries in and out of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and around and throughout the Global South. The chapters focus both on migrations and diasporas, and on cultural and economic interactions, to paint a variegated picture of the lives and experiences of both citizens of the PRC and peoples of the Global South who interact and deal with China and Chinese people on their own terms. The actors in this book—be they African women trying to eke out a living in Guangzhou, or the Chinese traders trying to make it in Johannesburg—are all active agents in the ongoing efforts to displace—or at least disrupt—traditional flows of capital. Continue reading →

Bird Talk review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Chris Song’s review of Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu, translated with commentary by Frederik H. Green. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/chris-song/. My thanks to Michael Hill, MCLC translation/translation studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu:
Modern Tales of a Chinese Romantic

By Xu Xu
Translated with commentary by Frederik H. Green

Reviewed by Chris Song
MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2023)

Bird Talk and Other Stories by Xu Xu. Translated with commentary by Frederik H. Green. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2020. 256 pp. ISBN: 9781611720556 (paper).

Despite immense popularity in Republican Shanghai and postwar Hong Kong, Xu Xu 徐訏 (1908–1980) remains an under-studied modern Chinese writer. Frederik H. Green’s research endeavor over the past two decades, however, has reminded the field of Xu Xu’s fiction, poetry, essays, and other literary activities. Green’s unrelenting efforts have been brought to fruition with the publication of Bird Talk and Other Stories. The book opens with Green’s introduction, which details Xu Xu’s life and works; collects five stories that Green selected and translated into English; and concludes with Green’s commentary on Xu Xu’s postwar fiction. The selection of stories reflects Green’s emphasis on the transformative (neo-)romantic sensibility that spanned Xu Xu’s entire literary career. The book not only reintroduces an ingenious author to the forgetful readership of modern Chinese literature but also makes an insightful contribution to the study of Hong Kong literature and other cultural productions during the Cold War. I shall refrain here from translation criticism and from reiterating Green’s able summary of each story. Instead, I discuss Green’s study of Xu Xu’s stories in the context of what he calls “transnational romanticism” (200), a concept that drove his selection and translation, and consider how Green’s illustration of this idea with Xu Xu’s stories might inspire new understandings of postwar Hong Kong literature. Continue reading →

MCLC 34.2

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We are pleased to announce publication of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, vol. 34, no. 2 (2022), a special issue on “Taiwan and Hong Kong’s Global Connections.” Find the table of contents below, with links to abstracts. See here for information on how to subscribe.

Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier, Editors

Table of Contents
Volume 34, Issue 2, December, 2022

Note from the Editors, by Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier
34(2), pp. v–vii
Full Text | PDF/EPUB

Beyond Party Politics? Visitors and Meaning-Making in the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, by Emily GRAF
34(2), pp. 241–290
Abstract

The Making of Small Literature as World Literature: Taiwanese Writer Wu Ming-Yi, by Kuei-fen CHIU
34(2), pp. 291–312
Abstract

“World Literature” between Transcultural Poetics and Colonial Politics: Yang Chichang, Le Moulin, and Surrealism in Taiwan, by Fangdai CHEN
34(2), pp. 313–344
Abstract Continue reading →

Sensing China review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Astrid Møller-Olsen’s review of Sensing China: Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture, edited by Shengqing Wu and Xuelei Huang. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/moller-olsen/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, MCLC book review editor for literary studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Sensing China:
Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture

Edited by Shengqing Wu and Xuelei Huang

Reviewed by Astrid Møller-Olsen

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2023)

Shengqing Wu and Xuelei Huang, eds. Sensing China: Modern Transformations of Sensory Culture London: Routledge 2022. xiii + 297 pp. ISBN 9781032008776 (cloth).

The ancient pages of the book before me are rumpled by water damage, the lower right corner of each page is stained brown and all but torn off, it smells musty and would feel sticky were I allowed to touch it. This object is a product of repeated multisensory reading sessions. It is a volume of choral sheet music from the European Middle Ages and its pages are marked by the audible breath of the singers, as well as by the touch of their fingers, hastily turning the page in time for the next verse. Holding it in their hands, they viewed the sheet music with their eyes and translated it into sound with their brains and vocal cords. The temperature and moisture of the room and the bodies in it merged with the sounds and became a visual imprint, a tactile trace of a melody heard long ago.

As this description of one object from the small but wondrous exhibition “Sensational Books” (2022) at the Weston Library in Oxford shows, the boundaries between sensory categories—and between physical and social aspects of sensation—are as permeable as they are practical. What is “a sense” really? How many are there, and might they not differ between periods, cultures, bodies, and social contexts? These are some of the questions posed by contemporary sensory studies, a field that combines sociological, anthropological, and historical approaches to diversify and nuance our understanding of what sensation means, has meant, and can mean. It is highly fitting that Sensing China, a new and very welcome addition to this cross-disciplinary area of scholarship, begins with a deconstruction of the very term “sense.” Continue reading →

Qiyue and Ansheng

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Linshan Jiang’s translation of and introduction to Anni Baobei’s “Qiyue and Ansheng.” You can read the full text at the following url: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/qiyue-and-ansheng/. A teaser appears below. My thanks to Linshan Jiang for sharing her work with the MCLC community.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

Qiyue and Ansheng

By Anni Baobei 安妮宝贝 (aka Qing Shan 庆山)

Translated by Linshan Jiang [*]

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright December 2022)

Anni Baobei

Anni Baobei is the pen name of Li Jie 励婕, who was born in Ningbo in 1974. She started writing online in 1998 and worked as a writer for the online literary portal, rongshuxia.com (Under the Banyan Tree 榕树下), in 2000 (see Hockx 2015). In the same year, she published in print her first short story collection, Goodbye Vivian (告别薇安; 2000), which includes the story I translate here, “Qiyue and Ansheng.” The collection was an immediate commercial success. Since then, she has published dozens of writings, including novels, short story collections, essay collections, and photo collections. She has also worked as an editor of a literary journal, Open (大方), and a translator of picture books for children. In 2014, she changed her pen name to Qing Shan (庆山), reflecting a shift in her thinking and writing toward meditation and religious beliefs. Most of her works have traditional Chinese versions published in Taiwan. In 2007, Izumi Kyōka (泉京鹿) translated nine stories in the short story collection of Goodbye Vivian into Japanese. In 2012, Nicky Harman and Keiko Wong translated three of her short stories into English. Relative to her popularity in the Chinese-speaking world, Anni Baobei’s works have not been widely translated into foreign languages.

Poster for the film adaptation Soul Mate.

Anni Baobei’s “Qiyue and Ansheng” is a coming-of-age story of two girls from their days in junior high school to their adulthoods. Although it seems to be firmly in a heteronormative framework—both girls love the same boy—the story entails “the ambiguity of the homosocial and homosexual distinction in the female-centered relationship” (Wang 2021: 128). Additionally, as this story was published at the beginning of the new millennium when “cyber writing” emerged as a new literary phenomenon, the story shows the “urban fashion of the ‘petty bourgeois’ (xiaozi 小资) frenzy” as China embraced capitalism and globalization (Yang 2006: 121). In 2016, the story was adapted into a film entitled Soul Mate (七月与安生), directed by Derek Tsang (曾国祥) from Hong Kong, which brought renewed interest and expanding popularity to Anni Baobei and her writings. The two actresses in the film, Zhou Dongyu (周冬雨) and Ma Sichun (马思纯), who performed the two female protagonists in the story, won the Best Leading Actress category of the Golden Horse Awards, which made a history to have joint winners. The film was nominated for and awarded by various film festivals.

In this translation, I choose the revised edition published by Tianjin Renmin (天津人民) in 2020, which is different from the earliest edition published in 2000. Anni Baobei has a unique style that makes use of a variety of techniques and literary strategies, the most obvious of which might be her use of punctuation. The author seldom uses question marks; instead, she usually uses commas and periods to enclose a question. Using more commas and periods than question marks in the text, the story offers a sense of monologue for the whole text, and even a sense of certainty sometimes. For example, Ansheng asks Qiyue if she likes a simple life; Qiyue says yes. As readers, we have seen Qiyue express her wish to live a simple life from the beginning to the end, so only an terse confirmation is needed, rather than a long explanation. The story also lacks quotation marks, even though there are many instances of dialogue. It creates a sense of monologue and even of stream of consciousness. The way I deal with this is to render conversations in the present tense, and all other facets of the narrative, including characters’ mental activities and indirect dialogues, in the past tense. In this way, I try to maintain the style of the author, which can convey a sense of strangeness in the reading process. One dimension of its formal style that has changed is its use of periods. In the earliest version, the author used periods almost for every pause, creating a choppy, staccato feeling to the language. Although this is less true in the version I translate here, a sense of simplicity and restraint is still manifest. … [READ THE FULL TRANSLATION HERE]

Donning Cosmopolitanism

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Su Ming Marian Chia’s “Donning Cosmopolitanism: Expressions of Modernity in Chinese Symbolist Poetry,” which introduces and translates poems by Li Jinfa, Fei Ming, Dai Wangshu, Bian Zhilin, and Ji Xian. The piece appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/mari-chia/. My thanks to Marian Chia for sharing her work with the MCLC community.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

Donning Cosmopolitanism:
Expressions of Modernity in Chinese Symbolist Poetry

By Su Ming Marian Chia[*]

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright December 2022)

Cover of Li Jinfa’s 1926 poetry collection Songs for Happiness (為幸福而歌).

Within the history of modern China lie histories and inflections that puzzle and provoke us. I am especially interested in the inflections that lie at the interstices of language, between the sign and signified, as they “speak” through the discordance between the ostensible aims and principles of cultural translation in modern Chinese poetry, and the tensions elicited by the pursuit of translated modernity.[1]

Liang Qichao’s clarion call to “renovate” the literature of a nation so as to “renovate the people of a nation” epitomizes how far early-twentieth century Chinese intellectuals were willing to go with literary reform.[2] In fin-de-siècle China, literary reform was a predominant agenda and earnest instrumentality undergirded its pursuit, as is evident from Hu Shi’s eight “modest proposals for the reform of literature,” but those who appreciate the discipline will recognize that literature, an interplay of authorship, readers, text and culture, defies prescription. Accordingly, the ideals of New Poetry—verse written in vernacular rather than classical Chinese—evolved as its practice came to life and a growing number of poets contributed to the debate on modernity and literature. The fervent iconoclasm of the early 1900s was replaced by fresh calls to reinvent, rather than reject, classical Chinese tradition in the 1920s, and an impetus to balance East and West began to replace a heavy reliance on importing foreign models. Continue reading →

The Routledge Companion to Yan Lianke

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Martina Codeluppi’s review of The Routledge Companion to Yan Lianke, edited by Riccardo Moratto and Howard Yuen Fung Choy. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/codeluppi/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, MCLC book review editor for literary studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

The Routledge Companion to Yan Lianke

Edited by Riccardo Moratto and Howard Yuen Fung Choy

Reviewed by Martina Codeluppi

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright November, 2022)

Riccardo Moratto & Howard Yuen Fung Choy, eds., The Routledge Companion to Yan Lianke. London and New York: Routledge, 2022, ISBN: 9780367700980 (cloth).

Putting together a comprehensive volume about one of the most interesting, prolific, and internationally recognized voices in contemporary Chinese literature is not an easy task. This work, edited by Riccardo Moratto and Howard Yuen Fung Choy, makes the most of its 519 pages to retrace Yan Lianke’s 阎连科 literary production from its origins to the present day, providing a generous number of essays on the author’s poetics in theory and in practice, as well as on the challenges of its translation and reception.

The ambition of the project is self-evident, and it takes no more than one glance at the table of contents to realize it: the volume comprises 32 chapters divided into four parts, each of them addressing two specific aspects of Yan Lianke’s literary production. The table of contents is followed by a list of illustrations and then that of the contributors, which shows a considerable degree of diversity in terms of academic position and nationality, thereby ensuring a multifaceted perspective. The volume has multiple levels of introduction. The foreword by Carlos Rojas provides a retrospective view on Yan Lianke’s main works, focusing on the key elements that characterize his literary production. In particular, Rojas employs the metaphor of darkness to bring forward the relationship between Yan’s works and censorship, leading the way for the following essays, just like the flashlight Yan himself talked about on receiving the Franz Kafka Prize in 2014 (xxii). Subsequently, Yan Lianke’s preface—translated by Riccardo Moratto—introduces the collection of essays by quoting from both Western classics, such as The Iliad, The Metamorphosis, The Divine Comedy and The Bible, and Chinese ones to show that literature emerged out of human experience. Yan then goes on to analyze how the relationship among writers, critics, and readers has changed across the centuries, and raises the question of where the truth and the “story field” of twenty-first century literature are to be found (xxxv). In doing so, he shows an aspiration to move beyond realism and seek the truth by transcending real-life experiences. Following Yan’s essay, the editorial preface by Riccardo Moratto and Howard Yuen Fung Choy provides some background information concerning the birth of the project and a description of it parts. Finally, two sections of acknowledgments—one by Yan and one by the editors—brings the introductory section to a close. Because of the richness of the volume and the variety of its contributions, I address each of its parts separately and provide a brief overview of each chapter. Continue reading →

Literary Information in China review

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MCLC Resource center is pleased to announce publication of Victor Mair’s review of Literary Information in China: A History, edited by Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Xiao Liu, Christopher M. B. Nugent, and Bruce Rusk. A teaser (it’s a long review) appears below. To read the review in its entirety, go to its online home here: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/victor-mair/. My thanks to literary studies book review editor, Nicholas Kaldis, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

Literary Information in China:
A History

Edited by Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Xiao Liu, Christopher M. B. Nugent, and Bruce Rusk

Reviewed by Victor H. Mair

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright September, 2022)

Jack W. Chen, Anatoly Detwyler, Xiao Liu, Christopher M. B. Nugent, and Bruce Rusk, eds. Literary Information in China: A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021, xxxii + 672 pp. ISBN: 9780231195522 (Hardcover); 9780231551373 (E-book).

This is a hefty volume, with a total of 670 pages of closely spaced, compact, but still readily legible, type. It explicitly styles itself a “history,” as in the subtitle. Yet, at the head of the “Introduction,” the editors state that it is “For a History of Literary Information in China” (p. xxi, emphasis added), which might be interpreted as signifying something like “materials for, or toward, a history of literary information in China.” In other words, one could think of this volume, which I will henceforth refer to as LIIC, as constituting a collection of fundamental data and ideas that could be used in the making of a history of literary information in China. But that begs the question, because we still don’t know precisely what “literary information” is with reference to the Chinese tradition (history). The aim of this review is to extrapolate from its many chapters just what sort of history of literary information LIIC is pointing toward.

***

In her “Foreword,” Ann Blair has done a worthy job of succinctly tracing the growth of information sciences since the mid-twentieth century, but one still wants to know what literary information is. One thing is certain: LIIC is not a history of literature in China. If that is what the reader is looking for, they have come to the wrong place. Indeed, in LIIC one will find little reference to literary works and authors themselves. Instead, what one will find in abundance are data concerning the epiphenomena of written texts—their constituent symbols (what the authors mostly refer to consistently as “graphs” (wen 文 and zi 字), the nature and form of written texts, the ordering, storage, and retrieval of words, books, articles, and so forth. To be sure, we now have in English and other languages a plentiful assortment of histories of Chinese literature. Thus, there is room for a work like LIIC, which tells us about the “stuff” of written texts in China not the written texts themselves. The notion of “literary information” is quite a novel concept in Chinese studies, though it owes much to Endymion Wilkinson’s monumental Chinese History: A New Manual (1973/1998—2022; six editions), which strives to make available answers and access to all aspects of the written and material culture of Chinese civilization since it began. Rather than a history of literary information per se, however, one may think of LIIC almost as an encyclopedia or handbook for the study of literary information. The editors do make a serious attempt to come to grips with the phenomena of information theory and information studies, not merely as they have emerged in China, but globally. . .  [READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW HERE]

Unending Capitalism review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Ruksana Kibria’s review of Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China’s Communist Revolution, by Karl Gerth. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/kibria/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk A. Denton, MCLC

Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism
Negated China’s Communist Revolution

By Karl Gerth

Reviewed by Ruksana Kibria

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright August, 2022)

Karl Gerth, Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China’s Communist Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, xi + 384 pp. ISBN: 9780521688468 (Paperback).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s victory in 1949 under Mao Zedong’s leadership was commonly regarded as the beacon of international proletarian salvation, epitomizing the triumph of socialist egalitarianism and liberty over the inequities of capitalism. The discursive construction of Maoist China as building socialism obfuscated the fact that what had occurred was essentially a nationalist revolution whose goal was to develop a self-reliant, independent, and powerful national economy—a coveted goal among the Chinese intelligentsia since the nineteenth century, long before the revolution or the advent of Mao. However, due to a convergence of ideological and geo-political factors, the perception was created that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) had not only embarked on a communist journey following an untrodden radical path, but was also a progressive and emancipatory paradigm to be emulated by other postcolonial developing countries. Reality, however, was quite different because, rather than liberation, the revolution essentially replaced one form of oppression with another.[1]

Karl Gerth’s Unending Capitalism: How Consumerism Negated China’s Communist Revolution is a thought-provoking contribution to the study of the expansion of consumerism in the Maoist era, a meticulously researched, clearly argued, and highly readable interpretation of this period. Although Unending Capitalism is Gerth’s most recent book, it is in fact the middle volume of a trilogy, bookended by the author’s China Made (2003), which deals with the emergence of nationalism and consumer culture in China in early twentieth century, and As China Goes, So Goes the World (2010), an exploration of the history of post-Mao consumerism. Continue reading →

MCLC 34.1

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We are delighted to announce the publication of issue 34.1 (Summer 2022) of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, now published and distributed by Edinburgh University Press. Titles and links to abstracts are listed below. The printed copies are still coming off the press, but subscribers can access the full content right away using the new MCLC repository:  https://www.euppublishing.com/toc/mclc/34/1

(direct URLs may vary depending on your home institution). Non-subscribers and those without institutional access can read one free article (Shu Yang’s “Wrestling with Tradition: Early Chinese Suffragettes and the Modern Remodeling of the Shrew Trope”) and the “Note from the Editors.” In the latter, we present some of the notable changes coming to the journal, including to layout and JSTOR access. A few things are changing for MCLC, but we hope the transition will be a smooth one for both readers and authors. Most importantly, the scholarship of the journal remains of the highest standard, so we hope you enjoy exploring this latest issue.

Natascha Gentz and Christopher Rosenmeier

Volume 34, Number 1 (Spring 2022) 
Articles

Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics review

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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Robert Moore’s review of Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age, by Shuangyi Li. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/robert-moore/. My thanks to Michael Hill, our book review editor for translations/translation studies, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics:
Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age

By Shuangyi Li

Reviewed by Robert Moore

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright June, 2022)

Shuangyi Li, Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 267 pp. ISBN 978-9811655616 (cloth).

Shuangyi Li’s Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age is a long-form study of four Franco-Chinese writers: Gao Xingjian 高行健, Shan Sa 山颯, Dai Sijie 戴思杰, and François Cheng 程抱一. All were born and raised in China but moved to France during early adulthood and compose works in French. All are also recipients of numerous awards, and one, François Cheng, is a member of the Académie Française, the first Asian-born person to be so honored. Li’s strategy is to demonstrate that all four share a recognizable aesthetic, one that is transmedial and transnational, and only emerges when we are able to understand how the cultures and languages with which they work influence each other simultaneously.

Chapter 1 is an introduction that lays out the conceptual framework for the study. Chapter 2 leads with a short consideration of some of the principal concerns of all four writers before launching into a long analysis of François Cheng’s Le Dit de Tianyi (The River Below in English translation). Chapter 3 discusses historically-minded works by Cheng, Shan, and Dai, with a particular eye on how images and motifs from ancient China can be re-presented and re-imagined in French. Chapter 4 looks at the way calligraphy influences, and is influenced by, the fiction of the same three writers. Chapter 5 concludes the main body of the study with a consideration of how Dai Sijie’s fiction, and Gao Xingjian’s painting, interact with each writer’s respective cinematic interests. Continue reading →