Cold Window Newsletter #7.5

Source: Cold Window Newsletter #7.5 (July 13, 2025)
Internet genres redux: 13 Ways of Looking at Chinese Internet Literature (#5-6)
By Andrew Rule

Welcome back to the Cold Window Newsletter. This issue: more ways of looking at Chinese internet literature. For the month of July, I’m setting aside literary fiction to focus entirely on a deep dive into internet genres, and in this issue we’ll dive straight into the vortex with a rough guide to the genres themselves. In case you need a refresher, I began this series with some thoughts on internet novels and Western publishing back in May. Take a look:

Thirteen ways of looking at Chinese internet literature: Genres redux (#5-6)

Last week, I tried to give a high-level overview of how to talk about Chinese internet literature genres and why they matter. This week, it’s time to look at the genres themselves.

Many discussions of internet genres, both in Chinese and English, are content to present them as lists of story types all in a row, like a menu authors choose from when they sit down to write. But if we’re going to try to understand what makes Chinese internet literature appealing, that approach feels seriously insufficient to me. Like I said last week, genre is about not just the existing tropes you pull into your novel, but also the ways you satisfy and surprise your readers. Making them hungry for more, while leaving room for new combinations, new genres, to arise.

So, below, I’m going to offer two different taxonomies of genre. The first categorizes novels based on the tools they use to achieve that satisfied, addicted feeling; the second is rooted in important works from internet literature history and the genres they helped bring into being. That may not be quite enough to capture the whole vast range of this literature, but it’s a start.

Way #5: as a taxonomy of story forms

My favorite approach to genre classification comes from 王玉玊 Wang Yusu in her book 《编码新世界》 Coding a New World. Wang proposes that the most recent generation of internet literature has been heavily shaped by cross-fertilization with animation, comics, and, most of all, games. I think her taxonomy is so good that I don’t want to get in the way. Instead, I’ll just translate portions below so that she can walk you through it herself.

《编码新世界——游戏化向度的网络文学》(Coding a New World: The Gamified Turn in Internet Literature, 2021)

Typical works of internet literature published within the current digital/artificial ecosystem include the following six basic types.

1. Leveling-up and system stories. These stories all show the clear influence of the questing and leveling-up structures from online games. The protagonist is required to constantly accept and complete quests, receive rewards, increase in strength, and accept new quests in a cyclical process that forms the main structure of the story. In systemless leveling-up stories 升级文, the protagonist’s motivation to achieve their goal—whether it is to ascend to immortality or to conquer the earth—ultimately comes from their own desires. […] More recently, the system story 系统文 genre portrays it as thoroughly natural for protagonists to be controlled by their systems. Not only does the external system assist the protagonist in the form of money, cheat codes, etc., it also supplies the protagonist’s entire life purpose.

2. Slice-of-life and pampering stories. Slice-of-life 日常向 stories pose a challenge to the traditional narrative impulse. They are no longer invested in telling complex stories featuring exposition, development, climax, and resolution. Instead, they revolve around highly aestheticized depictions of daily life. […] Around 2013, the pampering story 甜宠文 trend rose to prominence within female-oriented internet literature, and it soon became the sole guiding model for emotional development within female-oriented novels. Strictly speaking, the intimate relationship between the male and female leads in a pampering story is not love but rather soulmateship 羁绊: as a perfect pair fated by heaven to be together, the two characters adore each other, understand each other perfectly, and trust each other unquestioningly. No third party ever butts in; no conflicts or misunderstandings ever arise.

3. Infinite flow and rapid transmigration. These stories incorporate worldbuilding elements of many different genres in rapid succession. In one chapter the protagonist might be operating a mech suit in a sci-fi world, while in the next he might become entangled in a power struggle between families in a historical setting. […] In infinite flow 无限流 stories, the logic of the original world and the parallel “copy-worlds,” particularly mystery-solving elements in decoding this logic, become a primary reason for reading the story. Why does the protagonist keep appearing in different worlds? What does the overworld actually want from him? What secrets and traps are hiding from him in the copy-worlds? […] Rapid transmigration 快穿 is a subgenre of infinite flow oriented toward female readers. The pleasure of these stories comes primarily from the subversion of genre. In a typical rapid-transmigration story, each of the parallel worlds comes pre-loaded with the conventions and tropes of an existing internet literature genre. The protagonist forges a new path by breaking the genre rules of each successive world, all while mocking the irrationality of the original tropes.

(Let me cut in for a second to say that this Reddit post also does a fantastic job of explaining infinite flow to the uninitiated.)

《无限恐怖》(Terror Infinity by zhttty, 2007), one of the progenitors of the infinite flow 无限流 genre

4. Rants and memes. Works of internet literature centered around internet humor 玩梗 can broadly be separated into three types. The first is deeply embedded in popular internet culture and references as many memes as quickly as possible. New memes are incorporated into the story as soon as they become popular online. The second type creatively finds new humor in old memes, keeping the reader’s interest with original and unexpected rants. The third kind specializes in creating new memes. […] But wherever there are punchlines, there must also be ranting 吐槽. Whether the complaining about the jokes is done by the protagonist or is left to the reader, there must always be space left for a reaction to the punchline.

5. Headcanons and outline stories. Headcanon 脑洞 fragments (under 140 characters in length) and outline stories 大纲文 (thousands to tens of thousands of characters) can often be found on social media platforms like Weibo and LOFTER 乐乎. These works start from a specific ship, plot, meme, or worldbuilding concept to tell a story in extremely simple language with extremely few specific details. Any information unrelated to the central focus is excised.

6. Fanfiction stories 同人文While fan communities of a particular piece of media often insist on the primacy of canon 官设 story elements, […] it is fanon 公设 (i.e., fan-made) story elements that form the real creative basis for fanfiction. Of course, fanon is never static, but rather is in a constant state of flux. Different fans might have wildly different interpretations of a certain element of fanon. Still, in an active fan community, fanon should form a basic shared “database” understood by all members. It creates a digital environment exclusive to members of the fan community in which storytelling can take place.

Way #6: as a constantly evolving genre history

Of course, there’s a much more conventional set of genre terms that fans and platforms usually use to describe internet novels. As overlapping and vaguely-defined as they sometimes are, it’s worth taking a tour of these conventional genres, passing by some examples of influential novels in each genre along the way.

Don’t treat this as a reading list—I haven’t read most of what’s on here myself. I’ll also admit that the coverage of female-oriented fiction 女性向 below is far from complete, both because I’ve read less of it and because its historical importance is often understated in the Chinese sources I rely on for this series. So just think of this as a meandering, somewhat random stroll through genre history.1 Hopefully some proper reading lists, curated by myself and other fans based on what we actually love to read, will follow.

A note on links: in this and future issues, the Chinese title of each novel will lead to the original text,2 and the English title will lead to the officially licensed translation if it exists, or to the fan-maintained Novel Updates page if not.3

Beginnings

The actual starting point of Chinese internet literature is of some debate, but it’s generally accepted that it has roots in early experiments in serialized fiction on Taiwanese bulletin boards. 《悟空传》, a landmark Journey to the West fanfiction, is one of the earliest works that still reads like a modern internet novel.

  • 罗森《风姿物语》(The Shape of the Wind by Luo Sen, 1997)
  • 痞子蔡《第一次的親密接觸》(The First Intimate Contact by Pi Zi Cai, 1998)
  • 今何在《悟空传》(The Legend of Wukong by Jin Hezai, 2000)(xianxia)

Qihuan 奇幻

So-called “Western-style fantasy,” defined by elements like magic, orcs, dwarves, etc. This genre generated massively popular novels during the 2000s, including some some of the first internet genres to gain officially licensed translations in English. Subgenres include D&Dsword-and-sorcery, and steampunk.

Cultivation 修仙 and xianxia 仙侠Outgrowths of older Chinese wuxia and supernatural novels, mixed with elements of Western and Japanese fantasy stories. At their core, these stories follow a protagonist training to ascend to immortality. There’s no precise boundary between the two terms, but “xianxia” is often understood to refer to cultivation stories taking place in historical or mythical Chinese settings, while “cultivation” is a broader category that could also take place in modern or science-fictional settings.

Xuanhuan 玄幻

Also called “Eastern-style fantasy” to differentiate it from qihuan. This is an extremely broad category of fantasy stories that place a heavy emphasis on original worldbuilding and creative leveling-up systems. Many infinite flow 无限流 stories fit into this category. More recently, the success of 《诡秘之主》 has sparked a trend of xuanhuan novels inspired by the Cthulhu mythos 克苏鲁.

Tomb-raiding 盗墓

Suspenseful archaeology-adventure stories borrowing heavily from traditional Chinese culture. You don’t hear too much about this genre lately, but its early classics remain some of the defining works of Chinese internet literature.

History 历史 and historical romance 古代言情

The male-oriented side of historical novels includes plenty of influential transmigration, military, and alternate history stories, but it’s the female-oriented historical romance side that is most vibrant and has had the biggest impact on pop culture. Subgenres of historical romance include palace intrigue 宫斗 and feuding family 宅斗 stories, usually starting with a transmigration. There’s also field-tilling literature 种田文, a more relaxed subgenre in which the transmigrated protagonist ekes out a life (and romance) within a traditional farming or merchant society.

Urban romance 都市言情

Romance stories that take place in modern settings, not history. In addition to the evergreen campus romance 校园言情, other subgenres like “domineering CEO” 霸总 and “high-ranking cadre” 高干 have all had their turns in the spotlight. (霸总文 are predominantly male-female stories, while 高干文 was a subgenre of mostly male-male romance that was wiped off the major novel platforms during a 2014 censorship campaign).

  • 匪我思存《佳期如梦》(The Girl in Blue by Fei Wo Si Cun, 2006)
  • 辛夷坞《致我们终将逝去的青春》(So Young by Xin Yi Wu, 2007)

Danmei 耽美

Danmei, the internationally beloved genre of male-male romance stories written by and for women that I discussed at the beginning of this series, can overlap with just about any of the genres I’ve listed above. Historical transmigration, sci-fi, and infinite flow all have their own danmei canons. I’m following the example of many scholars and web literature platforms before me by giving them their own section, so as to reflect their independent development and fanbase.


That’s it for this month’s internet genre deep dive. Next time: a return to literary fiction for a special issue on the best short fiction collections of the year so far. Thanks for reading!

1 *For this section, I’m indebted to 《网络文学经典选读》(2016), edited by 邵燕君, among other more recent sources. But it’s impossible, and misguided, to make a fixed canon of internet novels; the only true classics are the ones fans choose themselves.

2 Unless the Chinese original has been delisted from the major internet novel platforms, which does happen. A lot.

3 I won’t link directly to unlicensed fan translations, but they’re very easy to locate using Novel Updates if that’s your preferred way to read.

Mending Bodies review

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Tammy Lai-Ming Ho’s review of Mending Bodies, by Hon Lai Chu and translated by Jacqueline Leung. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/tammy-ho/. My thanks to Michael Hill, our translations/translation studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Mending Bodies 

By Hon Lai Chu

Translated by Jacqueline Leung


Reviewed by Tammy Lai-ming Ho

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright July, 2025)


Hon Lai Chu, Mending Bodies Tr. Jacqueline Leung. San Francisco: Two Lines Press, 2025. 240 pp. ISBN: 978-1949641769.

In Hon Lai Chu’s 韓麗珠 Mending Bodies, originally published in Chinese as Fengshen 縫身 (which translates literally to “Sewn Body”) fifteen years ago and newly translated into English by Jacqueline Leung, the Hong Kong author envisions a society where connection and loyalty are measured by literal bodily attachment. Under a new law known as the Conjoinment Act, young adults are incentivized—indeed pressured—to surgically “conjoin” with a partner for life. These partnerships may be arranged through state-run matching programs that assess bodily compatibility, but they can also arise from personal choice, including romantic inclination. Yet love is no guarantee of harmony. Whether selected voluntarily or bureaucratically, conjoinment is depicted as a fraught compromise with an increasingly coercive society.

Hon transforms this surreal premise into an unsettling fable of personal freedom under siege, one that resonates far beyond its vaguely defined setting. Through spare, haunting prose and disquieting imagery, Mending Bodies interrogates what it means to relinquish autonomy “for the good of another person and for the good of the country.”[1] It’s a dystopian tale deeply rooted in Hong Kong’s contemporary anxieties, yet its questions about bodily sovereignty and identity feel unnervingly universal.

The novel’s unnamed narrator is a university student writing her dissertation on the history of conjoined humans. She is critical of the Conjoinment Act, even as friends and family urge her to “settle down” and join the program. In Hon’s alternate Hong Kong—a thinly veiled version of the real city—public opinion has been swayed to see conjoinment as the only path to a better life. The narrator observes with unease as newly conjoined couples are celebrated like heroes, showered with champagne by friends and touted as symbols of hope. Meanwhile, unjoined individuals face growing stigma as incomplete or selfish. This Orwellian social pressure is epitomized by the narrator’s close college friend, May. Once a free-spirited roommate, May now boasts about her own conjoinment and pointedly wonders when the narrator will “sacrifice” herself too (134). Through such interactions, Hon paints a chilling portrait of conformity, where even those close to us become agents of state ideology. Continue reading Mending Bodies review

Cold Window Newsletter #7

Source: Cold Window Newsletter #7
The fractal madness of internet literature genres
13 Ways of Looking at Chinese Internet Literature (#3-4)
By Andrew Rule

Welcome back to the Cold Window Newsletter! In this issue, the long-delayed return to my series on Chinese internet literature, with a focus on the chaotic sprawl of genres within which online fiction is produced. There’s a lot to say, so I’ll be splitting it up into two posts, published a week apart. No author profiles or recommended stories this time, but look forward to a bunch of those in a seasonal special later this summer.

I made this disclaimer last time, but it bears repeating: Chinese internet literature is one of the most massive media ecosystems in the world, and I am as far as can be from an expert. If you, like me, are a newcomer in this world, let’s treat this series as an opportunity to learn about it together. And if you’re a long-standing fan, I hope you’ll lend your expertise to the conversation.

Thirteen ways of looking at Chinese internet literature: Genre madness (3-4)

The first Chinese internet novel I ever really got into was about video gamers in a post-apocalyptic world. (I will withhold the title of the novel out of embarrassment.)1 A game-master transports them into the wasteland under the pretense that they are playing a VR game, and by manipulating them with quests, meaningless digital currencies, and promises of exclusive rewards, he manages to build an unstoppable army of blithe gamer warriors willing to carry out his every whim. I was astonished by the creativity of the concept: its humor, its moral ambiguity, its blending of classic sci-fi with manga tropes and game mechanics… It wasn’t until hundreds of chapters in that I discovered that this exact blend of story elements has a name: “Fourth Calamity” 第四天灾 fiction, so called because the arrival of gamers who fear no death and are hungry for loot on an unsuspecting world is an epoch-scale calamity. The Fourth Calamity subgenre is a tiny sliver of the video game novel subgenre, which is only part of the sci-fi and system story (系统文) genres. Novels in this subgenre operate in an incredibly specific range of plots.2 And yet there are a lot of them.

Chinese internet literature is VAST. All it takes is a quick scroll through Qidian or Novel Updates to see the whole bedazzling landscape of genres and subgenres unroll before you. But you’re not likely to learn much about internet literature as a whole just by gawking at genre names. Part of my thesis in this series is that internet literature cannot be understood at a glance (it takes at least thirteen!), and that goes for internet genres as well. So, for our next four Ways of Looking, we’ll try to approach genre from a handful of different perspectives. This week, in Part 1, a lexicon of how genres are talked about, and a bird’s-eye view of why they matter. And in Part 2 a week from now, a basic taxonomy of the genres themselves, and a blitz through some of the classic works that define them.

Let’s get to it. Check out my post from May if you want a refresher on Ways #1 and #2. Continue reading Cold Window Newsletter #7

Cheng Chou-yu dies at 91

Source: Focus Taiwan (6/15/25)
Taiwanese poet Cheng Chou-yu dies at 91
By Wang Pao-er and Evelyn Kao

Poet Cheng Chou-yu. CNA file photo

Poet Cheng Chou-yu. CNA file photo.

Taipei, June 15 (CNA) Renowned Taiwanese poet Cheng Chou-yu (鄭愁予) passed away in the United States in the early hours of Friday morning (U.S. time) at the age of 91.

Another local poet Hsiao Hsiao (蕭蕭) told a CNA reporter Sunday that according to Cheng’s sister-in-law Lin Tsai-kuei (林彩桂), Cheng passed away at 4:44 a.m. on June 13 due to heart failure.

Born in 1933, Cheng’s birth name was Cheng Wen-tao (鄭文韜). He was born in Jinan, Shandong Province in China, and his ancestral home was in Ninghe, Hebei. In 1949, he moved to Taiwan with his family following the Nationalist government’s retreat to the island.

In 1967, Cheng went to the United States to participate in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, later earning a Master of Fine Arts degree and doctoral degrees.

He taught at the University of Iowa, Yale University and the University of Hong Kong, and in 2005 returned to Taiwan to serve as a writer-in-residence at National Dong Hwa University.

At the age of 16, Cheng self-published his first poetry collection, Straw Sandals and a Raft. He later published numerous poetry collections including Slave Girls Outside the Window and The Possibility of Snow.

His most famous poem, The Mistake, is highly praised and often cited as a classic in Taiwanese literature. It was included in Taiwan’s Chinese language textbooks.

Cheng was also a frequent traveler, as demonstrated by a line in the Mistake: “I am a passer-by, not a returned man.”

Han Song wrestles with China’s rise and his own decline

Source: NYT (5/27/25)
A Science Fiction Writer Wrestles With China’s Rise, and His Own Decline
In his stories, Han Song explores the disorientation accompanying China’s modernization, sometimes writing of unthinkable things that later came true.
By , Reporting from Beijing

A casually dressed man stands in a place that looks like an old factory.

Han Song, a science fiction writer, at an old steel mill turned leisure park, in Beijing in March. Credit…Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Science fiction is the business of imagining the future, but reading Han Song, one of China’s leading writers of the genre, can sometimes feel like reading recent history.

In 2000, he wrote a novel depicting the collapse of the World Trade Center. In 2016, another book imagined the world transformed into a giant hospital, with doctors taking people from their homes — as would happen at times during China’s coronavirus years.

For Mr. Han, 59, this means only that he had not gone far enough in imagining how dark or strange modern life could become.

“I thought I was just writing, but that it was impossible for it to happen,” he said of his novel “Hospital,” in which everyone is reduced to being a patient. “It actually happened just a few years later,” he said, referring to the pandemic. “This is an example of reality being more science fiction than science fiction.”

How the unthinkable can become reality has been Mr. Han’s subject for the past four decades. By day, he is a journalist at China’s state news agency, recording the country’s astonishing modernization. At night, he writes fiction to grapple with how disorienting that change can be. Continue reading Han Song wrestles with China’s rise and his own decline

‘The Audible Annals of Abudan’

Source: Ethnic ChinaLit (5/25/25)
Synopsis: “The Audible Annals of Abudan” (梗概:《凿空)
By Bruce Humes

A colleague and I have just completed translation of a novel set in turn-of-the-century Xinjiang. Given that precious little writing is coming out of the region these days — and that this is a moving novel that captures the poverty and impact of state-driven modernization on a village there populated by Turkic Muslims and their uppity donkeys — readers might enjoy our synopsis of the novel below.–Bruce Humes

Synopsis: The Audible Annals of Abudan
(Based on the Chinese novel by Liu Liangcheng)

Within your lifetime,
many things will disappear before your eyes.
Only those you yearn for wont arrive. — Imam Ghupur

At high noon, a harsh burning sun hangs above Qiuci’s Old Town Bazaar in southern Xinjiang. On the congested bridge, a driver honks his horn furiously at an oncoming donkey cart. As if on cue, what seems like ten thousand donkeys commence braying in unison. The riverbed is instantly engulfed by deafening hee-haws.

Sirens blaring, the People’s Armed Police swoop down and order the cart owners to silence their beasts, or else. But as the chorus of furry vocalists converges in the sky and then plummets back to earth, no owner dares rein in his donkey.

What led to this ear-shattering mob action? Has the foreigner’s Mad Donkey Disease gone viral on Chinese soil? Could the donkeys have learned of their doomsday? Was it a toxic combination of the scorching sun, overcrowding and the piercing sirens? Or was it instigated by Elqem, the Donkey Master of Abudan?

The Party Secretary wants to get to the bottom of this “mass incident” — any leading cadre’s nightmare — and quick.

The investigators zero in on Abudan, where the Turkic villagers are accustomed to their hardscrabble lifestyle on the fringes of the vast Taklamakan Desert, once the ancient Buddhist kingdom of Qiuci before Islam arrived one thousand years ago. Continue reading ‘The Audible Annals of Abudan’

Chinese Thirdspace

Chinese Thirdspace: The Paradox of Moderate Politics, 1946–2020
By Jianmei Liu
NY: Columbia University Press, 2025.

Chinese intellectuals have long chafed under the dominance of dualities—the sense that they are trapped between two diametrically opposed forces, with no choice but to pick one side or the other. Over the years, they have been driven into binary debates such as reform versus revolution, tradition versus modernity, the West versus the East, and left versus right. At the same time, a number of key thinkers have sought to transcend the extremes and find middle ground.

This book examines how a diverse set of Chinese intellectuals carved out in-between spaces beyond the poles of competing ideologies for greater openness, multiplicity, and pluralism. Reappropriating and rehistoricizing the concept of Thirdspace—theorized by Homi Bhabha and Edward Soja—Jianmei Liu traces how writers and artists, in different times and places, have explored and developed alternatives to either/or dichotomies. Chinese Thirdspace brings together an unexpected group of cases, including Zhang Dongsun’s political philosophy, Yin Haiguang’s “colorless thought,” Jin Yong’s martial arts fiction, Liu Zaifu’s fragmentary writing, Gao Xingjian’s transmedia cine-poems, Xi Xi’s hybrid works, Chi Zijian’s eulogy of shamanism, Chu Tien-Hsin’s various heterotopias, and Chan Koonchung’s speculative political novel, concluding with the controversy over Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary. Their works offer new ways to grapple with the modern Chinese experience, and as Liu shows, they contain alternative possibilities for a future beyond the binary oppositions of our current era. Wide-ranging and theoretically rich, this interdisciplinary book demonstrates the pivotal role of Thirdspace in the intellectual history, politics, philosophy, literature, aesthetics, art, and film of modern China. Continue reading Chinese Thirdspace

Translating Yu Hua’s ‘City of Fiction’

Source: World Literature Today (May 15, 2025)
Answering New Questions: Translating Yu Hua’s City of Fiction
By Todd Foley

Here form is content, content is form.
—Samuel Beckett on Finnegan’s Wake

On April 8, 2025, Europa Editions published City of Fiction, the English translation of Yu Hua’s complex novel containing elements of epic adventure, romance, and family saga, set against the backdrop of the intense social and cultural development of China’s early twentieth-century history. In this essay, translator Todd Foley discusses his choices, some of which resist conforming to more standard editorial expectations.

The vast distance between English and Chinese makes the question of translating voice and style especially fraught. When a Chinese text is dismantled and rebuilt in English, how should it sound? What are the rules for its reconstruction? For all that has been written on the theory of translation, there is no clear answer, as the gold standard of “faithfulness” proves to always be relative: “faithful” to what? Every translation, as it takes shape from the idiosyncratic relationship between the original text and the translator’s feeling of it (which is, of course, always socially and historically contingent), poses these questions anew.

City of Fiction presented me with some new questions of style and voice I did not expect from Yu Hua. Following his impeccably executed avant-garde modernism of the 1980s, Yu Hua’s novels of the past three decades have all been characterized by brisk, rollicking narratives that critically examine recent Chinese history up through his contemporary moment. His energetic style is typically full of fecal matter, blood, guts, and misogynistic sexuality, which all paradoxically coheres around an incisive and tear-jerking social allegory—which itself is merely the first step toward the more serious philosophical tensions his works explore. Continue reading Translating Yu Hua’s ‘City of Fiction’

Cold Window Newsletter no. 6

Source:  The Cold Window Newsletter 6 (2025)
By Andrew Rule

Welcome back to the Cold Window Newsletter! In this issue: a first foray into the world of Chinese internet literature, kicking off a column that will be running through several issues of this newsletter throughout 2025; and short fiction from the margins of Southern China.

A note on numbering: this is the third issue of the newsletter published on Paper Republic, but it is the sixth full-length issue overall. I’ve also begun writing shorter features between main issues that will not be cross-posted here, so if you want to receive the interim feature that will be coming out later this month, make sure to visit the newsletter’s main page on Substack.

Guide: Thirteen ways of looking at Chinese internet literature (1-2)

When we write about Chinese fiction in English, we have a tendency to draw a clear line between translated literary fiction (serious, challenging, widely acclaimed but little read) and translated popular fiction (addictive, commercial, devoured in private by millions but rarely acknowledged by the literary establishment). Despite the warmth and open-mindedness of readers on the literary fiction side, and despite the explosive growth of translation websites and fan communities on the popular fiction side, this divide has persisted. But, in my view, as long as you’re only reading work from one side of the divide, you’re missing out on a huge swath of the creativity, diversity, and insight that Chinese fiction can offer. Continue reading Cold Window Newsletter no. 6

Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse

The volume Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse: Time, Space, Bodies, and Things, edited by Justyna Jaguścik, Joanna Krenz, and Andrea Riemenschnitter (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) is now available in open access via the press website.

The 1919 May Fourth movement was the breeding ground for experiments by authors inspired by new world literary trends. Under Mao Zedong, folk songs accompanied political campaigns such as the Great Leap Forward. Misty Poetry of the 1980s contributed to the humanistic discourse of the post-Mao reform era. The most recent stage in Chinese poetry resonates with contemporary concerns, such as technological innovation, environmental degradation, socio-political transformations, and the return of geopolitical Cold War divisions. In search of creative responses to the crisis, poets frequently revisit the past while holding on to their poetic language of self-reflection and social critique. This volume identifies three foci in contemporary poetry discourses: formal crossovers, multiple realities, and liquid boundaries. These three themes often intersect within texts from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan discussed in the book.

Contributors (in alphabetical order): Nick Admussen, Dean Anthony Brink, Simona Gallo, Justyna Jaguścik, Joanna Krenz, Andrea Lingenfelter, Liansu Meng, Andrea Riemenschnitter, Chris Song,  Maghiel van Crevel, Victor Vuilleumier, Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik, Mary Shuk Han Wong, Zhiyi Yang, Michelle Yeh.

Contents: Continue reading Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse

Writing to the Rhythm of Labor book talk

Dear Colleagues and Students,

We extend a warm invitation for you to join us at an insightful event celebrating the release of Prof Benjamin Kindler’s new book, Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942–1976. Details are as follows:

Date: 3 May 2025 (Sat)
Time: 5:00 – 7:00pm
Venue: MPL1201, Lingnan@WestKowloon (Address: 12/F, M+, Lingnan@West Kowloon, West Kowloon Cultural District, 38 Museum Drive, Kowloon)
Speaker: Prof Benjamin Kindler, Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University
Discussants:
Prof Pun Ngai, Chair Professor, Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University
Prof Rebecca Karl, Professor of History, New York University
Dr Harlan Chambers, Researcher, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Göttingen

Book Title: Writing to the Rhythm of Labor: Cultural Politics of the Chinese Revolution, 1942–1976
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Summary:
What does it mean to write in a socialist revolution? What defines labor in a communist society? In revolutionary China, writers were regularly dispatched to the countryside or factories with the expectation that, through immersion in the life of workers and peasants, they would be remade as “culture workers” whose writing could serve the communist project. Their cultural labor would not merely reflect or represent the process of building socialism—it would actively participate in it by excavating the contradictions and challenges of the ongoing reorganization of social relations. Continue reading Writing to the Rhythm of Labor book talk

City of Fiction

City of Fiction, by Yu Hua
Europa Editions
2025, pp. 432, Hardcover
ISBN: 9798889660934
Translated by Todd Foley

A story of love, blood and dreams, set in early 20th century China

In the early 20th century, China is a land undergoing a momentous social and cultural shift, with a thousand-year-old empire crumbling and the nation on the brink of modernity. Against this backdrop, a quiet man from the North embarks on a perilous journey to a Southern city in the grip of a savage snowstorm. He carries with him a newborn baby: he is looking for the child’s mother and a city that isn’t there.

This is a story of two people: a man who finds unexpected success after having journeyed to the hometown of the woman who abandoned him; and the woman he is searching for, who mysteriously disappeared to embark on her own eventful journey. This is a story about vanished crafts and ancient customs, about violence, love, and friendship. Above all, it’s a story about change and about storytelling itself, full of vivid characters, ranging from bandits to vengeful potentates, from prostitutes to deceitful soothsayers, and surprising twists—an epic tale, as inexorable as time itself and as gripping as a classic adventure story.

Yu Hua
Now one of China’s most beloved novelists, Yu Hua was born in Haiyan, Zhejiang province, in 1960, and grew up in and around a hospital where his parents were both doctors. His book include the best-selling To Live (Knopf, 2003) and China in Ten Words (Anchor, 2011). He is the recipient of numerous international awards and honors, including the Italian Premio Grinzane Cavour and Giuseppe Acerbi prizes, and the French Prix Courrier International. In 2004 he was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. His Paris Review Art of Fiction interview was published in 2023.

Posted by: Todd Foley <twf218@nyu.edu>

Reading Sinophone Women Writers

Reading Sinophone Women Writers
April 4, 2-5pm
Barker Center 133, 12 Quincy St., Harvard University

Speakers:
Li Zishu 黎紫書
Lu Pin 鹿苹
Lin Zhao 林棹
Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹

Moderators:
David Der-wei Wang (Harvard University)
Mingwei Song (Wellesley College)
Dingru Huang (Tufts University)

Sponsors:
East Asian Languages and Civilizations
Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation

Suipian 5

碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments #5
TABITHA SPEELMAN
MAR 30, 2025

Welcome to the 5th edition of Suipian, my personal newsletter in which I share thoughts and resources that help me make sense of Chinese society and its relationship to the rest of the world. You’re receiving this because you were previously subscribed to Changpian, my earlier newsletter sharing Chinese nonfiction writing – or if you recently subscribed. See here for more introduction to Suipian.

I hope you’ve been well. Today’s edition is a bit shorter than usual (maybe a good thing). Welcome also to those of you who subscribed because of the kind shout-out by David Ownby, who translated the 端传媒 story on Covid grief and anger that I shared last time. If you did not have a chance to read it, I recommend his excellent translation (and the rest of the Reading the China Dream website).

随笔 // Suibi // Notes

Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

When the new Trump administration got started on their ‘breaking things’ agenda, Western mainstream media quickly framed this as a great opportunity for China, especially on issues like the dismantling of USAID. I was struck by how that conversation seemed all but absent in China, where there was shock and some gloating at the chaos, but as far as I could tell not much talk, at least among the public, of how these developments might benefit China’s rise. I explored this topic in a few stories (and a Dutch podcast) for which I talked to experts but also to people like Mr. Ye, a retired Beijinger who I met in a park and who took some time from listening to his audio book to kindly mansplain me on how things look from China. Continue reading Suipian 5

Soft Burial review

Source: The Atlantic (3/27/25)
The Chinese Communist Party’s Ultimate Taboo
Fang Fang’s newly translated novel uncovers the brutal, buried history of land reform in China.
By Ian Johnson

collage of images depicting land reform in China

Illustration by Colin Hunter / The Atlantic. Sources: Chronicle / Alamy; Tzido / Getty; Wikicommons.

Over its 75-year history, the People’s Republic of China has suffered numerous traumas, but perhaps none with longer-lasting consequences than land reform—a violent campaign of torture, murder, and mob rule that the Communist Party enacted in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The program’s stated intent was to redistribute property to landless farmers, but in reality it was used to bring huge swaths of Chinese society to heel through the brutal persecution of landowners.

This history is the governing party’s ultimate taboo, its unspoken original sin. Over the decades, independent historians and ordinary people in China have at times managed to publicly criticize some of the party’s actions—even major upheavals such as the Cultural Revolution—without facing reprisal. But land reform is so fundamental to how the current government took power that no citizen may portray it as anything other than a benevolent campaign that brought fairness and prosperity to China’s long-suffering farmers.

This context is what makes Fang Fang’s novel Soft Burial, recently translated into English by Michael Berry, so electrifying. Starting around the turn of the 21st century, independent historians began to explore land reform, drawing on oral histories to challenge the party’s narrative. But their works were either quickly banned or circulated only underground. Soft Burial, first published in China in 2016, was different. Fang is one of her country’s best-known novelists, and a longtime member of its literary establishment. After Soft Burial was published, it won a sought-after literary prize and was widely discussed in mainstream Chinese media, until backlash prompted censors to ban it. Continue reading Soft Burial review