English jueju

Every other year, the University of Oklahoma celebrates the winner of the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature (this year Ling Yü, 零⾬) as well as the winners of the Newman Prize for English Jueju (紐曼英語絕句獎).  If you or your students would like to try your hand at regulated verse in English, there is a new interactive learning platform https://www.juejupath.com/ which takes learners through five levels of regulated verse rules organized into five levels of the Keju, Chinese Imperial Examination. By logging in with their unique username and password, students/learners will receive badges for each level completed on their way to mastering semantic, grammatical, ping-ze parallelism, qing/jing balance (qi-cheng-zhuan-he), as well as poetic rhythm, imagery, and eventually recitation techniques.  Teachers can also create a login for whole classes and track student progress on a teacher’s dashboard.  The deadline for submissions is March 7, 2025.

To begin, please visit www.juejupath.com

Learn more about the Newman Prizes.

To watch last year’s winners: see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tV5PT1f0eE&t=40s

Onward,

Jonathan Stalling

Ah Q, Big Brother, and a Californian’s Atlantic Crossing

Source: Writing Chinese (1/30/25)
Ah Q, Big Brother, and a Californian’s Atlantic Crossing
By Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine and co-editor of the China Section of the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the author, most recently, of Vigil: The Struggle for Hong Kong (Brixton Ink, 2025). We unfortunately had to cancel Jeff’s planned research salon in Leeds due to the Great British Weather, but he has kindly provided a blog post to compensate while we arrange a future date!

Jeff Wasserstrom profile pic

Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

I recently crossed the Atlantic to spend two days in Berlin and a week in England doing launch events and panels associated with a book that has just been published, a book coming out in June, and a book I’ll be spending the next two years writing. The books are different in many ways, but they have two things in common: all have to do with Asia; and all are concerned with autocratic systems and those who criticize or actively oppose these systems. The just published book is Vigil: The Struggle for Hong Kong, an updated Brixton Ink edition of a very short volume that originally came out in 2020 from Columbia Global Reports. The one publishing in June is The Milk Tea Alliance: Inside Asia’s Struggle Against Autocracy and Beijing, a very short volume that profiles several young activists in and exiles from Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Burma. The working title for one I am writing, which is under contract with Princeton University Press, is Orwell and Asia: A Continent’s Connections to an Author’s Life, Legacy, and Literary Creation.

Vigil cover

This is a U.K.-only updated edition of Wasserstrom’s Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (Columbia Global Reports, 2020), featuring two new parts, each written by a journalist, covering developments post-NSL : a “Foreword” by Amy Hawkins of The Guardian and an “Afterword” by Kris Cheng who did not move from his native Hong Kong to London until 2021.

I did not expect that talking about these three books in Germany and England would lead me to spend time thinking about the inventor of Ah Q as well as the inventor of Big Brother–but for curious reasons, it did. I thought about Lu Xun a lot as I made my way from Berlin to London and from there to Cambridge, Oxford, Manchester, and Sheffield. I would also have thought about him on my way to Leeds to speak at the celebrated Centre for New Chinese Writing there, but a storm that played havoc with some rail routes led me to put off speaking there until the next time I am in the U.K. Had I reached the Centre, I was scheduled to give a talk on the Orwell book-in-progress, but Lu Xun was so much on my mind that I planned to shift gears and speak there as much about the author of The True Story of Ah Q as about the author of Animal Farm. In doing that, I would have revisited and expanded on an old essay of mine on Lu Xun that I kept thinking about throughout my trip, even though it was not among those I had on my mind when I set out to cross the Atlantic. Continue reading Ah Q, Big Brother, and a Californian’s Atlantic Crossing

Paper Republic newsletter no. 20

Image description

Happy Chinese New Year!

As we usher in the Year of the Snake, this vibrant and meaningful occasion is the perfect time to celebrate the richness of Chinese culture—and what better way than through the lens of its literature?

This issue brings you a feast of publications and media showcasing the brilliance of Chinese writing in translation. From fresh releases to interviews with translators and other news, we’re thrilled to spotlight stories and voices that resonate with the spirit of this festive season. Whether you’re an avid reader or simply curious about Chinese literature, there’s plenty to explore. So, grab a cup of tea, settle in, and let’s dive into the world of Chinese storytelling together!

Read online for free

  • Yan An’s poems “Territory” and “Empty Train” (translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen) were published online in Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment (Iowa State University).

Events

  • Our 9th book club on modern Chinese literature with the Open University Book Club was on 17th January. Helen Wang joined us to discuss her translation of the short story “Ying Yang Alley” (鹰扬巷) by Fan Xiaoqing (范小青). If you missed it, you can check out the recording and transcript of the event here. And keep an eye on the website as we will be doing another book club in the next few months.
  • Don’t miss this masterclass and workshop by Nicky Harman and Yan Ge on 8 March 2025 at the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. Writing Lives: from China in the 1930s to Britain in the 2020s. Part 1: Presentation with Nicky Harman on Ling Shuhua and Life-Writing; Part 2: Creative Writing Workshop on Characterisation, with Yan Ge. Registration link now available here.

Continue reading Paper Republic newsletter no. 20

Interview with Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of “Behind the Scenes with the White Peony: An Interview with Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung,” interviewed and translated by Ursula Friedman. Too long to post in its entirety, find a teaser below. For the full interview, go to its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/online-series/friedman/.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Behind the Scenes with the White Peony:
An Interview with Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung

Interviewed and translated by Ursula Friedman


MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January 2025)


Figure 1: Pai Hsien-yung. National Taiwan University, 2014. Photo by Yang Chenhao for Life Magazine.

[*Note: The interview was conducted in Santa Barbara on February 25, 2023. Passages in blue were originally spoken in Mandarin Chinese; those in black in English.]

Ursula Friedman (UF):  You were isolated for five years as a child due to a contagious strain of tuberculosis. How did this period of isolation influence your creative writing and shape your personality?

Kenneth Pai (KP):  My grandmother originally lived in the countryside in Guilin, Guangxi province. Later, my father invited her into our home, and I lived next door to her. She was very kind to me. We would cook special meals for her, like chicken soup, and she would share with me. We didn’t know that she had tuberculosis (TB). I caught it from her when I was seven or eight years old. Then, when the Japanese arrived, we fled to Chongqing, and I ran a mild fever every day. After an X-ray screening, they found that a large area on my left lung had been infected, leaving a gaping hole. Second-stage TB. I remember that after seeing the X-ray, my father’s face fell. He was very anxious. That was during the Sino-Japanese War, when many people caught the disease, and there was no special cure. Many people died of lung disease, it was almost a fatal diagnosis. I was very lucky, because our family could afford to drink milk and eat chicken, keep up good nutrition, and then I got calcium injections every day to calcify my lungs. I was quarantined for four, almost five years, until I was 14. Why? Because there were so many children in our family.

TB was a highly contagious disease at the time. So I lost my childhood years. I didn’t have a childhood. I saw children playing outside, but I was locked in a small room all by myself. I remember that little room in Chongqing. Chongqing is a mountainous place—have you ever been to the mainland? Chongqing has changed a lot recently. When I was in Chongqing, it was all muddy, yellow soil, but now it has been transformed into a modern city. We lived halfway up a mountain. And my little room, separated off from the others, was nestled on the foot of the mountain. I watched the activities down below from above—my brothers, my cousins—the children all playing down below. Anyway, I felt that I was deserted, abandoned. So I became very—I wasn’t like that before! My mother used to say that I was a very active child! I was even overbearing. Lung disease changed my entire being, and I became very sensitive. People were all afraid of approaching me, because I was sick, they were afraid of getting too close. My brothers and sisters all gave me a wide birth. Second, I became very sensitive to other people’s pain. Since I was sick myself, it was easy to understand the pain in other people’s hearts and develop empathy for them. . . [click here for full text]

Suipian (Jan. 2025)

碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments
By TABITHA SPEELMAN
JAN 26, 2025

Welcome to the 4th 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. See here for more information on Suipian. I’m happy to send you this dispatch from Beijing. Ahead of the New Year holidays, the city – never too loud these days, what with all the EVs and population control – is getting downright quiet. But it’s been a lovely (worryingly mild) winter here so far, with lots of blue skies. Since I last wrote, I’ve spent time reporting here, in Holland, and in Taiwan, working on some stories I’d long wanted to do. I’ll save you a blow-by-blow account, but see below for a few links and thoughts. 新年快乐.

随笔 // Suibi // Notes
Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent

  1. Reporting politics. When CNN’s Clarissa Ward recently interviewed a Syrian man who pretended to be someone he was not, the journalistic error was corrected within days. I’ve been wondering what it says about China reporting that it has taken years for some of the media that cited controversial, Holland-based dissident Wang Jingyu on topics including Chinese overseas police stations and influencing practices to retract those stories, following mounting evidence of his unreliability. NPR, which has led the way in uncovering that evidence, has cited journalism experts who think it is one of the largest cases ever of a single unreliable source influencing media coverage. Assisting two colleagues on a related investigation in recent months, I learned a lot from diaspora interviewees, some of whom had long been documenting and warning about Wang’s misconduct, exchanging information across big political divides (from dissident to United Front-adjacent) in search of the truth. Continue reading Suipian (Jan. 2025)

Peace and Love poetry reading (1)

On December 31, I participated in a New Year’s  Eve and New Year’s Day poetry marathon on the internet in Chinese and other languages, hosted by the poet 桉予 An Yu. Altogether 300 poets reading over 24 hours. One section  was devoted to poets from Ukraine. An Yu has now been circulating video recordings of readings from this section on WeChat, under the title Real Tiktok Refugees. I have seen reports from Ukraine and even online anthologies of poetry from Ukraine censored on WeChat, but for now, these voices are there to be heard and seen. It is a diverse selection, maybe as diverse as possible in this situation.

Real TikTok refugees – Ukrainian section of New Year poetry readings on the Chinese internet: Introduction and nine poets reading their works, along with translations.
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ifq5ZTOPY7c0d4eemiJr7g

Real TikTok refugees, part 2: Ten more poets reading their works, along with translations
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/jG7IN-2rH-nkApXSW4FGeg

Martin Winter 维马丁

The Anaconda in the Chandelier review

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Jeffrey Kinkley’s review of The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China, by Perry Link. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/kinkley2/. My thanks to Nicholas Kaldis, our literary studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

The Anaconda in the Chandelier:
Writings on China

By Perry Link


Reviewed by Jeffrey C. Kinkley

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2025)


Perry Link, The Anaconda in the Chandelier: Writings on China Perry Link. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2025. viii + 287 pp. ISBN 9781589881983 (paper)

Perry Link’s eminence as scholar and as public intellectual is well known to most MCLC readers. His pioneering scholarship on twentieth-century Chinese popular narratives and on the linguistic inventiveness of Chinese oral and written expression more generally is embodied in full-length monographs,[1] supplemented by studies of the circulation of Mao-era printed novels and unapproved hand-copied manuscripts, as well as essays on comedians’ dialogues (xiangsheng 相声) of the Mao and post-Mao years. Link’s 2007 essay on xiangsheng in the early People’s Republic of China (PRC) serves as a bang-up penultimate chapter for The Anaconda in the Chandelier.[2] The book prints in total thirty-one of Link’s 1998-2023 short and medium-length essays, book reviews, and prefaces, including a number of Link’s longer and more academic articles, together with their footnotes. Most are reprints—with revisions, says the preface, but changes are scarcely visible. Many of these contributions take on the dark task of explaining the finely tuned mechanics, psychology, and social psychology of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) control of Chinese communication through censorship, pre-censorship, and, above all, the creation of an unconscious, second-nature self-censorship among writers and the general public. Link calls the condition “fossilized fear.” That was the subject of a landmark monograph from Princeton University Press he published in 2000—on the “uses” of literature in China.[3] He updated the story in newsy and learned essays published in The New York Review of Books and various op-ed and human rights forums. (NYRB-related contributions make up about half of the essays anthologized in The Anaconda in the Chandelier.) The author’s expertise, Chinese friends and informants, and ever-critical yet always humanely empathetic social probings enabled what is probably now his best-known research: historical and biographical accounts of Chinese dissidence and protest. That focus, too, dates back to the 1980s, when he began to translate, edit, and publish short fiction and essays by freethinking PRC writers who surfaced, or, like Liu Binyan 刘宾雁, resurfaced, after the demise of Mao.[4] Consideration of the 1989 June Fourth massacre accelerated Link’s major collaborative academic projects and human rights activism, which includes documenting and explaining the before-and-after of China’s nationwide 1989 calamity, the Charter 08 movement, and the life story of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波.[5] Through it all, Link has pursued yet another vocation: teaching in and administering Chinese language programs, while coproducing textbooks for them.[6] Continue reading The Anaconda in the Chandelier review

Disoriented Disciplines review

MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Carles Prado-Fonts’ review of Disoriented Disciplines: China, Latin America, and the Shape of World Literature, by Rosario Hubert. The review appears below and at its online home: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/book-reviews/prado-fonts/. My thanks to Michael Gibbs Hill, our translations/translation studies book review editor, for ushering the review to publication.

Kirk Denton, MCLC

Disoriented Disciplines: China,
Latin America, and the Shape of World Literature

By Rosario Hubert


Reviewed by Carles Prado-Fonts

MCLC Resource Center Publication (Copyright January, 2025)


Rosario Hubert, Disoriented Disciplines: China, Latin America, and the Shape of World Literature Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2023. 328 pp. ISBN 9780810146556 (paperback); 9780810146563 (hardcover); 9780810146570 (ebook).

The study of Sinographies, or “the particular forms of writing that produce and convey (within China as well as without it) the meanings of China,”[1] has become a meeting point where scholarship from Chinese studies, historiography, and comparative literature merge and interact in productive ways. To be sure, these studies differ depending on each scholar’s background, as well as on their scope and concerns. But, as a whole, they form a field that has now already gone a long way since its original formulation, which mostly covered writings about China in hegemonic Western contexts. The pioneering works of Haun Saussy, Eric Hayot, Christopher Bush, and a few others have now been enlarged, supplemented, and problematized from new angles and new linguistic perspectives, as well as with the aid of archives.

The study of Sinographies in Latin America is an excellent example of such fertile evolution. The past few years have seen a wide array of contributions that study the meanings of “China” in Latin America. Works by scholars such as Araceli Tinajero, Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Ignacio López Calvo, and Kathleen López have recently been expanded in new directions by contributions from Andrea Bachner, Monica DeHart, Junyoung Verónica Kim, Ana Paulina Lee, Jorge Locane, Maria Montt Strabucchi, Brenda Rupar, and Laura J. Torres-Rodríguez, among many others.[2] Thus, while a common trope in prefaces and introductions may still claim that China in Latin America is a new and under-researched topic, the fact is that solid scholarship already exists about it—in Spanish and English. The future also looks promising: not only because there is a massive archive that has not yet been fully explored, but also because of the theoretical potential of these discoveries to come. As a “South-South” interaction that escapes the logic of hegemonic scholarship, the study of China in Latin America can raise pertinent critical questions in discussions about truly global and transnational issues. Continue reading Disoriented Disciplines review

Ling Yü wins 2025 Newman Prize

NORMAN, OKLA. – An international jury has selected Taiwanese poet Ling Yü 零⾬ (Wang Meiqin 王美琴) as the winner of the 2025 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. Sponsored by the University of Oklahoma Institute for US-China Issues in the David L. Boren College of International Studies, the Newman Prize is awarded biennially to recognize outstanding achievement in prose or poetry that best captures the human condition, based solely on literary merit. Any living author writing in Chinese is eligible.

Ling Yü will receive $10,000 and an engraved bronze medallion. She will be celebrated at an award symposium and banquet to be held on the OU Norman campus during the last week of March 2025 along with the winners of the International Newman Prizes for English Jueju.

Ling Yü was nominated for the prize by Professor Cosima Bruno (School of Oriental and African Studies, London), who praised her poetry for its “untrammeled, ingenious lyricism” and its ability to weave contemporary themes and personal experiences with the controlled elegance of classical Chinese poetry.

Bruno remarked in her nomination statement:

Ling Yü’s language is economical and concise, yet surprising and reverberating with complex meaning. Her poetry engages thoughtfully with classical and modern, Eastern and Western literary, philosophical, artistic, and esoteric sources, generating outstanding works that require attention but are also intuitively grasped. Through her works, readers encounter a prism of rich, elegantly employed references that span themes of meditation, travel, feminism, capitalism, the environment, mythology and more.

Ling Yü’s extensive body of work includes nine collections of poetry, such as Series on a City (《城的連作》1990), Names Disappearing on the Map (《消失在地圖上的名字》1992), Mudong Hymns (《⽊冬詠歌集》1999), I’m Heading for You (《我正前往你》2010), and her recent collections Skin-Coloured Time (《膚⾊的時光》2018) and Daughters (《女兒》2022). Her poetry spans topics such as cultural heritage, mythological figures, ecological concern, and autobiographical reflection. Her work has been widely recognized, translated into multiple languages, and presented at major international poetry festivals, including the Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam and the Hong Kong International Poetry Nights. Continue reading Ling Yü wins 2025 Newman Prize

Paper Republic 2024 Roll Call

2024 Roll-Call of Chinese Literature in English Translation
By Jack Hargreaves, published 

‘Tis the end of 2024 (Where it’s gone? Don’t ask me.) and that means it’s time for the annual roll-call of Chinese-language literature published in English translation.

It has been a mixed year, with, on the plus side, there being more women authors published than in 2023, and just more works of fiction in general — more prizewinning works of fiction, too.

But there does seem to be less poetry. And when I say there are more works by women than there has been, the increase isn’t dramatic. In fact, you might say that this year is, on the whole, a return to business as usual after the post-Covid years — those weren’t fallow years, but they were lower yield.

Still, it’s a really exciting list of titles which includes some of my favourite reads from 2024, full-stop. I’m also confident that we’ve missed some works out, especially when it comes to poetry, so please do drop any absent titles in the comments below and we’ll make sure to add them. The same goes for any particularly glowing reviews you’ve come across, or prize announcements (we’ve mostly included winners, but please also share any shortlisted or longlisted works).

Special mentions go to translators Jennifer Feeley and Lin King for bringing us five showstoppers between them, with Mourning a Breast and Tongueless, and Taiwan TravelogueCloud Labour and book two of The Boy From Clearwater, respectively. Continue reading Paper Republic 2024 Roll Call

Prism 21.1

Prism (Volume 21, Number 1, 2024)
Guest edited by Ban Wang and Haomin Gong

Culture, Nature, and Environmental Humanities: An Introduction
By Ban Wang

TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL WISDOM

Dog Has No Buddha Nature: The Compulsion for Meaning, Nihilphobia, and Chan Therapy in the Anthropocene End-Time
By Chia-Ju Chang

The Life of Urban(e) Waters: Kyoto, circa 1830
By Stephen Roddy

ETHNICITY, PLACE, AND BORDER

“Natural” Disasters and Disaster Relief: Ecoethnic Politics in Alai’s Epic of Ji Village
By Huaji Xu; Haomin Gong

Mu Dan’s Encounter with Nature: The Phantasmic, the Metaphysical, and the Lyrical
By Qiongqiong Ye; Haomin Gong

Greenwashing, Simulated Green, and Beyond: Yi-fu Tuan and His Embodied Simulation of Habitats
By Xinmin Liu

Flood Dashing against the Temple of the Dragon King: The Allegorical Nature in Wind from the East (1959)
By Zhen Zhang

The Logic of the Void: Translation, Indigeneity, and Islands in Taiwanese Ecological Fiction
By Robin Visser

SCIENCE FICTION AND ECOCRITICISM

Inventing Climate Change: Nature and Nation in Late Qing Chinese Science Fiction
By Cheng Li

Ecology, (Post)Humanism, and Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Problem
By Melissa A. Hosek

Future Emotions and Senses: Chen Qiufan’s Science Fiction of the Anthropocene
By Kiu-Wai Chu

Indifference as Alienation in Chen Qiufan’s Science Fiction Waste Tide
By Yuanyuan Hua; Yunfan Zhang

Ecological Utopia and Dystopia in Chinese Science Fiction
By Ban Wang

Mu Cao wins Prince Claus Impact Award (2)

The Prince Claus Fund web page on Mu Cao includes a beautiful short video on Mu Cao, made by the Fund in September 2024 and first shown during the award ceremony for this year’s Prince Claus Impact Awards: https://edu.nl/wj6y4. (The video is right below the photo at the top; the play button is not clearly visible, but it sits in the middle of the burgundy rectangle.) In the video, Mu Cao explains what writing means to him. Below the video, there’s a brief profile of the poet in English.

Crossing, a book produced by the Prince Claus Fund on the occasion of the 2024 Impact Awards, includes laudations for each of the six laureates. After Mu Cao was nominated (in 2023), the Fund approached me for information on his life and work, to support the jury as it made its way from close to two hundred nominees to six awardees. In this capacity I had the privilege of writing the laudation for Mu Cao, for which I drew on an essay I co-authored with Hongwei Bao that is forthcoming in 2025. The text of the laudation is below.

Maghiel van Crevel

MU CAO: AN INIMITABLE VOICE
In Crossing (Amsterdam: Prince Claus Fund, 2024): 96-98.

Mu Cao is a poet and fiction writer whose life and work defy social convention in every respect. He is the author of a literary oeuvre that has emerged against the odds, carried by an inimitable voice that blends indignation and imagination to address a fiercely personal experience as well as overarching issues of social justice.

Born and raised in a village in rural China, Mu Cao was expelled from school at age fifteen and has since sustained himself with precarious labor, mostly in Zhengzhou and Beijing. One of three hundred million labor migrants who have flocked from the Chinese countryside to the cities since the 1980s, he has held dozens of jobs, from assembly line worker to web salesperson and from noodle-maker to barbershop attendant. Living on a shoestring, he works in order to save money so he can quit and write. When the money runs out, he looks for work again. Continue reading Mu Cao wins Prince Claus Impact Award (2)

Qiong Yao dies in apparent suicide

Source: BBC News (12/4/24)
Top Chinese language novelist dies in apparent suicide
By Fan Wang, BBC News

Getty Images Chiung Yao attends a press conference on July 10, 2007 in Taipei.

Getty Images

Chiung Yao [瓊瑤], arguably the world’s most popular Chinese language romance novelist, has died in an apparent suicide.

The 86-year-old’s body was found in her home in New Taipei City on Wednesday, local media report. Emergency services said she took her own life, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency.

Chiung Yao started writing at 18 and published more than 60 novels, many of which were adapted into movies and TV series and remained popular for decades.

She was also a successful screenwriter and producer. One of her most famous works was the TV drama My Fair Princess, which launched the careers of big name stars.

She was born Chen Che in Sichuan, China in 1938. Chiung Yao is her pen name.

A post on her Facebook account on Wednesday read: “Goodbye, my loved ones. I feel lucky that I have met and known you in this life”. It was not immediately clear if the post was published before or after her body was found. Continue reading Qiong Yao dies in apparent suicide

Mu Cao wins Prince Claus Impact Award

Chinese poet and fiction writer Mu Cao 墓草 (1974) has received one of the 2024 Prince Claus Impact Awards, as one of six biennial laureates in art and cultural practice worldwide (https://edu.nl/x8bjf). The Prince Claus Fund is an independent foundation dedicated to culture and development. The Impact Awards honor groundbreaking artists and cultural practitioners whose work inspires positive social change. The 2024 laureates received their awards on 3 December in the Royal Palace in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Mu Cao is known as China’s first openly gay poet. He is also one of China’s earliest migrant worker poets (aka battler poets 打工诗人) and writes with uncompromising candor on life on the underside, in his poetry and his fiction alike. Both queerness and socioeconomic inequality count as sensitive topics in China and Mu Cao has only published through unofficial channels there. An official, two-volume survey anthology of his poetry and short fiction came out in Taiwan in 2023 (https://edu.nl/fdg79). Five books of his poetry and two multiple-author anthologies produced under his editorship can be freely accessed at the Leiden University Library digital collection of unofficial poetry from China (https://edu.nl/k4d4d).

For scholarship, media, and translations on/of Mu Cao’s work, see the MCLC Resource Center bibliographies on literary studies: Author studies > M (https://u.osu.edu/mclc/h-q/#M) and Translations (author) > M (https://edu.nl/q6qc6).

Posted by: Maghiel van Crevel