News in the field

New Ailing Zhang English manuscript

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Source: USC Libraries (9/2/22)
New English Manuscript Discovered in Ailing Zhang (Eileen Chang) papers
By Nathan Masters

A page from the recently discovered manuscript

A new English translation of Eileen Chang’s short story “Xiang Jian Huan,” translated as “She Said Smiling,” has been discovered in the author’s papers in the USC Libraries’ Special Collections. The twenty-two typewritten pages were previously believed to be related to Chang’s translation of the 1892 novel Hai Shang Hua (The Sing-Song Girls of Shanghai)—until a patron noticed that they came from a different project. With the help of the patron and Professor Yunwen Gao of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, archivist Bo Doub and Chinese studies librarian Tang Li of the USC Libraries confirmed the discovery and moved the manuscript to its own folder within Box 2 of the collection.

Professor Gao, a USC alumna and Chang scholar, wrote the following introduction to the manuscript:

The 22 pages of manuscripts from the Zhang Ailing paper archive at USC has been discovered recently. Scholars from mainland China (Li and Zhou) have published research articles to prove that it is one version of the English translation/transwriting of Chang’s 1978 short story “Joyful Reunion” (相見歡). The Chinese title of the story is named after a Tang and Song tune pattern (cipai 詞牌), which describes the plot of two cousins, neither happy with their marriage, get together in their middle age, chat with each other with the company of one’s daughter, reminisce their youth, and end the conversation with a shocking moment when one forgets about telling an anecdote while the other forgets about having heard of it a few months before. The story was first drafted in the 1950s, yet not until 1978 did the story get published in Taiwan. In 1983, a revised version of the story was published in the short stories collection titled “The Story of Regret” (惘然記). In the decades in between, the story, like many other stories written around the same time, went through rounds and rounds of revision, translation, or as scholars call it, transwriting. In the article by Li and Zhou, they proved that there are at least two versions of the English translation of “Joyful Reunion,” translated as “She Said Smiling,” according to a letter from April 29, 1964 by Eileen Chang. The English manuscript found at USC, which is missing the title page, has many similarities with the Chinese version of “Joyful Reunion” and the English version “She Said Smiling” so that the authors Li and Zhou concluded that it might be the manuscript of “She Said Smiling.” Continue reading →

ACCL Election

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Dear ACCL members
本會會員台鑒：

My final duty as ACCL President is to call the election for the our next President. In accordance with our Constitution, the election is overseen by two members of the Executive Committee—Wu Shengqing and Daniel Fried—who will be reporting results back to me. I am grateful for their support.
會長最後之任務，即協助下任會長之選舉過程。本會會章規定，選舉由兩位執行委員會會員來監督，選舉完畢之後向會長報道。吳盛青、傅雲博執行委員已答應監督本次選舉，特此表示感謝。

Two candidates are standing for election: Song Mingwei (Wellesley College) and Zhu Ping (Univ. of Oklahoma). We are fortunate to have two excellent candidates who will skillfully steer our Association into the future. Please find the candidate’s personal statements below, as well as on our website.

本次選舉候選人爲朱萍（俄克拉荷馬大學）、宋明煒（韋爾斯利學院），均是傑出人才，將會作爲能幹有力之領導人。候選人之自我介紹詳見如下，也可以參見本會網頁。

Please cast your vote at this link.
投票請按如下鏈接.

If you encounter problems you may fill out the pdf form.
投票若遇到問題，也可以填本函附件中的表格。

The deadline for your vote is Aug. 14, 2022. All votes received by 11:59 pm (EST) will be counted.
投票爲2022年8月14日晚上11點59分（美國東部時間）爲止。

Sincerely,

Nicolai Volland 傅朗
ACCL President 本會會長 Continue reading →

ACCL elections: call for nominations

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Dear Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) members,
本會會員台鑒：

After we have successfully concluded our biennial conference, it is my final responsibility to supervise the election of the next President of our Association. To that end, members can download a nomination form, and would ask that you all consider either nominating yourself, or encouraging colleagues to seek election.
雙年會圓滿落幕，會長最後之任務，即協助下任會長之選舉過程，特此附上候選人提名表格，歡迎諸位會員，或自己當候選人，或鼓勵其他同事當候選人。

The primary duty of the President is to run the day-to-day affairs of the Association and to help strengthen and deepen our Association’s institutional structure. Aside from that, the President arranges the next biennial conference. The President is supported by the Treasurer, the Communications Director, and the Executive Committee, all of whom are appointed as outlined in our Constitution (to be found on our website).
會長之主要任務，是主持本會日常工作、擴充學會的機制、加深本會的專業化等。此外，會長負責舉辦下次雙年會。會長有挑選財務、公關等秘書、執行委員會之權，以便協助會長之工作（細節可見本會會章）。 Continue reading →

Song Translation Studies awards (2021-22)

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Stephen C. Soong Translation Studies Memorial Awards (2021–2022) 
宋淇翻譯研究論文紀念獎 2021–2022
1 July 2022

It is with great pleasure that I hereby announce the result for the 24th Stephen C. Soong Translation Studies Memorial Awards (2021–2022) set up by Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

WANG Shengyu (School of Chinese Language and Literature, Soochow University)
“Chinese Folklore for the English Public: Herbert A. Giles’s 1880 Translation of Pu Songling’s Classical Tales”, Comparative Literature 73, No. 4 (December 2021), pp. 442-462.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Professor Wang Shengyu and extend my thanks to all who submitted their papers for consideration. Call for submissions for the 25th Stephen C. Soong Awards will be announced in January 2023.

For more information, please visit us at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/ts/soong_awards.html.

Yours Sincerely

Lawrence Wang-chi Wong
Director, Research Centre for Translation
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Continue reading →

2022 Tang Prize in Sinology

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We are pleased and honored to announce Professor Dame Jessica Rawson as the newest Tang Prize Laureate in Sinology.

The 2022 Tang Prize in Sinology is awarded to Professor Dame Jessica Rawson for her gift and mastery of the craft of the visible to read the art and artifacts of Chinese civilization. By giving voice to the ancient world of objects, she has taught generations how to see when they look at things, and her acuity and vast visual learning have given new insight into the world of the lineages, transformations, and migrations of mute things.

For the press release, please visit https://bit.ly/3xGwyFe
To learn more about Professor Rawson, please visit https://reurl.cc/d2o6Yz
To hear Professor Rawson’s reaction to receiving the Prize, please visit https://youtu.be/I-Vv2YZCyZE

Tang Prize in Sinology <sinology@tang-prize.org>

He Huaren (1958-2021)

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Last week, I (belatedly) learned that Taiwan printmaker, illustrator, and bird expert He Huaren (何華仁) passed away in the week prior to Christmas 2021. MCLC Listserve members interested in (woodcut) printmaking and illustration will likely know of his work, and may have purchased books written by He or others, featuring his superb illustrations. He Huaren was also one of Taiwan’s most renowned birders and an activist for the preservation and protection of Taiwan’s bird and wildlife habitat; he was especially fond of raptors. Huaren was extremely generous, ever humble, had an outstanding sense of humor, and loved single malt scotch. Here are some sources on or by He Huaren.

何華仁（1958年－2021年12月18日): https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/何華仁
戰勝腦瘤 何華仁用繪本和版畫記錄台灣野鳥

蘋中人：刻在心上的鷹姿　何華仁
何華仁鳥版畫遺作 預計二月上市       中國時報

Nicholas Kaldis

Additions to Unofficial Poetry Journals from China

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Front page of The Battler Poet (打工诗人) no 2 (2002), featuring Zheng Xiaoqiong’s famous early poem “On this word dagong.”

It is our pleasure to announce the next upgrade of the digital collection of China’s unofficial poetry journals at Leiden University Libraries. Key agents of cultural renewal after the Mao era, these journals are hugely influential but hard to find. The Leiden digital collection makes them freely accessible online, for viewing and downloading. (Click here for a web lecture on unofficial poetry publishing in China, with abundant visuals.)

We’d like to draw attention to two highlights. The first is the 1985 two-volume New Tide Poetry (新诗潮诗集), edited by Lao Mu 老木,a key advocate of poetic innovation in the roaring 80s. This groundbreaking book showed avant-garde poetry right when it began to diversify after Obscure poetry (朦胧诗, aka Misty Poetry), years before this was recognized in official publications.

The second highlight is subaltern writing, variously referred to in English as migrant worker poetry, (new) worker poetry, and battler poetry. The journals in question include The Battler Poet (打工诗人), Worker Poetry (工人诗歌), The New Worker (新工人) and The New Worker Quarterly (新工人季刊), and the Migrant Workers Home Picun Literature Group Series (工友之家皮村文学小组作品集).

The collection as a whole now contains a variety of works from across four decades of unofficial poetry publishing in the PRC, of diverse poetical persuasion and regional provenance (click here and sort by “title” for the full list). It shows how the practice of unofficial publishing—aka self-publishing, publishing outside the system, underground publishing, etc—connects marginalized groups such as politically disenfranchised “avant-garde” (先锋) poets, advocates of feminist and queer emancipation, ethnic “minorities” (少数民族), and precarious workers. Continue reading →

Hao Chang has passed away

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Source: Academia Sinica (5/5/2022)
Academician Hao Chang Has Passed Away


Academician Hao Chang passed away in the United States on April 20, 2022. He was 85 years old.

Dr. Chang was a renowned Sinologist, devoted to the intellectual history of modern China and history of Chinese political thought. He studied under notable scholars, including Yin Hai-guang, Yang Lien-sheng, and Benjamin I. Schwartz, and obtained his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1966. Dr. Chang taught at Ohio State University from 1968 to 1998, and at the University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, since 1998.

Dr. Chang obtained many outstanding achievements and authored several articles and books in both Chinese and English. His comparison and reflection on Western Liberalism and Chinese Confucianism were widely influential in Sinology and in intellectual history studies. In February of this year, Dr. Chang donated his book and manuscript collection to the National Library, a remarkably generous gesture and invaluable contribution to history research.

During his distinguished career, Dr. Chang has received numerous honors, including grants from the American National Humanities Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, the Qian Mu History Lectureship and the Yu Ying-shih Lectureship at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Tseng Yueh-nung Lectureship on Comparative Study of Cultures at Tunghai University, Taiwan. Dr. Chang was elected Academia Sinica Academician in 1992.

Paper Republic newsletter 11

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Hello one and all, this month’s newsletter is packed with stories, poems and, much more so than usual, top notch podcasts for your all reading and listening pleasures. We’d also like to plug another newsletter we’ve been reading and loving recently, The Slow Chinese 每周漫闻, which is a resource to help you learn, use, and understand Chinese language the way people speak it today. The link there is for one recent instalment, but there are many, many more you can choose from on the site.

Also, some of you may have noticed in our annual roll call for 2021 that, for the first time, we included links to lists of published translations into other languages besides English. We would like to do more to promote and work with translators and publishers of Chinese fiction working in other languages, so this month we have the pleasure of sharing a roundup of news about Chinese literature in Spanish, from (China traducida y por traducir in collaboration with DIGITRANS, which can be found beneath the usual news pieces. Unfortunately, some of the events mentioned in this roundup have already passed, but do keep your eyes out for similar happening in the future.

And last but certainly not least, just in case you’ve managed to miss the announcement, the Paper Republic Guide to Contemporary Chinese Literature is out now and available to purchase in paperback and ebook form. Known affectionately as The Guide, the publication features detailed biographical entries covering almost 100 of the most important writers working in the Chinese language today, alongside in-depth essays on topics like the role of the author, women’s writing and Sci-Fi. We’ve already held one successful launch event in partnership with Aberdeen University Confucius Institute, and we have another coming up on Wed April 27th with China Institute, as well as one more in the works for anyone who is London-based (keep your eyes peeled for details about that). If you have questions or issues re: buying the Guide or registering for the event, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us at info@paper-republic.org Continue reading →

Dru Gladney in memoriam

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Source: Pomona.edu (3/18/22)
In Memoriam: Anthropology Professor Dru Gladney

In class with Professor of Anthropology Dru Gladney

Anthropology Professor Dru Gladney, a leading expert on the peoples and cultures along the past and present Silk Road, passed away yesterday suddenly and unexpectedly. He was 65 years old.

Gladney was a sought after and widely quoted academic voice on China’s Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, appearing in media outlets from The New York Times to CNN, and in scholarly forums around the globe. A Fulbright Research Scholar to China and Turkey, Gladney conducted field research in Western China, Central Asia, and Turkey for decades.

He was in the Xinjiang province of China bordering Afghanistan at the time of the 9/11 terror attacks, and he later testified before a congressional subcommittee in response to the detention of a group of Uyghurs at Guantanamo Bay.

His books included Dislocating China: Muslims, Minorities, and Other Subaltern Subjects and Ethnic Identity in China: The Making of a Muslim Minority. He contributed to 2004’s Xinjiang: China’s Muslim Borderland, which Gladney and other scholars reported led them to be barred from travel to China for a time. He was later able to return, but not to the Western regions where he had long conducted his research. Gladney, however, continued his scholarship on the new Silk Road, as China reached westward to Central Asia and Europe for markets and resources. Continue reading →

Germany’s contentious China debate

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In an op-ed (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung F..A.Z., March 9), Sinology professors Bjoern Alpermann (University of Wuerzburg) and Gunter Schubert (University of Tuebingen) branded criticism of self-censorship and appeasement within German-language China studies toward the Chinese government as “crusaderism.”

With ad hominem allegations rarely seen in German academic written exchanges, both authors called discussants of this academic discourse „moral crusaders“ (author’s translation) and established China scholars were labeled as „new crusaders“ (author’s translation). Thorsten Benner, Co-Founder & Director of the Global Public Policy Institute pointed out on Twitter that Alpermann and Schubert demonstrate a “most impressive capacity for cognitive dissonance when one claims: ‘Serious China research needs differentiation. Polarization makes it blind’ and at the same time one calls dissenters ‘moralizing crusaders’ who have fallen prey to ‘delusions of decoupling.’”[1]

In addition to these polemical personal attacks, Alpermann and Schubert brushed away arguments and existing research by claiming that there is no evidence for a growing influence of China on German China studies.

Andreas Fulda (University of Nottingham), Mareike Ohlberg (German Marshall Fund), David Missal (Sinologist and Tibet Initative Initiative), Horst Fabian (independent scholar), and Sascha Klotzbuecher (University of Goettingen) have replied with their own op-ed titled “Grenzenlos kompromissbereit?” (Willing to compromise without limits?) (F.A.Z., March 16).

You can read the German version here (paywalled). Pre-print of this article. The English translation of our op-ed is below.

Sascha Klotzbücher <sascha.klotzbuecher@univie.ac.at>

Willing to compromise without limits?

In view of Xi’s policy of repression, China studies must rethink its role. Ignoring problems and stigmatizing critical voices are the wrong way to go. A reply to an op-ed by Björn Alpermann and Gunter Schubert.  

By Andreas Fulda, Mareike Ohlberg, David Missal, Horst Fabian and Sascha Klotzbücher.

Last week, sinology professors Björn Alpermann and Gunter Schubert branded the criticism of self-censorship and appeasement within German-language China studies toward the Chinese government that has flared up in recent years as “crusaderism” (F.A.Z., March 9). Critics of the conformist course, including authors of this article, were defamed as “moral crusaders” and stigmatized as defilers of their own nests. The authors brush away arguments by claiming that there is no evidence for a growing influence of China on German China studies. Continue reading →

A Remembrance for Dr. Po-Hsien Chu (1986-2022)

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A Remembrance for Dr. Po-Hsien Chu (1986-2022)
By Jyana S. Browne and Caitlin Marshall

Dr. Po-Hsien Chu was a brilliant scholar of Sinophone theater and performance, a nurturer of the field of Sinophone Studies, a generous and witty collaborator, a punctilious teacher, and above all, a cherished colleague who made scholarly fellowship into an art. Like the many colleagues who have spoken about Po-Hsien in the past several weeks, we looked “forward to years of collaboration and comradeship” (Yizhou Huang) with Po-Hsien, and struggle to grasp that those years of fellowship are in the past. Dr. Po-Hsien Chu passed away unexpectedly on February 8, 2022. He was 35 years old.

How do we build a monument to one who had just, as it were, officially “arrived” to the academic party? One whose lack of pretentions would cause him to shoo away with a flourish of the wrist, a sideways glance, and an urbane smile any too-exuberant hailing of welcome or extolled announcement of his presence? We build by acknowledging and holding with dignity all that Po-Hsien gathered to him in his time, and we reflect that labor of love by sharing here a congregation of voices that loved him in return. Continue reading →

Sinoist Books new author spring showcase

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MCLC LIST readers might be interested in the following event:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/chinese-literature-spring-showcase-in-person-online-tickets-251853750347

We are co-hosting our first Physical event (in the Hybrid Online/Offline Format) in the past two year together with the new China Studies course (helmed by Dr Kyle Shernuk https://www.qmul.ac.uk/sllf/modern-languages-and-cultures/people/academics/profiles/shernuk.html). We will be showcasing some of the titles we are publishing in translation this year:

Li Er’s (李洱) – A Cherry on a Pomegranate Tree (石榴树上结樱桃),
Chen Yan’s (陈彦) – Set Dressing (装台),
Xu Huaizhong’s (徐怀中) – Leading Wave (牵风记)
Li Peifu’s (李佩甫) – Graft (平原客)

Daniel Yang Li
Alain Charles Asia Publishing