Chinese content for Paper Republic’s next edition of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing has been set in soap, and is set to include far more poetry than previous issues.

Faced with an abundance of work and a dearth of talented contacts, the editors are calling for motivated, experienced translators of Chinese poetry to establish a relationship with the magazine.

To be featured are Zhu Ling (朱零), Ou Ning (欧宁), Yao Feng (姚风), Wang Yin (王寅), Wang Xiaolong (王小龙), Yang Zi (杨子), Huang Jinming (黄金明), Liao Weitang (廖伟棠) and Yang Xiaobin (杨小滨).

The editors will do their best to assign poems based on their relationship with the translator, and first drafts will be due in mid-September. Compensation is – the editors say – exceptional for poetry.

Those interested should write to canaan@paper-republic.org or westrunningbrook@mac.com.

“The 1980s were the heyday of modern Chinese poetry. Poetry was like pop culture then – it played the role karaoke has today. Twenty years ago there was no such thing as karaoke, and every small city or town would have a place where people would get together after dinner and read poetry. It was such an everyday thing, so lively. Every night was like a mini-poetry carnival.

These days we have online communities. Every creative group has its own online communities – art, film, literature – but the most obvious is in the area of poetry, where the internet has had the biggest impact on the community’s development.”

Hu Xudong is Associate Professor at the Institute of World Literature at Beijing University. He’s also a poet, and was one of China’s first internet technicians, co-running an early website called New Youth (Xin Qingnian) which innovated with technology and language. What better person to give a lowdown on contemporary Chinese poetry, its origins in an ‘80s zine scene, and its internet iterations?

Read on for a bird’s eye view.

The Boat to Redemption, by
Su Tong, published by Doubleday

What is the status of contemporary Chinese literature within world literature as a whole? Should contemporary writers look towards the world or to local traditions for inspiration? And how to account for the apparent mismatch between China’s economic power in the 21st century and its cultural influence in the world? Around 50 speakers and another 250 listeners addressed these and other questions at the International Conference on the Global Significance of Contemporary Chinese Writing, held 29-30 October 2010 in Beijing.

Bonnie S. McDougall, eminent scholar and translator, attended the conference and has provided a report for Artspace China. This piece gives a broad overview of the themes and debates currently defining China’s literary scene, and of the authors engaged in these discussions. Many of these names and arguments will be picked up on in future posts, but you can start here for a lay of the land.
Apologies that I can’t provide links for more of these authors and scholars – the English language websites often just don’t exist. It’s a sign of how small a percentage of this literature and intellectual discussion is available in the English language, i.e. to a global audience.

Bonnie S. McDougall is Visiting Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. A former student and lecturer at Sydney, she also taught at Harvard, the College of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, and Oslo University before being appointed founding Professor of Chinese at the University of Edinburgh. After retiring from Edinburgh in 2005, she was also Visiting Professor at the Chinese University and City University in Hong Kong. Many thanks to Professor McDougall for her account.