Chinese stories

This happened a few days ago at the university where I used to teach English (article):

Two NCEPU Students Robbed and Killed off Campus – Police Close Case within 9 Hours

13 April 2009 

On the afternoon of the 11th two bodies were discovered in the small forest to the west of North China Electric Power University, Beijing (NCEPU). The bodies were identified as those of two freshmen in Electronics Class 08-1 of NCEPU’s School of Electrical Engineering. The students were romantically involved, and disappeared on the evening of the 8th. After the incident the school held an emergency meeting and arranged for counselors to help students deal with the situation. Yesterday afternoon the Beijing Public Security Bureau News Office confirmed that within nine hours of the crime the police captured all four suspects in Haicheng, Liaoning and Handan, Hebei. 

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Today’s Beijing News has an article on Yu Dan’s sequil to her Reflections on the Analects, called Revelations on the Analects, saying it has only sold at half of the rate of the first work in the two weeks it has been on the market. Now I read her first book after picking it up in a Wudaokou bookstore to see what all the fuss was about, and neither loved it nor disliked it. Even though it has the style I would expect of a Dr. Phil book on the subject, I thought it was refreshing that Chinese mainstream culture actually embraces scholarly topics, unlike the anti-intellectual mainstream American culture. I also like how the CCTV lecture programs on TV encourage people to learn about history and literature. I thought Yu Dan was helping to promote such interest, rather than trying to ride the wave of enthusiasm of the recent years. But a sequel? Give me a break.

I decided to check out Li Ling’s Stray Dog, a longer book on the Analects by a Beijing University professor. (Unlike Yu Dan’s book, this one wasn’t that easy to get ahold of.) Just from reading the introduction and a few pages of the body, I can tell that this book engages the Analects on a totally different level from Yu Dan’s book. The introduction was fascinating. First of all, Li Ling not only admits he never liked reading the Analects, unlike Yu Dan, who takes it as a given that the book has valuable lessons to offer us.

The intro also gives a brief account of the Analects’ reception in modern China, from the high enthusiasm of the early twentieth century, to the criticism of Confucius during the Cultural Revolution, to the current craze reemerging in China. He says that those who were the most ardent critics back in the day are the same people who are at the forefront of the craze nowadays. Probably not a dig a Yu Dan specifically, as he names other people, but one has to wonder…

Just by reading a few pages I could tell Li Ling did not just sit down to write a book on the Analects as Yu Dan seems to have done (even if it may have been published at an opportune time). Instead it is a result of a lifetime of scholarship, and you can tell the guy knows his stuff. It doesn’t make for as light reading, though, as he comments on every passage following the order of the original work. Li Ling says he aims his commentary at giving a non-political, non-religious, and non-moral interpretation, so most of it is explaining just what the heck the original means anyway. Its also refreshing that even though its written by an academic, it is readable and was actually a best-seller. There are very few philologists in the US that can make the same claim (if any?).

Even though my view of Yu Dan has changed, I was glad to see that her first book will be translated into English by Esther Tyldesley, because I’m for anything that would get folks interested in understanding China. The translation may not get the reception that the Yijing and Laozi usually get, but hopefully it will do well.

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There are two obituaries about the passing of translators in today’s Beijing News. One is Chen Bingyi 陈冰夷, who was a translator of Russian, and a founder of “World Literature” 世界文学 along with Mao Dun, and the other is Cai Hui 蔡慧, whose obituary I have translated here:

Translator Cai Hui Dies

Did not get to see his beloved new translation of The Gadfly published

(Cao Xueping reporting) Cai Hui, whose translations include Hemingway’s Islands in the Stream and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead passed away in Shanghai from liver cancer on February 10th at the age of 77. Regrettably, he did not get to see his beloved translation of The Gadfly published, as this novel still has three years before it enters the public domain.

Rong Rude, co-translator with Cai Hui of Gone With the Wind said, “In this day and age, there are not many true translators of literature, and even fewer who make their living off translation—Cai Hui was one of them.” Before the Cultural Revolution, there was an editing house in Shanghai whose employees all engaged in translating foreign literature, and who all made a living on their translation fees. In the 90s, the translator Cao Ying suggested that such translators go to work in the Shanghai Cultural History Museum, so they would have a steady income. To them, translation was something that gave them pleasure.

Those who often worked with Cai Hui knew that he did not take directions from publishing houses on what to translate—if he liked a work, he would put all his heart into making a good translation, then send it to a publisher. Before he passed away, his thoughts were often on The Gadfly. He began a new translation of The Gadfly that corrected many mistakes of the old version. After he gave it to the publisher, he found that the Chinese copyright for this work had been taken out by Lijiang Publishing, and after negotiations agreed to stop publishing it after 100,000 volumes of its translation have been sold. This was a great blow to Cai Hui, as he would have to wait until 2011, when the work enters the public domain, for his new The Gadfly to reach readers. Before passing, he entrusted Rong Rude with this matter.

On Cai Hui’s translating style, many of his colleagues said it was “finely crafted through painstaking labor” (慢功出细活), which is precisely a quality young translators are lacking nowadays. Unfortunately, the reaction within China to his representative translation The Naked and the Dead does not live up to the hard work that was put into it. Zhang Jianping, the chief editor of the Shanghai Translation Publishing Company’s Literature department said that Cai Hui’s translation saved the editors a lot of work, because he is known for using authentic Chinese—often the original would be ambiguous in places, and Cai Hui would digest the meaning for a while, and come up with a clear, unambiguous translation. Zhang Jianping also said that the unmarried Cai Hui lived a low-key life, and during the 14 months that he was in the hospital, his colleagues wanted to go see him, but he turned them away, not wanting to waste their time.

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In southern China, at least. Here in Beijing the weather has been pretty good, but in my wife’s hometown in Hunan, they have gotten the worst snows they say they have ever seen. Apparently all the highways in Hunan are shut down, and so are the airports. The news this morning on TV said that over 10,000 people are stuck in their cars on the highways, and food is being sent to them while they wait until they can be rescued.

We had originally planned on staying in Beijing, because travelling to the in-laws would have been tricky with a three-month-old, but the decision has already been made for us, as it has been for millions of migrant workers who won’t be able to return home for the New Year. My friend’s mother came up from Hunan to visit him, and his dad had planned on coming up too, but now he is stuck at home alone with no running water, and intermittent electricity. My in-laws are doing alright–they just sit at home all day and eat what they have. I guess the big family get together will have to wait until things warm up a bit.

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Here is an amazing article about a Hmong group who fought for the CIA in the Vietnam War, and is still hiding out in the jungles of Laos, hunted by the Lao military. The reporter and photographer hiked 15 hours through the jungle to find them. So many of them appear to be children now, and the article says there are only 5 veterans still with them.

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For the longest time I had no idea what Dongsishitiao (东四十条) was. East forty line? But then people pronounce it in a way that should mean East Fourth Tenth line. It wasn’t until I became more familiar with the area that I found there are many tiaos, from one all the way up to fourteen, and that Dongsi (like Xisi) is a place named after the four gates that used to stand there (they were torn down in 1954).

Today I came across an interesting article by CCTV that tells you everything you ever wanted to know about tiaos in Beijing. The article holds that tiao is actually a Beijing invention, as hutong 胡同 is Mongolian for ‘well.’ Linguistically speaking, tiao is a measure word, but hutong is not: you can say 一条胡同, but not 一胡同. It is also an adjective meaning something long and thin. Tiaos can be numbered from West to East or South to North, but you cannot use the word di 第 with tiao. For example, the first tiao is 头条.

Tiaos can be mixed in with Hutongs, and there are actually 422 tiaos in Beijing, mostly within the second ring road. If you want a list of a bunch of them, along with their former names, check out the article. Tiaos are the closest thing in Beijing you will get to numbered streets, like in Chicago and New York.

Now, if only I could find a Chinese partner and start selling 东四油条…

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I guess I’m coming a little late to this debate, but I don’t think the discussion has died down yet. (And I know the whole thing is totally bizarre, and agree that the law is absurd.) I found out about the discussion after reading a recent op-ed piece by Slavoj Zizek in the NYT about China’s new order governing the reincarnation of Living Buddhas. I wanted to find out more about the order, because I was interested in the language and logic behind it. Unfortunately most of the English-language coverage does not help very much, which makes it nearly impossible to form an opinion.

Suprisingly, or not, the most well-informed artilce is a China Daily/Xinhua story which does a pretty good job of laying out the major issues and has some good translations of the order. They note that temples are the main focus of the law, and that they must get permission for the reincarnation of a Living Buddha.

Then we have Newsweek’s Matthew Philips who writes, “In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.” Wait, so now the monks have to get permission before they die to reincarnate? Now I’m confused.

Jane Macartne with The Times isn’t much help either: “Tibet’s living Buddhas have been banned from reincarnation without permission from China’s atheist leaders.” Is it me, or are they being just a little sensationalist?

Shanghaiist isn’t much help, nor are any of the other articles linked to from there. Did anyone other than Xinhua/CD actually take a look at the law? From reading those articles it seems to me all of the later pieces are based upon the Xinhua release, and Zizek was the only one who read it correctly and/or did his homework and got it right.

Out of curiosity I took a look at the order, and noted a few interesting things: Continue Reading »

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It seems that every year in the past the Japanese prime minister has visited the Yasukuni Shrine (靖国神社) in Tokyo, which gets China and Korea upset, of course, and calling for apologies (the shrine honors convicted war criminals). This year Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三) didn’t go, and I didn’t hear much about it in the Chinese media. I do remember seeing him apologizing on TV as well recently, and didn’t hear much about that either.

Anyway, since Abe didn’t go this year a Japanese right-wing fanatic cut off his pinky finger and sent it to him in protest (link). The guy before him, Junichiro Koizumi (小泉纯一郎) used to go all the time, and after he went in 2001 a bunch of Koreans cut off their pinky fingers in protest (link). It seems that there’s going to be pinky cutting no matter what these guys do.

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Here is a translation of an article from the Beijing News. A translation note: The article mentiones 台湾大学 Taiwan University, whose official name is 国立台湾大学 National Taiwan University. Are mainland publications afraid of putting in the ‘national’ part, or is it omitted just to save space?

National Taiwan University professor Fu Peirong speaks on Confucius, and his new views elicit controversy

The Beijing News, Jinan (special reporter Zhang Hong) Yesterday morning Taiwan University professor Fu Peirong was featured on Shandong Television station’s program “New Apricot Forum,” and gave the first lecture in a series called “Nine Talks on Confucius.” The main topic of this lecture was Confucius’s way as an official. Fu Peirong also mentioned that before Confucius took up an official post at the age of 50, he made a living by assisting others in making funeral arrangements. However, at the time of this reporter’s interview, the scholar Chen Ming felt that this is only Fu Peirong’s own viewpoint.

The controversial question of Confucius’s livelihood

Fu Peirong holds that Confucius did not accept tuition from his students – “He had so many students, if he got one piece of dried meat from each, how could he eat it all? He accepted anyone over the age of 15.” Fu also says that according to writings in the Analects and Mencius, “During Confucius’s time many people did not know how to properly hold the funeral rites, so he made a living from helping others hold funerals up until he went and became an official at the age of 50.”

 At the time of this reporter’s interview, Capital Normal University Philosophy Department Assistant Professor Chen Ming felt that Confucius did indeed help others hold funerals, but this was not his means of livelihood. “That is just the personal opinion of Fu Peirong,” Chen Ming said.

Fu Peirong Visits Confucius Temple and Confucius Forest

In terms of the way Confucius acted as an official, Fu Peirong says, “Confucius went from being a county official all the way to State Warden, an agent of the Prime Minister, and spent five years governing the state of Lu. If he had had enough time he might have been able to achieve his theory of benevolent governance.”

In the afternoon Fu Peirong successively recorded three programs on Confucius’s way as a teacher, of making friends, and of being filial. Today he heads to Qufu to visit the Confucius Temple and Confucius Forest.

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The Beijing News has an article about the most popular names in China. I guess the government has been crunching their numbers, and can provide nationwide statistics on any given name — they even have a number you can send a text message to, and it will immediately send you back the number of people in China with that same name! It costs 1 yuan per message, and you just have to send “SW [name]” to 1066-5110 (China Mobile users) or 9951 (China Unicom users). I checked out my Chinese name, which is 葛强 (Strong Ge, has no relation whatsoever to my English name), and was told there are 2,576 葛强s in China. I tried the name we want to give our baby boy, and it was 847 (higher on the cool factor), but my wife had us all beat with only 363 matches to her name.  This service is actually meant to help families avoid the problem of having the same name as someone else (not so good if someone of the same name is being sought after by the police).

Below is the list of the top ten names from the article, and Zhang Wei is the winner with almost 300,000 people. Some quick fact checking on the internet shows that with that many Zhang Weis you could fill up all of Toledo, Ohio, or even Iceland! I translated the given names, which are only clues you have to go on to determine whether it is a man’s or woman’s name, and they all are pretty clear cut in this list. Below each name is a random picture I took off of Baidu of someone of that same name.

1 张伟 (Great Zhang) 290607

2 王伟 (Great Wang) 281568

3 王芳 (Fragrant Wang) 268268

4 李伟 (Great Li) 260980

5 王秀英 (Elegant Talented Wang) 246737

6 李秀英 (Elegant Talented Li) 244637

7 李娜 (Graceful Li) 244223

8 张秀英 (Elegant Talented Zhang) 236266

9 刘伟 (Great Liu) 234352

10 张敏 (Nimble Zhang) 233708

Of all Beijingers who are not minorities, 杨春白雪 (poplar spring white snow) is the most common four-character name (I think a woman’s name?).

For more Chinese demographic fun, visit this interesting post at Ben Ross’s blog.

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