Chinese Literature and Culture - Vol 3 - May 2015

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In this volume, Canadian author Patrick Kavanagh contributes an important piece: “Smutty Moll for a Mattress Jig: Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Beijing,” a recollection of his encounter with the late Xiao Qian, who consulted him about the translation of the many colloquialisms while translating nearly-impossible Ulysses into Chinese. We also have Su Tong’s masterpiece “West Window” translated by Prof. Feng Zhilin. Fraser Sutherland captures the spirit and subtlety of the story in his commentary with beautifully written lines like “A girl watches through a window. A boy watches the girl.” Liu Chun’s “Beijing Guys” is the story of a virgin girl being womanized by one of Beijing’s “last bunch of friends in need and friends indeed,” who are maintaining an old tradition in an increasingly unrecognizable city and become decadent, adulterous, and selfish. “The Postman” is the work of Lin Peiyuan, a promising young author. It is “a story that lets readers into village life in rural China.” (Craig Hulst). “A Poet’s Elm” by Xu Yi is the story of a former poet whose eye disease has ruined her career and is creating psychological problems. In the poetry section, we have something quaint: the beautiful lyrics of a petty official in the Qing Dynasty: “From Intoxication to Sobriety: the Ditties of Zhao Qingxi,” something that has never been translated into English before.