Chinese Literature and Culture - November 18, 2019 Vol 16

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We all live and we all die.It is the process between the start of life and end of it that is all that matters.In certain contexts, it is shameful to love your life and fear death, as reflected by the Chinese idiom tan sheng pa si, but to love life and fear death is only too natural as dictated by our animal heritage.In this volume, we have two stories that contrast with each other. In the former, Wang Xiaomu’s “Love Forecaster,” we see how humans love life and can possibly spoil it; in the latter, Yingchuan’s “No Turning Around,” we have a human that fears death as a consequence of inflicting death (as he imagines); in the former, we see how love can sour, and in the latter how human nature can stay dignified with so much love in the deep fear of death.Life is a one-way ticket, in either case; there is no return. As observers of other people’s lives and readers of other people’s stories we may perceive some meaning the way Craig Hulst does in his commentary on “Love Forecaster.”As always, a note of thanks must go to the translators, Zhang Hong and Li Qinmei, involved in this volume, for their painstaking work, and to the contributing editors, Fraser Sutherland and Craig Hulst for making the translations read well, and the School of Translation and Transcultural Studies of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies for continued support given to Chinese Literature and Culture.