{"id":12799,"date":"2023-07-31T06:30:39","date_gmt":"2023-07-31T06:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=12799"},"modified":"2023-07-27T15:14:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T15:14:53","slug":"the-best-chinese-fiction-in-translation-your-summer-holiday-reading-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/the-best-chinese-fiction-in-translation-your-summer-holiday-reading-list\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Chinese Fiction in Translation: Your Summer Holiday Reading List"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul French<\/strong> selects ten recent translations of Chinese fiction into English to take to the beach this summer to ponder China more deeply as you work on your tan rather than your business plan\u2026<\/h2>\n

Contemporary Chinese literature is a window into China\u2019s soul. Whether you want to profile your customers, work out who should be your target audience or just understand your friends, neighbours and partners better, reading fiction can be far more illuminating than a dozen business tomes and university case studies.<\/p>\n

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Love and betrayal in China: Nothing But the Now<\/em>, Wen Zhen (trans: Dave Haysom)<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Seven short stories beginning with \u2018Night Train\u2019, the tale of a divorcing couple who decide to make their last journey together before parting forever. \u2018Shepherd\u2019 depicts a romance between a teacher and a student; \u2018Lungfish\u2019 pits a quiet wife against a garrulous husband; and \u2018You\u2019re Still Young\u2019 tells a story of an unhappy woman who doesn\u2019t want to have children. These and all the other stories in this collection are revealing of Chinese life today, personal relationships, societal pressures and ordinary people\u2019s responses to emotional decisions.<\/p>\n

Tradition and change in contemporary rural China: The Funeral Cryer<\/em>, Wenyan Lu<\/h4>\n

Cambridge-based Lu writes about the strangest, and yet most traditional, of jobs \u2013 the professional mourner. Again though, as with so much Chinese fiction at the moment, a strained personal relationship is also at the heart of the story. The book has been praised for its tragic-comic style and for being an illuminating depiction of a \u2018left behind\u2019 society, the rural China so many of us never see.<\/p>\n

Exploring the capital\u2019s underbelly and underclass: Beijing Sprawl<\/em>, Xu Zechen (trans: Jeremy Tiang and Eric Abrahamsen)<\/h4>\n

Xu is a multi-award-winning Chinese author and is sometimes seen as the air to the liumung<\/em> (hooligan) authors of a previous generation, most notably Wang Shuo. Originally published as short stories, these tales of marginal life on Beijing\u2019s endless fringes hang together well as a novel. Featuring a collection of wanna-be hutong hipsters, gig economy survivors, recent migrants, bored country kids come to town, low-life criminals, thugs and ex-jailbirds, this is not the tourist\u2019s Beijing, and nobody much is living the \u201cChina Dream\u201d out in the sprawl.<\/p>\n