Chinese Literature in 2022: What to Read

Chinese Author Xueting Ni provides a selection of the Chinese fiction and non-fiction to put on your reading list this year.

The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Moxiang Tongxiu, translated by Suika

Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation

It would not be an exaggeration to state that the global success of the WeTV series, The Untamed, was the most remarkable international phenomenon of Chinese culture in 2020, marking a new level of engagement with China’s creative arts from fans around the world. Based on Moxiang Tongxiu’s web novel series, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, it was only a matter of time before the original novel made it into an Anglophone translation. Whilst it might be set in ancient China, and overflow with supernatural lore and occult cultivation, its skillful blend of traditional culture, such as the philosophies of kungfu and music, along with a host of well-developed, complex characters, make it a fantastic story. The book’s exploration of contemporary issues of class prejudice, existential agency versus predetermination, social (non-)conformity, and the aftermaths of war, also render it relevant to a younger readership. As an apt tribute to its phenomenal globe-stretching fandom, and the communities that rose out of this, spawning vast quantities of fan art, fanlations and fan fic, the English language edition features a team of international creators, Suika (yummysuika) on translation, Jin Fang (jinzillaa) on cover art, and Marina Privalova (BaoshanKaro) on interior illustrations, all avid fans of the danmei genre, who share a parallel online existence with the author MXTX. With volumes two and three slated for later this year, this series also provides a good inroad into the amazing new fiction from China’s recent revolutionary online publishing developments.

Kingdom of Characters by Jing Tsu

Kingdom of Characters

In over a decade of Chinese culture writing, speaking and translating, I have always stressed the importance of a holistic understanding of contemporary China in the wider world. The complex and incredible history of change and reinvention this civilization has gone through over the last two centuries, is now nestling against continuity, resulting in the unique place that it is today. As a civilization seen through lenses of century-old misperceptions, which defies Western preconceptions, and a society in development, learning about it requires an open mind. Literary scholar and modern cultural historian Jing Tsu brings us just such a rare and valuable portal of context into China. Today, it is one of the world's most powerful nations, yet just a century ago it was a crumbling empire with literacy reserved for the elite. Its most daunting challenge was a linguistic one: how to make a 2,200-year-old writing system universally accessible. This book follows the bold innovators who adapted the Chinese script - and the value-system it represents - to the technological advances that would shape the twentieth century and beyond. Today Mandarin tends to be viewed globally as a language of oppression, being imposed over other dialects and topolects across the nation, but this book offers an alternative perspective, demonstrating the vital importance of a common language in a nation state as diverse as China.

Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Culture, translated and edited by Xueting Christine Ni

Sinoptician

In its current cycle of development, China has only just begun to recognise the value of its genre fiction, and it’s only in the last decade that the anglophone readership became aware of Kehuan at all, despite the tradition of Chinese Science Fiction having existed and developed for over a century. If you want to find out about a nation’s hopes and fears, look at its science fiction. Despite China’s re-ignition of Scifi writing, the number of collections published in English can be counted on one-hand. Sinopticon, the result of many years of endeavouring to bring genre fiction to the West, is a set of 13 carefully curated and translated stories by a wide selection of Chinese writers, and is aimed at celebrating the breadth and range of styles and content within the genre, showing how SF has developed over the thirty years of its current revival, from relatively linear evolution, to sprawling biblio-diversity. In this anthology, you’ll find ‘a day in the life’ stories alongside whimsical galactic adventures featuring eccentrics and strange civilizations; you’ll find philosophical and contemplative space elegies nestling next to post-apocalyptic black comedy, hard-boiled thrillers side by side an interplanetary romance. Each work, is suffixed with a short essay, delving into cultural relevance, and translation oddities, to provide further insight for those who want to find out more. Authors featured include the renown Hao Jingfang, Han Song, Ma Boyong, Bao Shu and Wang Jinkang.

The Book of Shanghai, edited by Jin Li and Dai Congrong

The Book of Shanghai

Modern literature from China available in English since the 1990s, has been over-saturated by explorations of war, famine, revolution, political upheaval and stories of modern hardship, and to some extent, this genre of misery-porn has become a mainstay. It is true that China’s infrastructure and social morés are still playing catch-up with its rapidly developing economic success, but these changes have come with definite benefits. Despite the efforts made to improve everyday life, literature that reflects the positive aspects of contemporary China, or even that which takes a more nuanced stance, just do not tend to get picked up so often by anglophone publishers. This is what makes The Book of Shanghai, an anthology of eleven stories by contemporary authors, a rare find. The stories are a literary exploration of one of the world’s biggest cities, by offering an insight into the lives of its inhabitants as they go about their daily business, and branching into romance, social parody, Kehuan, and feminist celebration. This selection certainly shows a more rounded view of modern China. Yes, it still tackles the cruelty that all modern cities invoke, especially in The Story Of Ah-Ming, but it is not made the central scaffold from which every event and character are hung. Weighing in at about 180 pages, with very cool and distinctive cover art by David Eckersall, The Book of Shanghai provides a good solid block for cover to cover reading, or simply to dip into, on your (masked and distanced) journey around the city.

The Wuhan Lockdown, Guobin Yang

The Wuhan Lockdown

The Coronavirus Pandemic has been the single most impactful phenomenon of our time. Just after it was first reported in Wuhan just before Chinese New Year in 2020, the entire city went into total lockdown, helping to contain the first strain within the region, and helping China get to grips with the outbreak in an astonishingly short length of time. It seems incredulous that all aspects of China’s role in the control of the virus, from its discovery, to its reporting to the WHO, to the travel restrictions, have been clouded over in a new wave of Sinophobia in the Western media, spilling into attitudes towards Chinese food, eating habits, and diaspora with dire consequences on the lives of ordinary people. This incredible research project by Guobin Yang, professor of Communication and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is such a blessed relief in its telling of the lockdown, in the voices of the city’s own people. Using a vast archive of more than 6,000 diaries, Yang depicts how the city coped during the crisis, analysing how the state dealt with the lockdown, Yang demonstrates that citizen engagement was essential in the effort to fight the pandemic. The book features compelling accounts of physicians, patients, volunteers, feminist organizers, social media commentators, and even aunties loudly swearing at party officials; all in their struggle against COVID-19. These snapshots from the lockdown capture China at a critical moment, revealing the intricacies of politics, morality, community, and digital technology, making it an unparalleled account of the first moments of the crisis that will define this era.

Author: Xueting Ni

Xueting Ni is a writer, translator, and speaker on Chinese traditional and pop culture. Her translation work has ranged from comics, poetry, essays, film, fantasy and science fiction.

Website: www.snowpavilion.co.uk

Twitter: @xuetingni