Chinese Literature - Tumblr Posts

In this twentieth century, people are judged according to their nation. The people of a powerful nation are people; the people of a weak nation are dogs.

Mr. Ma and Son (二马) by Lao She (老舍). 1929.

Born Shu Qingchun (舒慶春) in 1899, Lao She, of Manchu ethnicity, was one of the most significant literary figures of 20th-century China. His most famous works are the play Teahouse (茶館) and the novel Rickshaw Boy (骆驼祥子), as well as the first major work of Chinese science-fiction, Cat Country (猫城记). An author who made use of the Beijing dialect in his works, Lao She was also a great satirist, penning scathing commentaries on the ever-shifting Chinese society that he observed at the time. Mr. Ma and Son, first serialised in a journal in 1929, uses the story of a Chinese father and son who inherit an antiques store in London to explore racism, immigration, and cultural divide, as well as China’s ‘humiliation’ by Western countries on the international stage. Like many other 20th-century intellectuals, however, Lao She was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in him taking his own life in 1966, when he threw himself into Taiping Lake in Beijing. 

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(via sinethetamagazine)

So, I guess November is JttW month!

From Dominic Noble:

To OSP:

And I just now found out this was true for this one podcast I haven't listened to in awhile (Mythology by Parcast) and one of the recent episodes covers Guanyin's goldfish (here are the other episodes too).

Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you’re done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me, and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation.

—Hao Jingfang, ‘Invisible Planets,’ in Invisible Planets: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, tr. & ed. Ken Liu