Translating China

For the next in our series of Arts Council England funded events, join our brilliant panel (detailed below), as we discuss the following aspects of modern Chinese literature: 

China is often portrayed in the West as an economic powerhouse a site of industrial monotony. How has contemporary Chinese literature complicated these images?

What are some of the most interesting trends in China’s literary scene today? Which subjects, forms or groups of writers deserve more attention outside China?

Phenomena like ‘lying flat’ and ‘involution’ express the exhaustion of many young Chinese people. How has literature responded to these anxieties surrounding work, social mobility and the future?

To what extent has China’s politics influenced its literature? How are Chinese authors affected?

Speakers: 

Lijia Zhang is a rocket factory-worker-turned writer, social commentator and public speaker. One of the few Chinese who write regularly in English for international publications, her articles have appeared in The Guardian, The South China Morning Post, Newsweek and The New York Times. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir “Socialism Is Great!” about her decade-long experience of working at a rocket factory in Nanjing and her debut novel Lotus, on prostitution in contemporary China, was published by Macmillan and was featured by BBC radio's World Book Club. Lijia is currently finishing a historical novel based on the life of China’s first feminist and revolutionary at the turn of the 20th Century, Qiu Jin, known as China’s Joan of Arc.

Jack Hargreaves is a Chinese-to-English translator from Yorkshire. His literary work, recognised by English PEN, has appeared on adda, Arts of the Working Class, Asymptote Journal, The Dial, Granta, Samovar, The Southern Review and elsewhere. Jack is one of the translators behind 李娟 Li Juan’s Winter Pasture and 柴静 Chai Jing’s Seeing. Most recently, in his translation, 胡安焉 Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing was published by Allen Lane and Astra House, and 顾前 Gu Qian’s Mutual Strangers by Sinoist Books. Comma Press's new anthology China+100 also includes his translation of a short story by Zhou Dedong. Jack has taught translation at the universities of Leeds and Aberdeen, SOAS and Hong Kong Baptist University, and writes for the China Books Review.