Literature has the fortunate habit of making itself known via a variety of media. This week, our editors from around the world introduce a thrilling TV adaptation from one of China’s most promising authors, the protests in Hong Kong making its way through its censored literatures, and a Vietnamese classic that has been underserved by its celebrated translation.
Charlie Ng, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Hong Kong:
This week, Hong Kong is stricken by Beijing’s passing of the sweeping new national security law for the city. The law was unanimously passed on June 30 by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, bypassing Hong Kong’s Legislative Council and without consulting the citizens. Details were not even revealed until 11 p.m. on the same day, to be put into effect on July 1. The details of the national security law indicate that the new law has broad offences, can override Hong Kong law, allows trials to be closed to the public, and requires the establishment of a National Security Office in Hong Kong directly controlled by Beijing, among other key points. The priority given to the new law can possibly erode Hong Kong’s judicial independence and be in conflict with Hong Kong’s common law tradition.
Fear towards the establishment of the new national security law has been spreading since the passing of the proposal in late May during the National People’s Congress.
Critics expect that the law will adversely influence Hong Kong’s freedom of expression and citizens’ rights to oppose decisions or policies determined by the government or China. Under such an intense political climate, quite a number of political works have been recently published, striving to defend free speech and publication, including Sociology professor Dr. Chan Kin Man’s Letters from the Prison, as he was sentenced to sixteen months imprisonment for his participation in the Umbrella Movement; and media professional Ryan Lau’s That Night in Yuen Long, which is a work of documentary literature on the 2019 Yuen Long attack.
Meanwhile, regardless of the continued threat of COVID-19, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council decided that the Hong Kong Book Fair would be held as scheduled from July 15 to July 21, under the theme of, “Inspirational and Motivational Reading”. However, with the implement of the new national security law, the publication sector is concerned about the displaying of politically sensitive books at the Book Fair being potentially prosecuted. Some publishers have already suspended the production of some books related to the anti-extradition movement and have given up displaying books related to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Although the actual impact on Hong Kong’s freedom of speech is yet to be fully revealed, tangible effects of fear induced self-censorship are pervasive.
Jiaoyang Li, Chinese social media manager, reporting from China
The hottest thing in China this week must be the newly launched TV series The Hidden Corner《隐秘的⻆落》directed by Xing Shuang. Some say this show is a Chinese version of Hirokazu Koreeda’s Shoplifters; some say Zi Jinchen, the original writer of the show, is the Higashino Keigo of China. Regardless, as part of iQiyi’s Mystery Fog Theatre, a new online content platform dedicated to suspense dramas, The Hidden Corner has already been considered the most exciting Chinese show so far this year.
The show, adapted from Zi Jinchen’s novel The Bad Kids, tells a gripping crime story that takes place during a summer holiday in Ningzhou, Guangdong. The narrative begins with a substitute math teacher, Zhang Dongsheng (played by Qin Hao) who has meticulously planned the killing of his cheating wife and her parents who had been mean to him for a long time. However, his act of pushing his parents-in-law off a cliff is accidentally captured by three kids, who were singing and taking videos of themselves nearby. It happens that the kids are, at that time, attempting to raise money so that one of their family members can undergo a necessary surgery, and so they decide to blackmail Zhang, hoping that he will give them the money they need. However, after the blackmailing email is sent, the plan of this secret business spirals completely out of control, with several families getting implicated. Zhang gradually escalates into a deadly serial killer, and the kids also lose their innocence. One memorable scene depicts Zhang telling his students that sometimes, people commit crimes out of fear of losing the things they love, asking them: “Will you choose to believe the fairy tale or the truth?” The finale leaves the ending ambiguous, and up to the audience’s imagination.
With its haunting horror and beauty, this show also gives a sneak peek into a lot of the social problems within Chinese society: school bullying, single-parent families, police systems, welfare house systems, and others. But without a doubt, the show will revive a new wave of reading detective and crime fiction in China.
Quyen Nguyen, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Vietnam
With the advent of summer, life has begun to resume a semblance of normalcy after the COVID-19 pandemic was successfully controlled in Vietnam. After five months of hiatus during which many events have been cancelled or postponed, literary gatherings are slowly returning. On the first day of July, a special talk in Hanoi entitled “Wounds That Can’t Be Bandaged: The Imperfect Translation of Women’s Suffering in The Tale of Kiều and The Sorrow of War” was led by speaker Trang H. Nguyen and Quyen Nguyen, founder of Zzz Review. This event, part of Manzi and Zzz Review‘s series of talks on literature in Hanoi, was supported by Goethe Institut.
Covered in the talk were two of Vietnam’s most important literary works: The Tale of Kiều written by Nguyễn Du in early nineteenth century (translated by Huỳnh Sanh Thông) and The Sorrow of War, written by Bảo Ninh in 1987 (translated by Phan Thanh Hao and Frank Palmos). Though separated by more than one hundred and fifty years, both novels examined the plight of women under a Confucian patriarchal society. Trang H. Nguyen compared and contrasted the two figures of Kiều and Phương to express the unchanging patriarchal oppression experienced by Vietnamese women during the course of one and a half centuries, despite a radical change of societal discourse from imperialism to communism.
Most noteworthy was how Nguyen problematized the issues of translation from Vietnamese to English in The Sorrow of War. Though first published in 1990, Bảo Ninh’s novel immediately faced strict censorship and was not allowed to be circulated in Vietnam until 2005, eleven years after the publication of the English version by Frank Palmos in 1993. This meant that the English version, which was rewritten by Palmos based on a rough translation by Phan Thanh Hảo, enjoyed a certain authority over the original Vietnamese. Palmos stayed true to the sequence of the basic plot and successfully introduces the counter-narrative to the propaganda by both sides of the war, but failed to convey Bảo Ninh’s comprehensive critique of the war through his distortion of Bảo Ninh’s representations of women throughout the novel. Listing various problematic examples in the text, Nguyen pointed out that, by exposing and emphasizing women’s bodies, and adding graphic, gratuitous violence to their scenes, Palmos fed into the Orientalist imagination of the helpless and vulnerable Asian female body. In effect, Palmos’ translation colonized the original text.
Palmos’s celebrated translation received several awards and was listed as one of the Best 50 Translations of the 20th century by the British Society of Authors. Strangely enough, twenty-seven years have passed with virtually no criticism of the English version. Nguyen’s research into the subject shed light on how Palmos created an inadequate interpretation and a disempowered translation of The Sorrow of War. Nguyen called for a new English version that will be more faithful to Bảo Ninh’s original text, in order to do justice to his critique of patriarchal Vietnamese culture as well as his empathy for Vietnamese women. In the middle of a worldwide pandemic, the subaltern writes back in Vietnam.
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