Ueda Akinari translation
PMJS has published William Clarke and Wendy Cobcroft’s annotated translation of Ueda Akinari’s Tandai Shoshinroku, available as a free PDF and also ...
Category: Literature
Transvestite chickens late at night
I’ve been reading Cao Naiqian‘s There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night. It’s an odd sort of book, and you can see wh...
The Teahouse Fire: Painstaking
I don’t often get unsolicited books with handwritten notes from the authors, unless I worked with them in some way. What was even more surprising is that ...
When translating, leave currency in the original units
I’m using Ivan Morris’ translation of Saikaku’s The Life of an Amorous Woman and other Writings this semester1, but one thing which is bugging...
Thin layer sensing with multipolar plasmonic resonances (and showgirls)
Via Language Log, something on how to make a fool of yourself in Chinese. Apparently the Max Plank Institute asked for a nice Chinese poem for their cover and g...
Mountains, Vikings, and Chinese Poetry
Lots of people seem to like Chinese poetry. The latest NYRB has a review of a reprint of A.C. Graham’s Poems of the Late T’ang by Eliot Weinberger.1...
Pearl Buck's Intriguing Staying Power: Imperial Woman
Parade Magazine (September 14, 2008) asked Laura Bush what she’s been reading: “The Imperial Woman, by Pearl S. Buck. I picked up this book after re...
Collecting Songs
In Imperial China, emperors and other high officials sometimes disguised themselves as commoners and mingled with the ordinary folk to learn what they were real...
Lin Yutang and Chinese literature
One of my neighbors was doing some spring cleaning and brought me this. Lin was a notable if somewhat minor intellectual figure in China but his real fame came ...
Authors/Books/China/Culture/Current Events/Literature/Maoist era (1949-1976)/Post-Mao/Teaching/Translation
New Chinese Literature
The New York Times has published three reviews of new Chinese works in translation: Wang Anyi’s The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong (pen na...
Remembering Meiji: Translations
Keene includes several extended reminiscences of Meiji published immediately after his death. Unfortunately, some are included in the original French (pp. 707 a...
'China Network' at Cambridge
If you will forgive the promotion, this may be of interest to other Frogs… Cambridge University’s humanities centre (CRASSH) recently received fundi...
Upcoming Events at the Donald Keene Center
If you are in New York city in the next few months, you might want to check out the spring schedule for the Donald Keene Center for Japanese culture at Columbia...
Jackie Chan and Louis Cha
Everybody knows about ping pong diplomacy, but we seem to have just completed a period of Canto-pop diplomacy, as Jackie Chan has recorded an “official...
Ding Mocun, Lung Ying-tai and Lust, Caution
Ang Lee‘s (李安) new movie Lust, Caution (色，戒) is apparently being released later this week in the United States. The movie won a Golden Lion at the Venice ...