MCLC: Bill Porter interview

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: pjmooney <pjmooney at me.com>
Subject: Bill Porter interview
***********************************************************

Source: Sinosphere blog, NYT (7/17/14):
http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/17/q-and-a-bill-porter-on-trave
l-writing-in-china/

Q. and A.: Bill Porter on Journeys, Poets and Best-Sellerdom in China
By Ian Johnson

For more than 30 years, Bill Porter has been one of the most prolific
translators of Chinese texts, while also developing into a travel writer
with a cult following. Under the pen name Red Pine, the 70-year-old
resident of Port Townsend, Wash., has translated over a dozen books of
poetry and religious texts, including collections of poems by Hanshan and
Song Boren, the Daoist classic Dao De Jing and numerous Buddhist sutras.
Under his own name, he has also published travel works like “Zen Baggage:
A Pilgrimage to China” and “Road to Heaven: Encounters With Chinese
Hermits.”

For much of his life, he barely made ends meet, and in the preface of one
book he thanked the United States Department of Agriculture for its food
stamp program. That’s changed over the past few years as Mr. Porter has
become a best-selling author
<http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/may/29/zen-book-contracts-bill-p
orter-beijing/> — thanks to middle-class Chinese readers. “Road to Heaven”
has sold 250,000 copies on the Chinese mainland, while several of his
other books have each sold 50,000 copies.

His Chinese publisher, Beijing Dushuren
<http://www.baike.com/wiki/%E5%8C%97%E4%BA%AC%E8%AF%BB%E4%B9%A6%E4%BA%BA>,
has been so thrilled with his resonance that it has even commissioned him
to write works for it to publish in China — reversing the usual process
for Western authors writing on China. One of these books, “Yellow River
Odyssey,” was just published in English by Chin Music Press, a
Seattle-based publisher. In an interview, Mr. Porter discussed his works
and his plans. Excerpts follow:

Q. Tell us how “Yellow River Odyssey” came about.

I was living in Taiwan, where I was translating, meditating and working
for a local radio station, ICRT. It was around 1990 and I was planning to
return to America. I’d been in touch before with Winston Wong [the eldest
son of Wang Yung-ching, the billionaire founder of Formosa Plastics], who
had sponsored my trip to find hermits in the Zhongnan Mountains [which
resulted in "Road to Heaven"]. I called him up and told him that there’s
one last thing I want to do, which is to explore the origins of Chinese
culture. I told him it’s about a three-month project and I guess I need
about $9,000. He said  why don’t you come down and we’ll take it out of
petty cash?

Then, my boss at ICRT was hired away by [the Hong Kong business magnate]
Li Ka-shing and [the film and broadcasting mogul] Run Run Shaw, who were
starting a new radio station in Hong Kong. They needed two-minute pieces
to anchor each half-hour segment. I told him about the project and he
said, “Do it for us as a radio show.”

So in 1991, I went up the Yellow River in March and got back in May, I
began writing up the scripts. In July they went on air, and the programs I
was writing for were successful, so they said just keep doing it.
Including the hermits, I did five series in all. I went up the Silk Road
from Xi’an to Islamabad and did another called “South of the Clouds” about
the hill tribes in China’s south. I did another called “South of the
Yangtze” where I looked at the Jiangnan region. My final one was through
the Three Gorges, where I started in Wuhan and went up to Chongqing.

It was a two-year contract with tons of money because Run Run Shaw and Li
Ka-shing had a lot. I had enough to put a down payment on the house I’m
living in now.

Q. And after they were broadcast, these shows just stayed in a vault?

Right. Then a few years ago, my Chinese publisher said that “Road to
Heaven” and “Zen Baggage” are doing so well, do you have anything else
right now? I told him about these shows and he said, “Can you rewrite them
as a narrative?” And so I did. All of them have been published in China
except for the Jiangnan trip. It’s coming out next.

Q. Your trip took place 23 years ago. Everyone says how China is changing
so quickly. Does this make it dated?

The book includes almost no mention of political or economic stuff. I was
interested in China’s past. That past hasn’t changed.

But you could also say that in some sense the book is a document. I deal
with the present to record how I’m traveling. The conditions of travel in
those days aren’t what they are today. But that was the great adventure of
the trip. It’s much more interesting to write about suffering and failure
than success or ease or comfort. It was easy to write about this trip
because each day was an adventure. Nowadays you don’t have to think about
how to get from A to B, but back then you did. The roads were terrible and
the buses were terrible, although they did get me from here to there.

It’s striking how many monuments there are along the way. Sometimes
they’re to mythical events, or statues of people when we don’t know what
they really looked like.

They have honored their history in that regard. They’re marked with a tomb
or a statue. Sometimes it’s in the countryside, and there’s just a bunch
of farmers around. So there is that aspect to my book — how Chinese revere
their past.

Q. You also talk a lot about the non-Chinese people — the non-Han.

The reason I wanted to focus on the Yellow River is that’s where Chinese
civilization began. By going up the river I’d get to its source and the
source of Chinese culture. But what you see is that Chinese culture is a
great mixture of peoples. Five thousand years ago, north China was not
controlled by the Han Chinese. That sort of started with the Yellow
Emperor defeating the Miao people at the Battle of Zhuolu
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zhuolu>. Until then, north China
was up for grabs. I felt that traveling there. Even today a lot of north
China isn’t entirely Chinese. There are Mongolians, Hui and others. It
becomes obvious when you travel the length of the Yellow River that it was
a series of accidents that led to the ascendency of the Han.

Q. How surprised are you that it is Chinese consumers who are driving your
book sales?

I always thought of myself as a bridge from the East to the West —
bringing these translations of poetry and travelogues and introducing the
material to the West. But it turns out that the people most interested in
China are the Chinese. It’s, duh, of course, it’s their own country. And
it turned out that I’ve written books in a style that’s new to them. It’s
interesting for them to see what a foreigner has to say.

Q. Besides your travel books, your translations of some classics, such as
the Platform Sutra and the Heart Sutra have been published in Chinese.
Most Chinese readers probably don’t care about how you translated the book
into English, so what’s of interest to them?

They’re interested in my commentaries to the text — how I interpret the
meaning.

Q. But your commentaries are based on Chinese sources.

I think our educational system makes us perhaps more open to different
ideas. The Chinese are more constrained by their history of commentaries.
Me, I don’t know what the tradition is. I just read the commentaries and
use them to understand how the texts relate to practice. [Mr. Porter is a
practicing Buddhist.] So it’s a personal journey and they’re interested in
that. By the end of the year, my editions of the Dao De Jing and the
Diamond Sutra are coming out in Chinese too.

Q. And your final book?

It’s called “Finding Them Gone.” It’s based on travels I’ve made to the
homes of famous poets. It’ll be out in Chinese next spring and in English
in October of next year.

Q. The publisher is not worried about flooding the market with Bill Porter
books — three books in the next nine months in China?

The publisher knows they can sell the books. From the talks I give, I know
I have readers who will buy everything I write, and there seem to be
thousands of them.

Q. And then you’re retiring?

Yes. It’s a good time. I’m still healthy. I want to travel. But I don’t
want to see places, I want to talk to people. When you get older, you
realize it’s the people that matter. I’m going to travel to Europe [where
Mr. Porter lived earlier in his life] and back to Taiwan.

Q. Will you look up Winston Wong?

I want to give him a copy of “Yellow River Odyssey.” It’s been like 23
years since he gave me the money. He probably wonders what the hell
happened to it.