MCLC: Yu Hua, "How My Books Have Roamed the World"

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Yu Hua, “How My Books Have Roamed the World”
Source: Specimen (9/21/17)
How My Books Have Roamed the World
Written in Chinese by Yu Hua
Translated into English by Helen Wang
For this presentation, I counted the number of countries and languages, apart from China and Chinese (and China’s ethnic minority languages) that my books have been published in so far, and it came to 38 countries and 35 languages. The reason there are more countries than languages is mainly because English editions are published in North America (US and Canada), the UK, Australia and New Zealand; Portuguese editions are published in Brazil and Portugal; and Arabic editions in Egypt and Kuwait. But sometimes the situation is reversed: my books are published in two languages in Spain (Castilian and Catalan) and in India (Malayam and Tamil).
Looking back on how my books have roamed the world, I see there are three factors: translation, publication and readers. I’ve noticed that in China discussions about Chinese literature in a world context focus on the importance of translation, and of course, translation is important, but if a publisher doesn’t publish, then it doesn’t matter how good a translation is, if it’s going to be locked in a drawer, old-style, or, these days, stored on a hard drive. Then there are the readers. If a publisher publishes a book, and the readers don’t pick up on it, then the publisher will lose money and won’t want to publish any more Chinese literature. So, these three factors – translation, publication and readers – are all essential.
My first publications in translation came out in 1994, in three countries: France, the Netherlands and Greece. 23 years later, 11 of my books have been published in France, 4 have been published in the Netherlands, and just the one has been published in Greece.
Two of my books were published in France in 1994. To Live was published by the biggest publisher in France, and a collection of short stories, World Like Mist, was published by a very small publisher, which was almost a one-man-band. In 1995, when I was in France to take part in the St Malo Literary Festival, I went to Paris to visit the big publisher and met with the editor. At the time I was writing Chronicle of a Blood Merchant and asked if he’d like to publish my next novel. He asked me in a strange way: “Can your next novel be made into a movie?” I could see I had no future with that publisher. Then I went to see the little publisher, and asked if they’d like to publish my next novel. Their answer was very modest: they were only a small publishing house, and wanted to publish other authors as well, and couldn’t devote so much attention to me. At the time I thought I had no future in France. Then, luck came my way. The prestigious French publishing house Actes Sud started a Chinese literature series, and invited Isabelle Rabut, Professor of Sinology at the École des Langues Orientales, in Paris, to be the series editor. She was familiar with my work, knew that Chronicle of a Blood Merchant had just been published in the literary journal Shouhuo [Harvest], asked Actes Sud to buy the rights, and a year or so later it was published in French. After that, Actes Sud published one after another of my books. I had found my publisher in France after all.
After publishing To Live in 1994, the Dutch publisher De Geus went on to publish Chronicle of a Blood Merchant, Brothers, and The Seventh Day. It’s interesting that in these 23 years I haven’t had any contact at all with De Geus, I don’t even know who the editor is, or the translator, probably because it all goes through an agent. I tried to work it out. I know only one Dutch Sinologist, Mark Leenhouts, but he doesn’t translate my books. When I saw him last July in Changchun, in China, he said he hoped I might visit the Netherlands next time I’m in Europe, and we arranged to meet this September. I asked him about my Dutch translator, and he smiled and gave the name Jan De Meyer. He said Jan is a Belgian, who speaks Dutch and lives in France. A very interesting person! This April De Geus asked Jan to edit a collection of my short stories, and I received my first email from him. The first line read: “You don’t know me. I’m the person who translated your books Brothers and The Seventh Day into Dutch.” That was the sum total of his self-introduction.
There’s an even more interesting story about my book in Greek. About ten or so years ago, the Greek publisher Hestia decided to publish To Live. They signed a contract with me, had a translator lined up, and then suddenly discovered that another publishing house, Liviani, had published it in 1994. I didn’t know anything about it, or even who had sold Liviani the rights. Hestia pulled out, Liviani sent me some copies of the book, and then both publishing houses forgot about me, and I forgot about them. I only remembered them when I was putting together material for this paper.
Finding a good translator is very important. M.R. Masci and N. Pesaro (Italy), Ulrich Kautz (Germany), Andrew Jones and Michael Berry (USA), Iizuka Yutori (Japan) and Paik Wondam (Korea) all translated an entire book of mine before looking for a publisher. My current English translator, Alan Barr, wrote to me, with an introduction from Andrew Jones. He translated a collection of my short stories that then took ten years to be published. Translators like Barr, who translate with passion, without caring when the translation will be published, are very rare, because good translators are usually well-known, or soon will be, and some of them will translate books by many authors. So, they won’t translate until they have a contract from a publisher – which makes it even more important to find the right publisher for you. In France, I’ve had four different translators, but have been with the same publishing house, Actes Sud. In the USA too, I’ve had four translators, and one publisher, Random House. When you’ve got a steady publisher, you can keep publishing your books.
To Live (tr. Michael Berry) and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (tr. Andrew Jones) were translated into English in the 1990s, but I kept hitting a brick wall with the American publisher. One of their editors even wrote to me, asking: “Why do the characters in your novel have only family responsibilities, and no social responsibilities?” I realized there were historical and cultural differences, and wrote back, saying that China is a country with a history going back 3000 years, and that a lengthy period of feudalism had obliterated individuality in society, that individuals did not have freedom of speech in their social lives, only in their home lives. I told him that those two books were set in the late 70s, and that everything had changed since the 90s. I tried to persuade him, but didn’t succeed. I continued to hit a brick wall in the US, until 2002 when I met my current editor, LuAnn, and thanks to her, I got a foothold at Random House.
A key part of finding the right publisher for you is to find an editor who appreciates your work. My first books in Germany – To Live and Chronicle of a Blood Merchant – were published by Klett-Cotta in the late 90s, but they didn’t publish any of my other books. A few years later I found out why. It turned out that my editor, Thomas, had died. My later books have all gone to S. Fischer, because they have a good editor called Kupski, and whenever I go to Germany, she takes a train to wherever I am – no matter how far away – and comes to meet me, often arriving in the evening, and leaving the next morning before dawn on a train back to Frankfurt.
In 2010 I went to Spain to promote my new book. I met my editor Elena in Barcelona, and over dinner I joked about the conversation I’d had in 1995 with the biggest publishing house in France. She listened in horror, her hand over her mouth, her eyes widening, barely able to believe that such editors still existed. I knew instantly that Saix Barral was the right publisher for me in Spanish, although they had only published two of my books at the time.
I’ll say a few words now about my interactions with readers. I’m often asked if Chinese readers and foreign readers ask the same kind of questions. I’ve been asked this overseas and in China, and there’s some misunderstanding here. People think that I’m often asked social and political questions overseas, but not in China. In fact, readers in China ask just as many social and political questions as foreign readers. Literature encompasses everything. When we read in a literary work that three people walk past another person, we know that three plus one makes four people – that’s maths. When we read about sugar dissolving in hot water, that’s chemistry. When we read about leaves falling, that’s physics. Literature can’t avoid maths, physics and chemistry. It can’t avoid society and politics either. At its heart, literature is literature, whether it’s Chinese or foreign, and what concerns readers most are the things that belong to literature: the characters, their fate and the story. If we’re talking about the novel itself, then I don’t think there’s any difference between the questions asked by Chinese readers and foreign readers. If there are differences, they are between individual readers. For us Chinese, when we read foreign literature, what is it that draws us in? Very simply, it’s literature. As I’ve said before, if there is a mysterious power in literature, then it’s the power that allows us to read about our own feelings in works by authors of different periods, different ethnic groups, different cultures, and different histories.
When talking with foreign readers, there are often some lighter questions too. For example, they might ask what would be different about the same event if it was taking place in China? I tell them that China’s population is huge, and that more people give up trying to get to a venue in China than actually make it to a venue overseas. Another question I’m often asked is: what has been my deepest impression on meeting a reader? I say it was in 1995 when I went abroad for the first time, to France, and I was at a book signing event in a tent at the St Malo literary festival, sitting behind a pile of my own books in French, watching French readers coming and going. Some of them would pick up my book, look at it, and then put it down again. I waited and waited, and then finally two young French boys came over with a piece of blank paper, and told me through the translator that they’d never seen any Chinese writing, and asked if I would write a couple of Chinese characters for them. It was the first time I was asked to sign my name overseas. Of course, I didn’t write my own name, I wrote Zhong guo [China].
Published September 21, 2017
© Yu Hua 2016
© Specimen 2017
by denton.2 at osu.edu on October 18, 2017
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