Things I Like #5

- the smell of fresh cucumbers
- the change in Mr Coates' facial expression, voice, and body language when he's about to say something he thinks is funny (I love Mr Coates, he's such a well organised teacher and is so cute... "When I worked in Malawi/Malaysia/at a summer camp in America/at a fish and chips shop...")
- cello music
- spring (I used to think my favorite season was summer, but in the summer we take so many things for granted. There are already signs of spring -- some small yellow flowers, light birdsong, the smell and feel of freshness, the warmth of sunlight on your skin at 3 in the afternoon... spring is such a beautiful season, when all the daisies start cropping up in the field at school and everyone starts to spend lunchtimes outside, just laying on the grass and picking daisies and there's such an atmosphere of anticipation... it really is a season of hope and rebirth!)
- the clinking sound when something gets sucked into the vacuum cleaner

Under the Hawthorn Tree

I have often said two things about Zhang Yimou: first, that Zhang Yimou peaked in the late eighties and early nineties. Of course, as usual, I am not an expert and am simply expressing my humble, possibly incorrect opinion, despite not having seen every Zhang Yimou film to support my statement. Yellow Earth, the film considered to have kicked off modern Chinese cinema for which he was the cinematographer to Chen Kaige's directing, is arguably his best work. Raise the Red Lantern was great. Red Sorghum was good. To Live was great. The second thing I often say about Zhang Yimou is that he hasn't made a good film since 1994. The twin wuxia epics, House of Flying Daggers and Hero are interesting in their own right but too much of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon bandwagon films to be really considered exceptional, and also they start to mark Zhang's Hollywood ass-licking era, which continues on today. I saw his Coming Home in the cinema and thought it was okay. He made a Christian Bale vehicle and is now the director of the infamous Great Wall. And, until now, I have always (rather pompously) thought I was right in making such a statement.

I will now amend my statement. Zhang Yimou has not made a good film since 1994, except in 2010. However, this is because, in 2010, he momentarily had two souls. A gentler, softer Zhang Yimou from a parallel universe who'd had a much happier childhood was transported into this universe's Zhang Yimou's body. (We'll call the other Zhang Yimou, Zhang Yirou, with rou being the word for "gentle" and "soft".) Zhang Yirou saw Zhang Yimou's mind and was sad. He couldn't understand why Zhang Yimou, once the enfant terrible of Chinese cinema, had truly become a terrible child –– a real pain in the neck with a knack for crowd-pleasing –– who had begun to plagiarise himself in order to try and replicate his success. "Why is there not more gentleness and softness in this universe?" wondered Zhang Yirou. And so he decided to make Under the Hawthorn Tree. After the premiere of the film, Zhang Yirou returned to his parallel universe. "I have done good," he thought. "I have brought some gentleness and softness into that world. I have made Zhang Yimou a good director again." But he was wrong. Zhang Yimou is not a man to be messed with. During the course of the production of Under the Hawthorn Tree Zhang Yimou had suffered immense pain due to being subjugated by another soul in his own body. He could only watch as his gentle and soft counterpart hired a new Yimou Girl and created a gentle and soft film. Although he had to admit to himself it was a good film, he decided to spite Zhang Yirou by continuing to make mediocre-to-average, 6/10-type films.

Of course, all this is to say that Under the Hawthorn Tree is a gentle and soft film. It is another Saint-Exupérien work, which is currently my favorite genre. (My second favorite genre at the moment is heist films. Ah, I love heists. Ever so much.) Although it takes place during the Down to the Countryside Movement, with parents never being seen again after being labelled rightists and with a particularly hopeless and exhausting abortion scene, the Romance of the Hawthorn tree (as the Chinese title translates to) between the two main characters is just –– so –– pure. And even though the main reason why they can't be together outright is to not endanger her career, which is fragile because both of her parents are counter-revolutionaries, all the political turmoil just seems like background noise to the sincerity of their relationship. Laosan and Jingqiu are bashful and innocent, too shy to make outright expressions of love. This is especially the case for the latter, who doesn't even have a name for him. She makes him a golden koi keychain. He buys her boots. Every little detail brims with tenderness. A tear leaks from her eye and, as she turns her head to look upwards at the ceiling, it traces a line down the middle of her throat. Her family manufactures envelopes by hand in their one-room home, and the process runs throughout the film. Stacks of ochre-yellow envelopes with crimson ink lines get passed from mother to daughter to son to daughter. Her mother uses a flat blade to cut out the corners of each paper to make flaps. Then she puts down the flaps, insisting on the folds with a heavy brick. Then the children's nimble fingers flip, stick, tuck, glue. The fresh smoothness of the paper is a constant and a comfort into which Jingqiu retreats. There are none of the exuberant and gaudy colors of Zhang Yimou's signature. The palette is subdued under a delightful wash of faded Communist era tones. Jingqiu's face (to which, I admit, I bear some resemblance) stands out among a sea of white shirts whose textures are almost tangible from the screen: once starched, but now soft to the touch, smelling of cheap simple soap and a hint of sweat, well-worn. He tells her the hawthorn tree's flowers bloom red. He tells her she looks good in red. He gets leukemia, the white blood cell disease. She wears red for him. He dies. When spring comes, the flowers are small and white, like mist, like bandages, like the splash of river water in the hot summer months.

That's all I'll say now. That's all I can say. The rest I'll keep in my heart.

Bad Poems #6

My new toothbrush has a small head
oval and precocious
soft white bristles all of equal length
the toothpaste sits on top of them like a fakir
after Rodin, floats strangely.
In my mouth it doesn't assert its presence
slides over my teeth
smooth and fast
like the new ballpoint pens I bought at Migros
green blue red black
a German name and bright blue casing
smooth and gliding across the paper
that is how my new toothbrush feels.
The toothpaste doesn't seem to make any
real contact with my teeth.
My movement is too brusque,
shoving it around, with its small head
it is too small to withstand my usual motions.
Lately the toothpaste has made me feel sicker than usual.
Four times I have retched, wretched,
neck hung over the sink
wincing, long drops of saliva suspended from my lip
like okra, sweetly foreign texture on my tongue
lady's fingers, snotty salivary strange feeling
almost as strange as when a persimmon is eaten
at the wrong time (too early or too late? I don't remember)
and it makes my mouth feel fuzzy and unbearable
my whole body contorts with discomfort
hair hanging over the sink.
Maybe it's the type of toothpaste
not the standing tube like at the orthodontist's
but the clear blue with specks and stripes
not white with pink
but almost translucent blue.
Perhaps they have different ingredients.
I hope I don't actually throw up.

Things I Like #4

- Ocean Vuong's poetry
- Putting lipstick onto your top lip, then pursing your lips and seeing the imprint appear on your bottom lip. Then going over it and making it brighter.
- Refreshing my emails on my phone
- Thick braids
- Dane Dehaan

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On translation:

Deborah Smith began studying Korean in 2010 and translated The Vegeterian by Han Kang to practice her language skills. The English version was published in 2015. It won a Man Booker. She and the original author split the prize money.
The more I think about being a translator of (modern) prose literature, the more appealing it seems to me. I could do French to English and Chinese to English. I think the fluent-in-theory-but-dy1ng-in-practice relationship I have with French and Chinese, and my excellent English (if I may say so myself) is a good combination. Or Spanish? Or I could even do a new language from scratch, like Smith. My list of languages I want to learn next are:

1. Cantonese (but in terms of literary translation, of course Hong Kong literature would probably need knowledge of Cantonese to translate, but still isn't impossible with Mandarin and some guidance)
2. Korean (I feel like it'd be easier than...)
3. Arabic
4. Sanskrit (not very practical for modern translation!) 
5. Czech

I don't know why Czech. I've had this very romantic view of Prague ever since I read Daughter of Smoke and Bone in year 7 and I also loved The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. And, of course, Kafka. Prague is just such a beautiful name.

Speaking of Kafka, I'm still lowkey reeling from Kafka on the Shore which I read over the summer. I don't understand it. But it was so interesting. The only other Murakamis I've read are Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and 20 pages of a Spanish version of After the Earthquake. He won't stop thinking about sex during moments when it's not necessary. Anyway, I feel like you could write a whole book analysing Kafka on the Shore. I haven't thought about it yet. It's just sitting in my mind, like a bookmark. Maybe someday I'll dwell on it. 

Old Home, New Home by Lung Yingtai

Translated extracts from another text we studied in Chinese class, about the families separated for forty years after the Kuomintang fled to Taiwan in 1949. Both made me cry in class.

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乡音
于是我让哥哥就着录音机坐下，"给爸妈说段话吧！"哥哥两眼望着自己的脚，困难地思索着。我在一旁呆坐。是啊、他该说什么呢？问父母这四十年究竟是怎么回事？问老天那一列火车为什么走得那么不留余地？

回到台湾的家，行囊尚未解开，就赶忙将录音带从口袋中掏出——我从不可预测的历史学得，有些东西必须贴身携带，譬如兵荒马乱中秘书的孩子，譬如一张仅存的情人的照片，譬如一卷无可复制的带着乡音的录音带。

外面黑夜覆盖着田野，我们聚在温暖的灯下。

母亲捧着杯热茶，父亲盘腿坐在录音机前，没有人说话。

极慎重地，我按下键盘。

哥哥的声音起先犹疑，一会儿之后速度开始加快。

父亲沉着脸，异常地严肃。我偷觑着——他会哭吗？父亲是个感情冲动的人。

母亲呢？为了四十年前在衡山火车站的一念之差，她一直在自责，此刻，她在回想那一幕吗？

我用眼角余光窥看着两个老人，有点儿等待又有点儿害怕那眼泪夺眶而出的一刻。

"不对不对，"一言不发的父亲突然伸手关了录音机，转脸问我，"你拿错带子了？"

"没有呀，"我觉得莫名其妙，那分明是哥哥的声音。

"一定拿错了，"父亲斩钉截铁地，而且显然觉得懊恼，"不然我怎么会听不懂？像俄国话嘛："

我张口结舌地看着他，只是看着他。

他没有泪下，他没有大哭，他不曾崩溃，他他他——少小离家老大不回，四十年浪迹他乡，他已经听不懂自己儿子的乡音。

我看着父亲霜白的两鬓，觉得眼睛一阵热——唉呀，流泪的竟然是我。

Sounds of home

Then I had big brother sit down with the recorder. "Say something for Mom and Dad!" Big brother only stared at his feet, thinking hard. I sat next to him, doing nothing. Right... what could he say? Mom, Dad, how have you been these forty years? God, why did You let that train leave without even looking back once? 

When I arrived back in Taiwan, I didn't even wait to unpack before fishing out the cassette from my pocket –– the unpredictability of history had taught me to keep certain things close to me, like a child in the midst of war and turmoil, like the treasured memories of a romance, like the sole copy of a cassette tape that contained the sounds of a long-lost home. 

Outside, the night wrapped itself around the fields. We were surrounded by the warmth of the lamp.

Mother held a hot cup of tea and Father sat cross-legged in front of the cassette player. Nobody spoke.

Carefully, I pressed the button.

Big brother's voice started out calm and composed, but after a while he began to speak faster.

Father's face was heavy and serious. I watched him discreetly –– would he cry? Father was a very emotional man.

And Mother? For that one wrong decision made in a lapse of judgement at the Hengshan train station, she had been torturing herself for forty years. Was she replaying that moment in her mind? 

I glanced at the old couple from the corner of my eye, waiting, both in expectation and fear, for the flood of tears to arrive.

"No, no!" My silent father suddenly turned off the cassette player. He turned to me and asked, "Is this the wrong tape?"

"No." I was confused. That was definitely my big brother's voice.

"It must be the wrong tape," Father concluded resolutely. He was clearly frustrated. "Otherwise, why can't I understand it? It sounds like Russian."

I stared at him. I was unable to utter a word. I only stared at him.

He didn't shed any tears, he didn't begin to cry, he didn't fall apart, he –– he –– he –– He'd left home as a youth and had grown old elsewhere. He'd spent forty years wandering around in a foreign land, and now could no longer understand his own son speaking their home dialect. 

I looked at the snow-white hair on Father's temples, and felt a gush of warmth in my eyes –– aiya. In the end, I was the one crying.

老乡

邵伯伯来打麻将，总拎着瓶酒。进门见到四个五个流着鼻涕的小孩，从裤袋里总掏得出一巴掌黏兮兮、皱巴巴的廉价糖果。他边喝酒边打牌，酒喝多了就趴在牌桌上哭，放声地哭。

邵伯伯的太太留在河北老家，没出得来。母亲赶鸡似地驱逐一堆看热闹的孩子；邵伯伯还有个女儿，走的时候才刚生呢！

有一天，邵伯伯把牌一推，头栽在桌上，人家以为他又犯了，没想到他死了。

Hometown

Whenever Uncle Shao came to play mahjong, he would always bring a bottle of alcohol. Encountering four or five snotty children upon entering our home, he would always fish around in his pockets and hand out some of those sticky, wrinkly cheap candies. He drank heavily while playing mahjong, and when he got drunk he would slump onto the table, wailing and crying.

Uncle Shao had left his wife at home in Hebei. She hadn’t been able to come to Taiwan with him. Mother would hurry to drive us curious children away: Uncle Shao had also left behind a newborn daughter!

One day, Uncle Shao pushed away his tiles and planted himself face down onto the table. Everyone thought he was going to have another episode. Then we realised he was dead.

A Patch of Sunlight by Lin Huiyin

Chelsea's blog gave me the idea to do some translation. The other day I stumbled upon a Facebook meme page for translators and it made me contemplate being a translator of prose. I think it would be very fun and interesting. I also watched this Vox video essay about the issues with translating proper nouns in Harry Potter. Anyway, all that is to say that today during my free period at school I was meant to memorise 10 vocab words from A Patch of Sunlight by Lin Huiyin, aka the really cool 1/2 of an academic power couple whose life and relationship just sound like my life goals (I mean, come on... hanging out with your cool, equally intelligent husband and all your cool, equally intelligent friends... pioneering architecture studies in China... just being smart and learning things and discussing and writing and travelling... everything just sounds so perfect and ideal and fun... what an accomplished life! That is literally everything I want to be (omG and Maya Lin is her niece? Whaaaat?? That's so cool! What a family!)), but I really liked the piece so I just decided to translate the last part of it. So I didn't have time to memorise those 10 vocab words for tonight's class. Sorry An Lao Shi. 

Thank god for Pleco!

Edit: I still aced the test for the vocab words, so nice.

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That brings me to the first patch of sunlight I ever saw. That year, I was six years old. I remember having just caught water pearls –– water pearls are usually called chicken pox, but in my hometown dialect the term was water pearls. Back then I was enchanted by the beautiful name and forgot that it described an illness, feeling instead a mysterious pride. Whenever someone passed by my window and asked me if I had "water pearls", I would feel a kind of glory. That feeling is still imprinted onto my mind today. And because of this, I still remember my luxuriously content mood during the course of the disease. Even though it was no different from all the other times I'd been sick, that time I was quarantined inside a room to wait it out. That was the room farthest from the gate in our old compound; the courtyard was surrounded by whitewashed walls, with a row of three rooms on the north side. The middle room was an open hall. When I was sick I was in my mother's room, on the east side. The west side belonged to my aunt. My mother and my aunt were always doing women's duties with my grandmother in her courtyard, which was closer to the gate, so I was often the only master of those three adjoined rooms.

The experience of staying in those three rooms while sick was unbearable. Time passed extraordinarily slowly, especially during times when I was not sleepy. At first, I would exercise my sense of hearing on various sounds that seemed to be footsteps, yet also didn't. I would try to decipher the sounds' origin, then wait, hoping that someone would appear. Occasionally, I'd press my ear to the wall and listen to trivial sounds, the kind that arose from beneath the foundations of the wall and then vanished. After a while, I became impatient –– I don't remember why. I tiptoed towards the door, pressing down onto the wooden bed so as to make no noise. The door to the hall was slightly ajar, and I leaned against the doorframe, gazing at the outside world with curiosity.

It was approximately two o'clock in the afternoon. A large table that had just been cleared of the previous meal's plates was standing solemnly in the hall. A patch of sunlight had made its way onto the ground underneath the table, where it lay poured out and dispersed on the floor. The silent patch of glittering gold was shrouded in an environment of absolute quiet. For some reason, the sight provoked an abnormal oscillation in my six-year-old self's heart.

There was no extravagantly beautiful and artistic décor –– only a mundane old-fashioned dining table. If I remember correctly, not long ago the table had hosted an ordinary dinner that had consisted of dishes such as salted fish and pickled vegetables. But the child's heart had been stopped. Perhaps two eyes opened wide, looking about, as though looking for the answer to a question. Why was the beauty of that patch of sunlight so touching? I remember that I climbed onto the table text to the window and, intentionally or otherwise, I looked outside. In the courtyard, that same patch of golden color and warmth was scattered onto the whitewashed walls in a wholly different manner. At the same time, I opened an antique lady's mirror that lay near me, and shook the little row of drawers and the small copper weight carved in the shape of a basket of flowers. I could hear the fresh song of birds as they hopped from branch to branch with joy. Inside, I still held a vague wondrous uncertainty about that patch of sunlight.

Another dream

I had a dream about one story, but from three different perspectives. In the first perspective I was myself. My family and some other people had rented a villa somewhere. Then one of the friends was actually a wuxia. He flew to the heavens with his wife and together they stormed the palace of the heavens. They wanted to kill these two men who had assaulted his sister many years ago. I ran outside and it was nighttime. Then I saw them return, but they didn't want to talk about it. The second perspective was the morning of that day. My brother was in the bathroom watching A Series of Unfortunate Events and they were planning the attack wearing ancient Chinese battle gear. In the third perspective I was the man. At the door of the palace of the heavens the emperor and his wife drew their swords and forbade me from entering, so I basically cut down everyone in the entire palace just to kill those two people. Then I was arrested and my friends were like "What have you done?" and I remember going down stairs with my hands on the banister (it was made of a really thick rope) grinning and saying it was worth it. So that was really violent and weird. At first I was actually killing people but then I got tired so I was kind of just touching people's shoulders with the sword and they'd fall to the ground, injured. Also the wuxia couple could fly because they would turn into bats. But you could catch them with this magic scroll. If you threw the scroll into the air and it managed to hit them, the bat would turn into a painting on the scroll. But it had to be exactly right. In the first perspective after they flew back down at night I threw the scroll at one of them and actually caught them and remember feeling pretty happy about aiming well. Also the man looked like William Chan. So I guess it was because I saw this picture on Instagram about an hour before going to bed. But that was really scary and disturbing. Some of my dreams are really weird. The nice ones just get forgotten. The night before that dream I actually had a nice dream. I went to UCL, and as I was moving into my dorm all the seniors who'd graduated were pissed that they had to leave. (One of them was Iris?) But finally they left but left behind a piece of paper with an assignment. As my other roommates (including Gabe) arrived we all had to do the assignment. But it was fun -- I remember having fun in the dream. I don't remember the details of that, but I vividly remember really awful dreams.