
How Yan Lianke Became China's Most Controversial Satirist - jseliger
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/yan-liankes-forbidden-satires-of-china
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dang
All: if you post in this thread, please avoid two scourges: (1) comments on
the evils of communism or the opposite—we've all heard it a million times and
nothing new on it will ever come out of an internet forum. (2) any trace of
nationalistic flamebait from any side.

I'm putting up this banner because every thread related to China has been
degenerating badly lately. The idea of HN is to avoid such "night in which all
cows are black" threads, so please stick to specifics.

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greatquux
I'm intrigued by that phrase you just mentioned. Never heard it before...
"Night in which all cows are black"?

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dang
It's a phrase of Hegel's that comes from his criticism of romantic idealism.

[https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/hegel-s-preface-to-the-
phenomenolog...](https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/hegel-s-preface-to-the-
phenomenology-of-spirit/)

~~~
brownbat
Possibly a critique of deriving truth from intuition, which leaves no way to
critically distinguish between two conflicting ideas, much as you can't
distinguish between cows by color at night.

Hegel wasn't exactly from the Strunk & White branch of philosophical writing
though, so I could easily be wrong. :)

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dang
Based on refreshing my memory by a couple of cheap web searches, I think
that's at least in the ballpark.

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brownbat
Yan Lianke's "Serve The People!" contained vivid sex scenes, with characters
aroused by destroying images and writings of Mao and set during the Cultural
revolution, when the punishment would be death by firing squad. The Party
responded to the 2005 controversy by halting a magazine's publication of the
work. This in turn led to enormous demand for the novel, naturally.

Wikipedia (yes, guilty), citing July 2007's "A pen for the people" in "The
Age."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Lianke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Lianke)

See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

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rjtobin
I’m always hesitant to read a translated novel (especially literary fiction).
Seems like too much would be lost in translation. Even putting language aside,
without knowing the cultural context within China, would Lianke’s books be
totally lost on me?

I’m guessing my view here is naive (and, in terms of the cultural context, a
sort of self-fulfilling project). Any HNers care to educate me on this?

~~~
yorwba
Translated books live and die with the ability of the translator. A bad
translator can make a bad book boring, a good translator can turn a mediocre
book into a page-turner.

Whether the translator did well or not can only be seen by trying to actually
read the book.

I read the first few pages of "Serve the people!" on Amazon and found it to be
quite well-written, with appropriate explanations for cultural context where
necessary. Then I read the same part in a pirated Chinese version [1] and
found it to be even better.

The most difficult part of a translation is to preserve not only the content
but also the form. Yan Lianke makes some stylistic choices like reusing
sentence structures with only a few words swapped out, that would sound
incredibly forced if you tried it in English, but flows naturally in Chinese.
In these cases, the translator can only leave it at an approximation.

Some metaphors are also difficult to convey. In the original, Yan Lianke
compares history to a measuring rope, whereas in the translation it turns into
a yardstick. Maybe there's some intentional subtlety that gets lost (the rope
is flexible, the yardstick is rigid).

Then there are simple translation errors that slipped through quality control,
e.g. 一颗发光的五星 (one shining five-pointed star) is translated as five gleaming
stars.

But if you're not explicitly trying to compare between versions, you're
probably not even going to notice that there's anything off. Rather than
wondering whether the translation is inferior to the original, try finding out
whether you can enjoy it nonetheless.

Disclaimer: I'm a native speaker of neither English nor Chinese, so I might
not be the best person to judge what quality literature in either language
looks like.

[1]
[https://www.bannedbook.org/resources/file/600](https://www.bannedbook.org/resources/file/600)

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sevensor
I was intrigued by the descriptions of Chinese rural poverty. Eating bark and
clay during famine times, fertilizing the garden with night soil, eating meat
once a year. When I read _The Good Earth_ , I thought it was a picture of
China painted for Westerners. Which perhaps the article is as well, but it's
interesting that the pictures are so much the same.

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plink
Audible has only two of his works: "Lenin's Kisses", and "The Four Books".
Does anyone have recommendations on other audiobook sources for his works?

