I think as early as when I was in my secondary school years, I already had this vague feeling that I would like to become a writer. But at that time, it was not very clear what it is to be a writer, and so actually I did not write any truly literary works at that time, just some essays, you know, the schoolboy stuff.
It was when I was studying at the university. At first, I studied Chinese Literature. But then in my second year, I tried to sit in in courses of Comparative Literature and English Literature and I was greatly attracted by those works and by the way that the professors talked about these Western literary works. And so I changed my path and I, in the end, majored in English Literature and Comparative Literature.
I think it was when I got in touch with works like Kafka’s, or Marcel Proust’s literary works, which are so different from the traditional Chinese literary works that I had read before, that I had that kind of shock, that “Oh, we can actually write like that!”. Of course, I don’t mean that Chinese literature is inferior to Western literature. It was just that, by that time Chinese literature was something that I was quite used to, and so I didn’t really have this very strong feeling of how special it is. So when I got in touch with something very different – I cannot say it’s better, but just very different from what I used to read in the past – I got this stimulation and I gradually had this idea that “Well, maybe I can also try to do something like that”. It was after I graduated, and after I started my postgraduate studies that I tried my hand in writing some short stories.
My home is Hong Kong, of course. I was born here. I grew up here. I am still living here, and I have no plans of leaving this place in the near future. So my home is very obviously Hong Kong. But if we’re talking about cultural identity, I think it is more complicated.
First of all, I would see myself as a [person] from Hong Kong, as a Hong Konger.
At the same time, I’m also Chinese in cultural terms, because I was very interested and influenced by Chinese literature. I started having the aspiration for becoming a writer when I read Chinese literary works. And so the Chinese cultural heritage is also an essential part of my present and of my career as a writer. So that is also part of my identity.
I would like to add that, maybe, Western culture is also part of my cultural identity because since I started studying European literature, and started reading European philosophy, I think a large part of my mentality and way of thinking and looking at things, are also having this background of this Western cultural identity.
Yes, I consider myself a Hong Kong writer. That is how I would introduce myself to other people. And my works are obviously part of the heritage of Hong Kong literature. That is very obvious. It is unmistakable.
To characterise Hong Kong literature is a very complicated thing. Different people have different things to say. There have been people saying that “Hong Kong literature is a minor literature”, “it’s a literature on the margins”, “it’s a unique literature”, many things. Well, I think I would add something different. For me, Hong Kong literature is world literature in a local form.
I discovered that when I was teaching a course on Hong Kong literature. It’s called “Appreciation of Hong Kong Literature” at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. It was a general education course which is for students who are not majoring in Chinese. It’s something very elementary. It’s an introduction to some of the most important works in Hong Kong literature. While I was teaching that, I discovered that I was, at the same time, introducing to the students, trends in world literature. So we find, in Hong Kong literature, realism, modernism, post-modernism and magic realism—many of the things that we find in world literature from the 19th century onwards. So I have this strong feeling that, well, I am not just teaching them Hong Kong literature, I am teaching them world literature as well. And so I realise that Hong Kong literature has this characteristic of being part of the world literature tradition.
First of all, it’s Xi Xi. She influenced me a lot. Her works—I would, if I am to use a word to describe my feeling of her work, I would say she’s a very innovative writer. She explores on different literary forms, different ways of expressions, and different ways of writing fiction, essays and poetry. So I would say she is the most innovative writer in Hong Kong literature.
The second one I admire, is P. K. Leung, Leung Ping-kwan. He is a very important poet, and novelist, as well as a scholar on Hong Kong culture and Hong Kong literature. I would describe him as very intellectual and reflective. By reading his works, I have many ideas and stimulations on thinking about, and reflecting on Hong Kong’s cultural identity and Hong Kong’s historical identity, etc. So he is, for me, at least, an intellectual writer.
The third one whom I admire, I would say Wong Bik-wan. She is very different from Xi Xi and P. K. Leung. I would describe her as a very intense writer with a very strong passion. Although her style is very different from mine, and I am not directly influenced by her in this aspect, I admire her work because she is so different from me. She has something that I do not have. I am much closer to P. K. Leung and Xi Xi. I also want to explore on literary forms, and I am very often described as a very intellectual writer. I am very different from Wong Bik-wan, but she is great. I feel the intensity and passion that we seldom see in Hong Kong literature. Hong Kong literature, as a whole, seems to be calmer. It does not have much passion, very expressive passion and Wong Bik-wan has this very special characteristic.
Yes, it is true for some of my works written in a certain period starting from Tin Gung Hoi Mat 《天工開物》 (The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera), the natural history trilogy. The subject matter was about local city life, about those older living environment and people trying to protect and preserve those ways of living. In those works, of course, my childhood experience of growing up in Sham Shui Po is very important and essential when I was writing those books, because that was what we regard as a local way of life. But that, first of all, that way of life, or that kind of living environment is becoming something of the past. I think in the recent ten or twenty years, many of those old buildings were being pulled down. In new residential areas, we do not have that kind of very close neighbourhood, you know, relationships with our neighbours. It is becoming something of the past. Maybe in my more recent works, this experience is not that important.
It is difficult to talk about this very comprehensively, because very obviously I grew up here, and I feel very strongly to be a Hong Konger. So of course, Hong Kong, this city, is always at the back – or not just at the back – is always a constituting factor in the way I write. Maybe I’d just focus on series of works that I wrote in the late nineties. Hong Kong as a city, for me, actually for many people as well, is a place which is very crowded, and the tempo, the pace is very quick and fast. Things keep changing very quickly. Sometimes we feel a little alienated by that kind of modern city experience. Many things look like fragmented.
I wrote the series starting from Atlas published in 1997, a series called the V City Series, in which there are four books, Atlas, Catalogue, Visible Cities and Natural Recollections. All of these books are written in a special form in that they all contain very short pieces, but they are combined, or arranged in a way that they form a work thematically. For me, this combination of very short units, is a way of reflecting the very varied, and the kind of juxtaposition of different aspects or faces or facets of life in Hong Kong. When we look at the Catalogue, it looks like we are looking at big buildings in which there are many windows, and there are characters and people living in different units or flats, and they are having their stories. But we cannot see the whole of the story. We can only see part of the stories because we are peeping through windows. Sometimes we see some episodes of something happening there, but we cannot see the big picture, the whole picture, the complete picture.
For me, it is like a metaphor of the city as a whole. At that time, in the late nineties, I chose to write in this way, and indirectly, or actually directly, it also has practical concerns, because at that time I felt that to be a writer, a full-time writer in Hong Kong, is something which is nearly impossible. I need to do all kinds of things, like teaching part-time, and writing other essays. So the time I could spend on writing was also cut up into small pieces. I think this is a very flexible way of dealing with my writing projects, that is I can manage to finish a short piece in a shorter time. At the same time, because of some central creative idea or concept, I can put all these pieces together and form a whole. It’s not like the ordinary practice of many writers who write short stories, that all these short stories are independent of each other, and then they are just collected and put into a book because there are already enough works to form the book. I had this creative concept for each of these books in the V City Series, but they are made up of short pieces. I think it is also influenced by the practical side of being a writer in Hong Kong.
The language experience in Hong Kong is quite unique in that we speak Cantonese, but we learn to write in modern Chinese. So there is a gap between what we speak and what we think and what we write. For some people, or for many people, it is something that is a kind of obstacle. They think that we need to translate what we think into what we write.
As for me, maybe because I am very fond of reading, and I do not have much difficulty. I do not even have this feeling that I need to translate anything. But that doesn’t mean that it comes very naturally. I think it’s still kind of something so called “unnatural” when I start writing, that the written language is something which is a little artificial for me. I think this artificiality is good for me as a writer because for me, I do not have this idea of what the original language is, or the standard language that I need to adhere to. For me, everything – colloquial usages, written language, or different linguistic forms – all these are things that I can manipulate when I write.
Instead of being hampered by this discrepancy between our speech and our writing, I think it’s an advantage for us Hong Kong writers that we would not automatically fall into some received patterns of expressions. When we write, we need to think about it, and we need to consciously try to choose and manipulate the language that we intend to use in a certain literary work. It is actually an advantage for me. It makes me more aware of the literariness of the language that I am using. While I write, I can shift between different registers of language. In some works, I may use more colloquial expressions or more Cantonese. In another work, I may write more like a Chinese written form. Even I can incorporate some elements of older Chinese language, or elements of Europeanised or Westernised Chinese. I think it is also part of the reserve, linguistic reserve that we can use when we write.
Authenticity is very difficult to define. First of all, I will try to approach it in a negative way, in something that it is not like alienation. Maybe the opposite of authenticity is alienation. While I write, I would try to be aware and avoid alienation – alienation by material concerns, by ideologies, or by political, social ideologies – anything that gets between me and the subject matter that I am dealing with, that could possibly alienate me from the object. I am pretty aware of that. In order to do that, or in order to go from this passive or negative definition of authenticity to a more active one, I think the only way that we can do is by constant self-questioning and self-reflecting.
I cannot claim that at any moment, or in any work, I can finally achieve or arrive at that kind of authenticity that I claim that I aspire to, but at least I can feel this getting near, this approaching of that ideal by constantly reflecting and asking myself questions. In so doing, hopefully at some moments, I can truly achieve that. As to what is the motivation behind me having this ideal, I am not sure. Maybe it is because of the Chinese character zan真, authenticity, the original I used in Chinese is 真. I am always fascinated by this word 真. It is a very fundamental and is an embracing term which in English includes being real, true, authentic, many things. It is a deep word for me, and I like this word very much.
Actually, I seldom translate my own work. Maybe just parts of my Altas, mainly in Atlas. I translated a few pieces myself. When I did that, it was just a preliminary draft for revision by my translators. Although nominally I was included in the translators of that book, I did not regard myself as actually translating my own work.
Actually I am quite reluctant on doing that because I think my English is not good enough for that. My English is a very bookish English. I acquire that mainly through reading and very often not reading contemporary works. It is not a very everyday life English. I am afraid that – of course if I am to do it, I can do it reasonably well, maybe, but – I am not very confident, sometimes not very sure about the very small differences between the use of words, the choice of words. There is always this kind of nuances that, for a non-native speaker, you cannot get the feeling just by looking up the dictionary. I think it’s not a good idea for me to translate my own work.
I think for some cases, there are very little communication between the translator and me as the author. There is very little to say on this kind of relationship. But for me, the experience of working with Bonnie McDougall and Anders Hansson is very fruitful, because we have a much closer relationship while we were working together. Actually I would say that we are really collaborating.
They have translated my Atlas, and later they started on Catalogue, some pieces of which were published in the book Cantonese Love Stories. Actually we have finished the whole book, 99 stories, and we are approaching publishers and trying to get it done. I have the experience of working with them on two books. Every time we have lots of queries and answering and discussions. I feel that we are truly working together and they are trying to understand me and understand my work, and I try to explain to them. In some very rare cases, maybe they also made suggestions to me, that I was not aware of when I wrote the books. I even changed some of the details in Atlas, in the Chinese version when there was a new edition, new Chinese edition. I actually made some amendments according to my translators’ comments or suggestions.
There is one example. In Atlas, in one of the pieces there, I mentioned a ship, a Spanish ship. I read that from some material... When I first wrote that, I read that from some material and I wrote the Chinese name, the Chinese translation of the name of the Spanish ship. But then when my translators were to translate that, they couldn’t figure out the original Spanish name just from the Chinese words, and I did not know. They suggested another name. They said, "Why not call it 'Esperanza?'". I think that means hope, and I think, "Oh, well, it's a good idea". So in the English translation it's called Esperanza, and in my renewed Chinese edition, I translated "Esperanza" into Chinese. So I actually changed some of the things in the Chinese text. I think that's a very fruitful experience. It is like recreating the work again, not just improving on some careless mistakes that I made in the original version, but maybe to improve on it, in having some better suggestions on how to express some certain points.
I guess maybe it’s because the form and the subject matter of Atlas lends itself more readily to the reading habits or interpretations of Western readers or Western critics, because Atlas actually looks more like a Western literary work than a Chinese one. At that time, when I wrote this book, I had in mind writers like Calvino, Borges, and these choices are easily recognisable by a Western reader or critic, and so they feel that it’s easier for them to get hold of what the book is about.
On the other hand, I think it's because Atlas is closely related to the Handover in 1997, because it was first published in that year. It was obviously a response to this historical event. So it will easily gain more attention in the West, more than other works which do not have such an obvious creative concept.
The only thing unusual about my background is that as a child I had considerably more exposure to classical Chinese literature than was the norm in HK – it was a matter of family background. That accounts for the fact that I was the only person to have initiated translations of classical Chinese poetry written in twentieth-century HK.
For the rest, including why I studied translation at HKU, I suggest you read my book 《不帶感傷的回憶》 (HK: OUP, 2017), particularly the chapters on 王兆傑 (S. K. Wong), 宋祺 (Stephen Soong), and 高克毅 (George Kao).
You also will find the following chapters useful in relation to some of the questions below: 也斯 (P.K. Leung), 張佩瑤 (Martha Cheung).
Hong Kong had always been unjustly called a 'cultural desert', despite the fact that between 1950 and 1986 this was the only Chinese society in the world where a full range of works by modern Chinese writers was widely available. For more than 3 decades, Taiwan banned the works of writers who stayed in the Mainland after 1949, and Beijing banned the works of writers who moved to Taiwan after 1949. HK was the only place where all their works were reprinted and sold.
It was true, however, that one could not live on the proceeds of 'high brow' literature in HK. Many writers undertook part-time work as columnists, or had their fiction serialized, to cope with the commercial nature of newspapers and magazines. Such arrangements did not necessarily generate uniformly good work, but there was no denying the quality of the best works among them. That is why showcasing a selection of quality pieces is particularly relevant in the case of HK.
Literature does not function in a vacuum. Despite the claim of some literary theorists, an understanding of the social, cultural and even personal backgrounds of writers/ groups of writers does contribute to our appreciation of their work. It is therefore always useful to provide contextual and background information.
HK is unusual in that local writers who were born here, or who grew up here, all had extensive direct exposure to foreign literatures. At the same time, they also had unparalleled exposure to works of modern Chinese literature (see answer to Question 2). All this fed into the local cultural environment, which is different from those in other Chinese communities.
All literatures, like all cultures, are always 'in the making', and all editors realize this. Besides, they also realize that their selection is influenced both by personal taste and by the cultural or social milieu around them. I would suggest that a good editor always assumes that other anthologies would come along, and that their own work is just a part of a bigger picture—one that keeps growing.
Naturally, translators play an essential part in making the works available in English. In some cases they are also the translation initiator, which means they play a vital part. However, many of the HK works in Renditions publications were selected by the editors and matched with suitable translators. In such cases, the editors, as translation initiators, had the vital role.
Since I was the editor, my perspective was substantially different from other translators'. I often ended up translating pieces which I considered essential for a selection, but which no one else could/would do. From a purely translation perspective, I am always attracted to works / authors whose 'voice' I feel comfortable with.
The editor is the brain behind the project—the only one who envisages what it would/should look like from the beginning. She is also the gatekeeper, the one who sets the standard for all the translations, and where necessary, the one who helps translators achieve that standard. At least, that was the Renditions way.
The primary difference between a translator and an editor is probably this: the translator is free to make independent choices in the process of translation, and then to justify such choices when interrogated; the editor must first identify the reasons for the translator’s choices, and then make queries and suggestions which take into account the translator's reasoning. If the problems are purely stylistic, then the editorial suggestions need to be stylistically in line with the translation's overall effect.
I could be said to have been part of that literary community, because I was also a writer, though never a prolific one. However, I hardly ever joined in the social side of things. Authors who have worked with me seemed to value the fact that I didn’t get in touch unless it was really necessary. With translators it was a bit different, especially in cases where significant changes needed to be made to their work.
Renditions is primarily an academic journal, and in my time the main subscribers were U.S. and European universities and academics. Renditions paperbacks as well as some special issues were often used in their course work. At that time there was also a select list of subscribers among expats living in HK who wanted to learn about Chinese culture through literary translations.
My predecessor Stephen Soong, literary critic par excellence, should be credited with putting HK literature on the map. It was through his efforts that Xi Xi’s short stories were translated and published in Renditions. This work started before I joined RCT in 1986. Stephen's contribution is concrete demonstration that often it is the editors, rather than individual translators, who achieved major breakthroughs.
When I took over in late 1986, half of the items that eventually went into Nos. 29 and 30 had already been commissioned for translation. My part was just to fill in some gaps and weave the material together.
Obviously 1997 was a landmark year in HK’s history. No one who lived in Hong Kong between 1989 and 1997 could be oblivious of the turmoil and strife in society, as well as the difficult personal and family choices that had to be made by individual citizens. It wasn’t just a matter of politics; HK was also facing economic problems. Nos. 47 and 48 were conceived during this period and designed to reflect it. Basically, everything I read daily in newspaper columns and literary journals, as well as individual literary books, contributed to its conception.
A number of the young poets were colleagues at CUHK, while some were the university’s graduates. Together, they and their friends launched new poetry journals and projects. There was a sense of renaissance of HK poetry that was exciting for an editor.
Special sections in Renditions do not necessarily have a link to other items in the same issue. Where possible, I tried to showcase the vastness of the field of Chinese literature. Some mainland writers have expressed a sense of pleasant surprise when they see their own works juxtaposed against say, the poetry of the Tang dynasty.
Many of the essays chosen eventually made it into To Pierce the Material Screen. I had a special interest in short essays published locally, having penned a column myself in the literary section of Sing Tao Daily for 15 years. This was a genre special to HK. It was unrivalled both in the number of local writers engaged in its pursuit, and in the scope it covered. As a mirror of what was happening in society, it was second to none.
Please also see the answer to Question 13.
To Pierce the Material Screen was my farewell project at Renditions. It was some eight to nine years in the making—I had planned my early retirement very early. I am rather sad that it is still considered 'the most comprehensive anthology', as I had hoped that other anthologies would appear in its wake.
The biggest challenge is always to draw a line and say to oneself: ‘Stop’. But I did have a self-imposed deadline, and that helped. The greatest difficulty I had was in fact the lack of time—I was conducting research into 2,000 years of Chinese translation history while To Pierce the Material Screen was in preparation. I am forever grateful to my colleague Alena Chow, who took over the task of contacting all authors (or their literary executors) included in this anthology.
The decision to deviate from a genre-based listing of contents on Vol. 2 was not easy, as I knew it would ruffle some feathers. The point in juxtaposing different genres was to highlight their common themes.
I have many happy memories, particularly of the congenial teamwork at the Research Centre for Translation, CUHK.
Well, I suppose translation has always been my interest in one way or another. When I was in secondary school, I actually was a science student, so I studied Physics, Computing and all sorts of things like that. I always knew that my first interest, my main choice would be something to do with languages. In my final year of secondary school, I was in the English Debating Society and I was helping my classmates to translate all the Chinese materials that they found into English. So I knew that I could do the job, and I thought I wanted to do more about it, so when I was choosing what I wanted to study in the university, translation was my first choice.
My first translation, I think, was Tang Juan’s 唐捐 Wo xiang yao dang wo bu neng 我想要但我不能 [I want to but I cannot]. It’s a short poem by the new Taiwan poet. It was one of the first projects that I handled for Renditions at that time. Eva, that is Eva Hung, the editor of Renditions at that time, prepared a pile of poems that she wanted to get translated into English. I’d just picked this one because this one looks manageable, at least, and it sounded right to me basically. So that was actually the very first poem I translated and published.
Translation, as I was saying, translation has always been an important part of me. With this very first poem that I translated, I think both Eva and I agree that we can do more of this sort, and I had the aptness to handle it, and I myself found it a fascinating process. That’s how it goes from that basically.
I would say my home is Hong Kong. There’s no question about it. I was born and bred here. I haven’t really lived for a long period of time anywhere else. So I would say my identity is very much what a Hong Kong person was thought of in the 1970s and 1980s.
My cultural background, I would say, is very much cultural hybrid, if not linguistic, because I find myself more comfortable writing in English than in Chinese, even though I studied translation. I was fairly comfortable translating from Chinese into English, I would say more so than translating from English into Chinese. When I have to write something on my own, I probably more comfortably write those things in English as well. So that’s what it’s like for me.
For me, Hong Kong literature is also very interesting, fascinating, hybrid of some of everything. I think that’s what makes Hong Kong itself interesting. It has a long tradition of Chinese writings from writers especially those Nanlai zuojia (南來作家, southbound writers), those mainland writers who came to Hong Kong in the sixties, seventies, who helped build the scene in Hong Kong, literary scene in Hong Kong. We have people who were educated overseas, came back and wrote in Chinese, and of course there is always an influence of Taiwan writers as well. Many of the Hong Kong writers, actually, first published their work in Taiwan. So there is some of everything and a great variety of different sort of writers and writings which make things most interesting.
I would say my first choice would be Xi Xi, Sai Sai.When I first read her work, I didn’t like it. It was an essay that I had to read in secondary school, so itwas a textbook passage. But after I actually got to know her work more, I found it absolutely amazing with the variety of things she has written and has kept on writing all these years. She always strikes me as someone with a very active imagination. Yet, the message or even the story itself is still very much grounded in everyday life, very much relevant to everyone. So that’s Sai Sai.
The second, I think, maybe somewhat not an obvious choice for others, but I would say it’s Luqishi 綠騎士 (Chan Chung-hing). I translated one of her short stories into English for Renditions. It was one of my first lengthy translations, I would say. I got to read everything she’s written, everything she’s published over the years. She actually came from Hong Kong and migrated to France for many years and has lived her life there now. I find her work very much… It has a very strong local Hong Kong flavour, even when she’s been living overseas for so many years. And yet there are also stories not based in Hong Kong, but based in different parts of the world, based in, maybe, France, or somewhere in Europe. So there’s again a great variety of things in her short stories and essays. I love all of them.
And the third one, I suppose, might be Gu Cangwu古蒼悟 (Gu Zhaoshen). He is a poet, a Hong Kong poet and essay writer. I also translated a couple of his essays and short poems into English some years ago, and I got to know the guy. I know him when I was in HKU studying my master’s degree. He was doing his PhD there, so we got in touch with each other. I was his assistant along with another supervisor of mine, and we were working on the kunqu project, the Kun Opera project and we translated some of the literary works, or theoretical works on kunqu singing. One of his works that I particularly liked was a very small volume called Zufu de dazhai 祖父的大宅 [Grandpa’s Mansion]. It consists of a whole bunch of very short essays or anecdotes with his memories of his hometown, his old family and relatives and so on, and how his life was in southern China, how he grew up there in the 40s and 50s. That’s three I can think of offhand, I would say.
Renditions was founded by George Kao and Stephen Soong in 1973, I think. I actually did some research about George Kao many years ago, so I came to know him before I actually worked for Renditions. According to him, it was a pet project he had in mind when he was visiting Hong Kong as a visiting scholar or visiting fellow for the Chinese University in the early 1970s. This magazine specialises in translations of Chinese literature into English from all historical periods, with all genres and everything. I think it is one of the unique presence at that time in the literary translation scene. Even though there are other journals that also focused on translations from Chinese into English, I think Renditions was the only one that handled the whole historical period from Shijing (Classic of Poetry) up to the very present, and regardless of where the work originated from. As long as it’s written in Chinese, it’s a piece of literature and it’s translated from Chinese into English, it’s within the scope of Renditions.
As I was saying, when I was studying for my masters, my thesis was on George Kao actually, not on his translations from Chinese into English or not on Renditions itself, but on his translations of American literature from English into Chinese. Of course, my research touched upon all of his career and I got to know Renditions itself fairly well, and about how it came into being. I had travelled to the States to interview him. We talked about all sorts of things related or unrelated to Renditions. And my supervisor at the time was Diana Yue (余丹). She was actually the very first managing editor for Renditions. So I think it is only natural that I grew so very interested in this magazine itself. When I see a job notice for research assistant and assistant editor of Renditions that came up when I was actually looking for a job after my master’s degree, I basically jumped, and luckily I got the job.
It really depends, because we also relied very much on unsolicited manuscripts that arrived on its own. But if we are thinking of a particular theme that we want to work on, sometimes we also commission translations. The criteria is always that, it has to be a piece of good literature in Chinese regardless of who writes this and when, but it has to be a piece of good literature in Chinese and it can be translated into English.
When we are picking on different English translations that we received, the main criteria again is that it has to work as a piece of literature in English. The translation has to read well, but also at the same time, faithful to the Chinese text. I think we are one of the very few literary journals that actually edits in a fairly detailed way. When we are editing the work, we actually ask our contributors to supply us with the original Chinese text as well. In addition to general English literary editing that any literary journal might also be doing, we would check it against the Chinese original text to make sure that it’s a good representation of the Chinese work.
I probably can’t think of anything that I’m particularly proud of, really. But there is a work, maybe, that I have, I found it particularly interesting. It’s one of my very first translations, a lengthy translation, a short story as I was…, as I mentioned before, a short story by Chan Chung-hing 陳重馨 (綠騎士). It was a short story about the migration issue in Hong Kong in the eighties and nineties. The main protagonist of the story is an old granny whose sons and daughters were all spread all over the world. They have migrated to every part, almost, every part of the world. When she had to visit her sons and daughters, she had to travel by plane, as the title of the story was Kongzhong yapo《空中亞婆》. I translated that as “Air Granny”.
Within the story, there is one pun that appears throughout the whole story. In print, it’s like “哎,被他氣死咯”. That is “ABC” – it appeared in the Chinese text like that – “A,B他氣C咯”. So it’s not easy to translate that into English and I think I did what I can. Basically, that’s the first thing that I considered whether I can handle this before I decided to translate the story. I came up with the solution – it’s not the 100% ideal solution, but I think I sort of made it work and it’s also one of the very first translation hurdles that I thought I managed to overcome. So this is kind of… if I had to pick a proud moment, maybe that’s the first taste of it, I would say. That’s – always as I’ve said – that’s what makes translation fascinating.
I would say, it’s like translating anything, there are always things that may not be readily translatable. With Hong Kong literature, even though we are very much influenced by western way of life, there are still things that are pretty Chinese, or really grounded in Chinese tradition that are not readily translatable in English. That’s one of the things that, always, it’s one of the things that a translator will have to overcome in one way or another – cultural issues and cultural differences, and how to handle it. I think with this whole variety of Hong Kong culture… there are aspects of different words. There are always things that are not easy to handle or translate. It’s not just the linguistic aspect, how to present it in English language, but whether the cultural impact behind it can also be conveyed to the English readers.
As I was saying, one of the criteria for Renditions to decide whether a work is accepted for publication is that the piece of translation itself has to work as a piece of literature in English. It has to be translated in idiomatic English language, no question about that. And then the issues behind it, the stories behind it, have to be conveyed in one way or another, to an English reader, to make sense to an English reader. That’s what we always will focus on when we are editing the work.
I would say that the translator is in a way… I wouldn’t say a translator is a conduit that’s invisible. That simply is not right, but I would say that the translator is trying to convey what he or she understands of the author’s intention to make sense to the target reader of the translation. So the [translator] plays an essential role in the translation process itself. He or she has to understand clearly what the author is trying to say, or has a valid interpretation of what the author is trying to say, and then to convey it in idiomatic English for an English readership who may not necessarily have knowledge in the finer points of the Chinese culture in them. So to make sense and understandable to them is another piece of the puzzle that we have to solve.
It depends on whether the writer is alive and reachable. It’s usually not us, as editors – I mean at Renditions – who contact the writers ourselves unless we are looking for the copyright permission. But as a translator, I usually try to reach out to the author if possible, and I did in some cases. In one of my latest translations Ng Yuk-ying’s 吳煦斌 short story Niu 《牛》[Cow], I actually got to her quite a few times because actually I am not just translating that particular story, I’m also responsible for getting the whole story collection translated. I farmed out the stories to other translators, and I was the editor of that volume that came out in English.
I actually met up with the author quite a few times. The first time was with other translators who were available in Hong Kong. We sat down in a coffee shop and we discussed different things about the work or different stories, different things that other translators have problems with, or want her opinion about. Afterwards, I also met up with her again alone a few times. We discussed different issues of stories and since she reads English with no problem – she has lived in the States, or in Vancouver. She studied in the States, at least for a few years, and she has no problem reading English, so she actually read the first proof that I translated and got layout. She also gave me feedback, so that’s one of the works I actually worked closest with the author.
With other things, I may not, with other stories, I might still contact the author in some way, telling him or her that I am translating it and so on, but I might not discuss every single thing that I came across. There might not be such in-depth exchange.
To Pierce the Material Screen is Eva’s last pet project before she left Renditions. This is one of the things that she had her mind on for many years. She wanted to have an anthology of Hong Kong writings translated into English, so what I did was to help her identify works that can be included in the volume. There are works that she had a strong opinion about and she wanted to absolutely include – no problem. There might be a few authors that she thought should have a presence in the book but she had not decided on which of his or her works to get included. So I either helped her dig out the works of that particular author and make recommendations, or maybe she had one or two works in mind from that particular author and she wanted my opinion about: A, whether that’s worthwhile, or B, if it’s two or three stories, two or three essays, which one I would pick if I had to. So that’s basically my role in the selection of the pieces to translate.
Obviously, as assistant editor [of the anthology], as well as assistant editor of Renditions at that time, I had to go through all the proofs, different stages of the editor manuscript, the proofs, and I had to contact the contributors if they are not translated in-house – I mean most of them are translated by, I farmed out to other translators, commissioned to them. So I got in touch with – sometimes it was me, sometimes it was Eva who had to get in touch with these translators and follow up with different stages of the editor manuscript and the proof. Since Eva was living, most of the time, in the UK in the last stage of the preparation of this book, I basically was the one who helped coordinate things in Hong Kong. Of course, I kept in regular, frequent contact with her by email. Sometimes when she came home, we talked in detail and so on.
I would say yes, especially for Renditions. My first experience as editor was at Renditions and I basically got full time on the job training under Eva. With Renditions, obviously translation is key to it, and what’s interesting as an editor of Renditions is that whenever there are problems in the translator’s work, usually it’s something that’s extremely difficult to translate, or something that is a problem in translation in one way or another. But as an editor, you have no way to just look the other way. You know the problem exists and you have to come up with suggestions to the [contributors], and explain to the contributors why we think his or her original translation might not work. So you have to justify the changes that you make.
First, you have to come up with a valid alternative and you have to convince the [contributor] that your suggestions actually work better than his or her original attempt, and to justify the reason for the changes and for the suggested changes and so on. So it gets you to really think about the translation process and what you want to achieve in translation and why, what is important in that particular piece of work and what is particularly important in the translation process that you want to do what the text to preserve even though you might have to sacrifice other elements because it’s not a 100% translation. It doesn’t always happen. The work is not perfect and the translation is not perfect either, but you have to make a choice and you have to justify why. You get to think about all these issues. This exchange with translators – a lot of them are very experienced translators, a lot more experienced than I was at that time at least, very well-known, very experienced, some of the tip top in the industry. So I actually got to learn a lot during the experience.
I would say [with] my experience of nine years, or almost ten years at Renditions and then a few more years at the HKU Press as a full-time editor, I am fairly comfortable editing different types of text, especially literary or academic texts bilingually, whether in Chinese or English, or whether it involves elements of translation in it. During my years as an editor of Renditions and editor of HKU Press, I also came to understand the problems… The limited number of people who actually devoted the time doing this sort of things and who are actually good at this sort of things. It’s extremely difficult to find a good editor, bilingual editor of academic or literary texts. So I thought I could do it, and I could make a contribution this way and actually make a living this way. So that’s what I decided to do after I left my full time employment.
I think the relevant background is this: I spoke no English at home, and when I was in secondary school, I wasn’t allowed to speak Chinese in school. To add to it, some of the students in DGS (Diocesan Girls’ School) in my class were very naughty, because we were not allowed to speak in Chinese in school. When we went out for lunch, we made a rule – to forbit English. The penalty was a fine, so it was a very deliberate attempt to put the use of two languages, use separately in separate situations. That was very interesting, and that, I think, has contributed to my background as a translator. My interest in translation and in literature arose because I was interested in literature, in Chinese literature as well as English literature. My research degree was in English literature. My commitment to translation arose in the 1970s when the government made it possible for people to use Chinese as one of the official languages, and suddenly – I was teaching at the university then – and suddenly everybody said we needed translators. We needed translators so some colleagues in the English department and some colleagues in the Chinese department at HKU (the University of Hong Kong) grouped together to form the first degree in translation. The Chinese University had some courses in translation, but not a full degree programme. The University of Hong Kong had the first degree programme in translation, and then we all had to work to make that happen. That was how it all started, but my interest in both Chinese literature and English literature turned up to be very useful. That’s how it got started.
I didn’t run the Renditions. I was a contributor to it. I would say that the Renditions was an excellent quality journal in translating Chinese literature for a selected audience, the academic audience. People like western Sinologists and Chinese scholars who wanted to see how other people saw Chinese culture would also read the Renditions. Some of us wanted to see how we can make Chinese literature interesting and enlightening, inspiring, and wanted to translate Chinese literature into English, to share with people. I think it made a lot of contributions in helping people understand Chinese culture at that quality level. Academics enjoyed it most of the time, I think.
I think the second of the anthology that you talked about was compiled by Eva Hung. That was picked out from a lot of the previous works published in Renditions, and put together as an anthology. My contribution there was retrospective. They picked out some of the works that I did for them and incorporated into this one.
The other one is different, Hong Kong Collage. I worked very closely with my colleague, Martha Cheung, who was also one time my student. I worked very closely with her, because she wanted to compile an anthology to show people what contemporary Chinese literature is like. So she put together prose, short stories, and excerpts from novels and so on. She invited me to contribute. I enjoyed thoroughly one of the pieces that she asked me to translate, the Crazy Horse section, which reflected, in a very satirical way, humorous way, the anxieties of Hong Kong people during the approach of 1997. It was very very amusing. It’s a very good piece too.
I talk to them only when I feel that there is something more I need to know. When I come to think of it, I have not talked when I translate Siu Si 小思. I didn’t talk to her about her work, but when I translated it, she’s happy with it. That is how it works for me.
On the other hand, when I translate drama, that’s different. I translate scripts for actual stage productions. I always talk to the director first because in translating a play, there are all different ways of presenting a play. You need to ask your director how he or she wants to present the play. What slant she’d like to use. Had knowing that or how the play would be adapted for the stage, whether there should be a change in the setting or the time setting or geographic setting, all these matter. Before I translate a play, I always ask these. For instance, I worked very closely with Dr Vicky Ooi. I always talk to her in great length and details and so on. I talked to her when she wanted to produce King Lear. I’d ask her what kind of an old man she’d make this King Lear, somebody who’s large, larger than life, or somebody, a meaner old man or so. That makes a difference to me because I need to shape the language, twist the original a little, finetune it a little, to make it appropriate, so that the actor would find it easier to fulfil the expectations of a director, and yet have the lines to work with. That is when I talk most.
When I translated The Comedy of Errors for Collin George at the APA, I asked “What costumes would your actors be wearing?” He said T-shirts, striped T-shirts. “And you name me one of the props that you’d use”. “A bicycle”. Then I know I’d not use the Shakespearean language. I would turn the language into something like early twentieth century Chinese, and use that so that the picture would come up right because if people wear traditional costumes, traditional Shakespearean costumes, and I translate in early twenties in the nineteenth century’s Chinese, then it won’t look right. The modulations of culture and time, all that, it matters a great deal in drama translation. That’s when I talk to directors.
But if you take something like – Eva Hung asked me to translate Muk Jyu Syu木魚書, a poem adapted from the tone in traditional Chinese foot ballad, 木魚書, when you read the original in Chinese, you read the poem in Chinese, it has that sound, the mood of 木魚書. You know 木魚書? Like foot ballads. It brings out a particular feeling of nostalgia, and this contemporary poem uses that to talk about writing on the computer, about the pace at which letters appear on the computer screen, on the monitor. The intriguing thing, the challenging thing is to make the two blend together. I did that without having to ask, because I knew, I felt what the author wanted to say. That will come up naturally. So I don’t bother the authors very much when I translate their work, except when I come across difficulties. I haven’t felt that for prose work.
I am fairly good at entering into the consciousness of a writer. There are some writers for whom I feel very little simpatico, then I’m not comfortable translating that work. It’s happened once or twice. Not happy with it so I backed out.
Luckily, I have the luxury of choosing what I translate and what I don’t want to translate. I’m lucky there.
I come alive when we talk about drama. I love drama. I love operas, Peking opera in particular. I love the stage. I love drama and when I have an opportunity to translate for the stage, I just love it. It’s one of my passions.
It started in the 1950s when I was studying. In the 1950s, there was a very big wave of activity in drama in England, and at that time, my English professor at HKU wanted students to learn contemporary English rather than Dickensian, Victorian English. He wanted the students to learn contemporary English, so he started a course on contemporary English, and imported a lot of English newspapers, flown in by air, so that the students could read those papers. We imported a whole lot of brand new British, contemporary British drama. At that time, drama was very active in Britain and in Europe. So we got a lot of exciting new things, and our students started reading these and I started teaching them these. We all got very excited by this new drama movement. You see, this is in Hong Kong at that time. There were very few good plays. We were talking about period drama, Cing Gung Jyun《清宮怨》(Hatred Of The Qing Court) and things like that, or anti-drug propaganda plays. But there were all these exciting things happening in the West, and we brought them back and I convinced the professor, “If you want people to speak good contemporary language, we got to show them how to do it by reading plays.” So I convinced him to turn three offices, three professors’ offices into a dark room like this, a studio, and we started producing plays in English so people could practise using English. It was very effective, I must say. And then other people wanted to share that excitement, but they didn’t have as much English. So we translated those plays. There was one group which produced the same play in English and in Chinese because they were bilingual, equally good in both languages, and that was fantastic. Then there was some pressure making us translate those plays and produce them for the public. So we did that. Some friends formed together a theatre group called The Seals Theatre Company and we produced many translated plays. There was another group at the HKU also produced a lot of these plays. There was a great deal of activity, translation and drama. That’s how it started.
No, it’s not a matter of including it to other things, but it was a whole concept that these three communities, Chinese communities, how they are surviving in these troubled times when they are divided by culture, by politics and all.
An Oxford Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Drama was started by Dr Vicky Ooi. She had that vision. She had the vision and she said nobody outside of Hong Kong knew anything about Hong Kong drama. In Hong Kong, we know nothing about Chinese drama on the mainland or in Taiwan. It’s not a good situation, so she wanted to try to bring these drama activities together in some massive sort of triannual activities and so on. But that involved a lot of money, a lot of planning. She started doing it but other people who had more money worked on that too. So we didn’t do that after all. But this stream, Martha Cheung and I picked up and we said, “Although we cannot manoeuver so many theatre groups together because we don’t have the resources, we can put the plays from these three places together, to let the world know what the Chinese are doing about drama.” And we looked at the activities in Beijing. We went to Beijing to collect that. We went to Taiwan to collect that. There was whole lot of trouble to collect things. The important thing is we wanted to see whether we stay with realism, naturalism and to see if people in different places had started branching out, exploring new ways of producing plays. It was very interesting. We took plays from Beijing, plays from Taiwan, plays from Hong Kong and all turned out to be trying to experiment in different ways. This is why that anthology was very interesting, and that anthology attracted attention of people outside of China, outside of Hong Kong. When the book was published, I actually had requests for permission to perform those plays. Some plays are very difficult for foreigners to perform, but the simpler ones had been performed a number of times in Taiwan and in the States. That means it’s getting through to people and it’s making people know that we are doing this interesting stuff in different ways in different places. So it’s important to get things done in that way because it’s image building but it’s also looking at how the three different Chinese communities are attempting new things in different directions.
Anybody who’s interested in what’s happening to the Chinese, anybody who’s interested in the future of China. This was some time ago before the return, before 1997… around 1997 but before we know what’s happening. We’d now look back on hindsight but those days we were all wondering. But still in Taiwan they’re still wondering, right? So it’s for Chinese people, for drama people because there’re all these different variations in exploration, in new experiments. If you’re interested in drama and drama experiments, there’re an interesting variety of styles to look at and to see how these things are used to incorporate contemporary ideas. Then it’s also this image building so people know what the Chinese are doing. The people in Taiwan will know what’s happening on the mainland, and we know what’s happening in Taiwan and so on. It’s good for bonding and it’s also good for image building to a non-Chinese community.
I have translated quite a lot of plays. Most plays did not present any difficulty for me. There was one problem that butted my career as a translator. There was a pun in a play called Noises Off. It’s a pun on the word “sheik” and “sheet”. It’s a pun which created a lot of stage difficulties for people. I couldn’t translate that pun so I turned down the commission. I was invited by the director, Dr Vicky Ooi, to translate that play, and I told her that I couldn’t do this pun. She said, “Try to skip over it”. I couldn’t. I said – in my youth, I was very arrogant – I said I would not skip over something I do not know. So I turned it down. It’s a very interesting stage play. Later on, it was translated by somebody else, and the play was staged. I think Dr Vicky Ooi never forgave me for that. Years after whenever she mentioned this, she would scold me. The interesting thing is, many years later, one night when I was sleeping, I dreamt of a way of translating that, and I was very happy about it. I said, “wake up and I would tell Dr Vicky Ooi to vindicate myself this one thing that I could not translate”. I woke up and I forgot it. So to this day, it’s the one difficulty I could not cross over. Even when I was translating King Lear, I had no problem with it. When you can enter into the consciousness of the writer, you become the writer and you understand what it is that he wants to say. And then you can say it in exactly the same style, in exactly the same rhythm, in exactly the same posture. The secret is entering into the consciousness of the writer when writing that piece.
If you want to try to translate something from the outside, you only get the outside. But if you try to go into the consciousness of the writer, you feel what he feels. You breathe and you use the rhythm that he uses and you would get it, and you’ll be a good translator.
I’ll talk about Hong Kong first. In Hong Kong – all three places kept the interest, the utilitarian interest of naturalistic drama, to reflect contemporary political and social environment. In Hong Kong, Chan Kam-chuen 陳錦泉’s play Hong Kong House was a reflection of Hong Kong at a time, at a sort of crucial time wondering about its future. So it was a naturalistic but symbolic play. In Beijing, you also have naturalistic plays which would reflect the community, in Taiwan as well. In Taiwan, people are more experimental. They do symbolic things but they exaggerate and incorporate Peking Opera drama and so on into reflecting their political dilemma. And also they have these symbolic plays where everything has detached from the naturalistic level. And they have a lot of humorous plays to reflect the situation.
In Hong Kong, we have that and we have Zeon Nim進念, Zuni Icosahedron. They also go into experimental things but in the abstract, impromptu things. We have movement, noise levels – it’s quite a departure from the naturalistic. The experimentation in Beijing was very interesting. It went into the mythical and incorporating Peking drama into contemporary drama. I think if one reads the anthology, one notices these things, that three places have a kind of mood, just as they share the naturalistic basis of drama. And then they have all these interesting explorations in different directions. It’s a good experience to know what’s happening.
I had a lot of difficulty at first trying to understand what editors do in an anthology. If the editor chooses, he can do a lot of things. A, to work on the concept of an anthology – what it’s supposed to do, what to include and all that, and then to provide the material, to collect the material, to select the material, alright? And then to have the material translated. Having got the material translated, he has to do the editing, to ensure quality, accuracy, appropriateness, and after that it goes to print. The editor has then to go through the copy-editing. And dealing with the funding, and dealing with the publisher. Yes. So the perfect editor for an anthology does all these things, but some editors do some and other editors do others, and sometimes we have a whole lot of editors doing the whole thing together. Now I know this. When I first got into this business, I wondered about it, but it does depend on which pool the editor is and what she or he wants to do. Sometimes, some editors would only deal with the concept and you have to do all the other things. So if you ask me what the editor does, the editor can do all or some of these. Some people are only doing the copy-editing to make sure that the manuscript is properly presented in the print version. That is an editor. But the person who oversees the whole thing is also an editor. It depends.
My own work as a translator was that a translator gets asked, invited, ordered to translate a certain work and the translator has to do justice to the work that is translated and give it to the editor, right? So one’s involvement as a translator is different from that of an editor. But sometimes the translator does some of the editor’s work.
I have one overriding goal, demand of myself. It is to do whatever I do well. If I do it well, then I am happy. That goal hasn’t changed.
The happiest moment is when I feel I’ve done good work. I’ve done work that will help people feel good, happy, to increase people’s understanding, to nurture a kind of sensitivity to humanity. That is good. That is as high-sounding as I can make it.
When I was young, my mother used to bring me to the library, especially when I was in primary school. I was not from a well-off family and reading at the library was a free entertainment. When I was in junior primary school, I often went to the library and became passionate about writing. Sometimes I would write a few poetic sentences and let my family read them. My parents were not highly educated and they did not know English and Mandarin, so I’d not been interested in English and other foreign languages until secondary school.
I went to an EMI secondary school and many of my classmates would read a lot of English books such as Harry Potter, works by Roald Dahl and other English books. My English was not particularly good, but I had to study Literature in English . So I was familiar with English and other foreign languages. I even thought it was a must to be fluent in a foreign language.
Yet I never planned to write in English, because the works I’ve been reading since childhood and the writing that would make me feel touched are all in Chinese, especially the Classics. That’s the reason I chose Chinese Literature for my A-Levels and I decided to write in Chinese. At the same time, I also value English as an essential tool to interact with the world and communicate with people from other places.
Hong Konger, for sure. Especially after what happened these two years, I’m more certain that Hong Kong is my home. Of course this is not only because of the abstract socio-cultural factors, but also because of the fact that most of my family members are in Hong Kong. I grew up here and this is the place that I’m most familiar with. I haven’t studied overseas, and I think I'm culturally influenced by the environment in Hong Kong. This is the place where I was born and bred, so I would consider Hong Kong my home.
As I identify myself as a Hong Konger, I'd consider myself a Hong Kong poet, especially because many of the poems in my poetry collection were written in Peng Chau. Peng Chau is a special island in Hong Kong and it's very different from the urban life. This reflects the diversity of Hong Kong. Apart from all the hustle and bustle, it's also easy to have access to the countryside, and I'd chosen to get in touch with that side of Hong Kong. There's a place where I can be in touch with nature and write up this poetry collection. So it's fair to say this collection belongs to the islands and nature of Hong Kong, and it should be regarded as a work of Hong Kong literature.
I'd also consider myself as a Hong Kong poet, especially because my writing is influenced by our language. Even though I never attempt to write in Cantonese, the way we learn language, the written language in particular, does not involve our mother tongue and it's already a sort of translation. The texts we write is the product of reading and learning, and the texture of our poems is very different from the works by Taiwanese and mainland writers. This is unique to Hong Kong, even though we use written Chinese.
According to my past experience, Hong Kong literature is often associated with many different definitions and adjectives, including "marginal". That is because some people think that it's merely the literature produced in a tiny city on Chinese soil with a limited readership, and it should not be regarded as a mainstream literature. Some people also describe it as "diversified", since it encapsulates both Chinese and Western cultures. Sometimes people say there are certain avant-garde elements in Hong Kong literature. Very often, different writers agree that the city has a long-standing tradition of literature.
The interesting thing is not about what I think Hong Kong literature is, but the fact that our understanding towards it is always volatile and beyond description. We are now at a stage where we are craving to explain what Hong Kong literature is. It involves, of course, many political and cultural factors, and I sometimes wonder whether it’s possible to explain what it is, and characterise Hong Kong literature by explaining it. On the contrary, it’s more noteworthy to understand why we want to explain Hong Kong literature, how to do so, why we haven't been unable to do so, or why we want to explain it in a certain way. These are the questions that deserve constant discussion.
The Hong Kong writers whom I admire, the first one is Wong Bik-wan 黃碧雲, the second one is Xi Xi 西西 and the third one is Xiaosi 小思, Professor Lo Wai-luen.
Why do I admire Wong Bik-wan? Every time she engages in creative writing, she writes with an innovative and investigative spirit. This is rather rare among Hong Kong writers. We might touch upon this later on, and this is the issue that we encounter when we write in Hong Kong. Yet, her works throughout the years have been produced as individual projects, e.g. one of her recent works Lou Kei Zi Sei《盧麒之死》 (The Death of Lo Kei), or her earlier novels such as Lit Neoi Tou 《烈女圖》[Portraits of martyred women] which was produced based on oral history. Through interactions and conversations with different people, she developed and enriched her own language. This is a remarkable spirit, in my opinion. Of course, a lot of critics would bring up the subject matter in her writing. She is concerned with the post-colonial situation in Hong Kong, as well as the mobility of Hong Kong people leaving in face of the Handover in 1997 and returning later. These works are inextricably connected to the social background at the time. Apart from the subject matter and her approach, what I admire most is her tireless efforts in creative writing. This might sound rather abstract, but she always creates something new with this spirit, and she believes that every work is a new experiment. I think this kind of new experimentation and exploration is something that every writer will talk about, but not every writer can do it.
Xi Xi is also an author that I admire. Based on my interactions and conversations with her, she is a natural writer. Writing has become a part of her life, and I admire her for her curiosity to explore the world. Whenever she is interested in something, she becomes fascinated by it, studies it and writes about it. That’s why Xi Xi is a valuable presence in the Hong Kong literary scene. There is limited space in Hong Kong for this kind of writers to keep creating and publishing. This is not an easy task, and it can only be done with her perseverance in creative writing. Interestingly, apart from perseverance, she also perceives writing as a game. This means that she does not necessarily want to become an extraordinary writer and have her works passed on to future generations. She doesn’t write with this mentality. She really thinks writing is a game and a part of her life, and wants to try something new in her work. This kind of spirit is idiosyncratic in Hong Kong, so I admire her very much.
The third writer whom I admire is Xiaosi; because of her research and contribution to Hong Kong literature. Her spirit prompts us to reconsider what Hong Kong literature is, especially because she has preserved a lot of information about the earlier writers, such as old newspaper clippings. In addition, she has also mentioned that the information she gathered at that time might not be the most suitable for writing the history of literature, because she would have to organise it in a greater width and length. Her attitude as a researcher and explorer, the thoroughness of her data collection and the extent to which she cherishes historical documents are all qualities that I greatly admire.
Similar to many Hong Kong writers, writing cannot be my main source of income in this city. This is especially true when you think about your career and you realise that what you wish to write will not become mainstream. If it’s not mainstream, it’s basically impossible to earn a living in such a city with high living costs. Very often you have to think how to earn a living, and your life will be interfered and sped up by different jobs. This is very likely to affect your state of mind for writing. In Hong Kong, many creators struggle to do so.
I took some time off work before and moved to Peng Chau. That's the island I mentioned earlier. It was very quiet and there were not many tourists. When I was living there, I seldom came to town. In such a state of serenity where I could devote myself fully into writing for a month, I could produce some literary works and poems. I think this kind of space is necessary, no matter how long it is, to put aside our work and focus on writing.
I also realised that there are many poems about the city and all sorts of things that happen around us in Hong Kong. I tried to avoid it in my own poems because many people have written about it and I did not feel moved by the urban side of Hong Kong. I’m more inspired by nature. I think this is also something that distinguishes Hong Kong from other cities, because it is fairly easy to get to the countryside here, enabling me to produce this kind of work.
Issue 26 was published years ago and I think we can now talk about more clearly. The key to anthologising a collection is its completeness. Something complete has its natural beauty. What I mean by completeness is that the editor must make a selection, or the author must make a selection, for the anthology to become something. It would not be complete if we simply compile some works together without selection. Writing poetry is a process and anthologising a poetry collection is another one.
From a poet’s perspective, I think it's necessary to have some project-based ideas. What I mean is that we should produce pieces of writing with a plan or topic in mind. This is very important in my opinion. If you start writing with a theme in mind, the poetry collection would turn out to be complete. Of course, some might think that it would place constraints on creative writing, but I believe it's possible for a writer to have several writing plans going on. Some could be based on certain themes, while some could be about our daily life. We can plan how to publish our own works at different stages. But as for how to anthologise a collection of poems, I think there must be an element that makes it complete. It may not be the theme. It could be the theme, the aesthetics, etc. So I think this sort of completeness is more important than other considerations.
Fleur de Lettres is currently a rather important literary magazine in Hong Kong, founded by a group of active local writers in 2006. That includes Tang Siu-w ah, Hon Lai-chu, and Dorothy Tse, etc. It’s been around for 14 to 15 years since it was first established.
I joined this magazine in 2009, mainly responsible for writing manuscripts and conducting interviews. I was attracted by its innovative and energetic image at that time. I felt that in Hong Kong, literature was often presented in a dull and heavy manner, but when Fleur de Lettres was first published, it was very refreshing.
I remember very clearly that the spirit of Fleur de Lettres was stated in the inaugural editorial, and I believe that the editors at the time would agree. That is, "youth does not equal to childishness, and liveliness does not equal to indiscretion". It's an attitude of being playful and serious at the same time, so that we can discuss serious matters in a lively manner.
It's been 14 to 15 years since the magazine started and we still try to maintain this kind of vitality. Although the aesthetics have changed, we all agree that literature must be intertwined with life and our times. In fact, literature is a natural response to what happens around us. We often attempt to capture some new issues that everyone cares about, whether it’s local or international. We also try to come up with certain aesthetically oriented topics, as well as more in-depth critical pieces. In fact, all of these are efforts to live up to the spirit of Fleur de Lettres. We endeavour to maintain it along the journey.
At Fleur de Lettres, the editor is mainly responsible for the creative section. The editor reads the contributions of many different authors. Of course, as an editor, you cannot be constricted by your own aesthetics. I try to include authors of different styles. As long as they reach a certain level, or contain some refreshing elements, we’d put them in the magazine. So the editing criteria is different. When editing my own poetry anthology, I try to produce a work that is aesthetically complete.
Of course, in retrospect, some poems might look repetitive, or the techniques and subject matter presented in the poems are alike. Some readers might think that the voice within each poem is similar. I believe it will have this effect, so I hope that my next poetry collection will be different. This can be regarded as an effort of self-improvement in the form of poetry collections.
Spicy Fish was actually created to publish the local literary magazine Fleur de Lettres. But over ten years have passed, and it has evolved into a literary organisation with many different plans and objectives. This is the job I hoped to accomplish when I was thinking about what I wanted to do. A decade or so ago, literary organisations in Hong Kong were basically non-existent, and the vision towards this sort of organisation was rather vague. There were literary societies, or groups of friends who liked literature would start a magazine by themselves. At that time, not many people really thought about whether a literary society could become a non-profit organization, which could take up more work, or have different plans.
Thanks to the increase in funding resources now, there are different people who’d like to do various things. Apart from publishing, literary organisations can also have other plans. So when I came back to Spicy Fish four years ago, I set three directions for this organisations.
The first direction is literary publishing, which is the publication of Fleur de Lettres, or books written by some young writers in the literary world.
The second one is overseas exchange, and I think this is an essential part of the plan. With overseas exchange, the voices of Hong Kong writers can be heard by different readers over the world, so we arrange exchange programmes with places like Singapore and Malaysia. In addition to the Sinophone regions, we are also thinking about Britain and America. I think these are very important to both the recognition of Hong Kong literature and the perception of Hong Kong writers towards their career. These are opportunities for them to communicate with other readers.
The third direction is community development. We used to work towards the expansion of readership. That is the number of magazine subscriptions and followers on our social media platforms. I believe the promotion of literature is not just limited to that. Of course, readers and followers are crucial, but more important than that is the connection between literature, culture and the people in the community.
We have been thinking about community development for a while. What do I mean by that? We are starting with San Po Kong now, because our office has been in San Po Kong for more than ten years, so we are familiar with other arts organisations and partners in the district. We hope that more people will get to know this side of San Po Kong. We’d also like to get into the community of Wong Tai Sin, because I reckon that literature and art should be down-to-earth and beneficial to the public. We hope it can be a part of their life, so we are looking to organise more activities for them.
With community development, in addition to geographical areas, we would also like to organise activities targeting different groups in the future, such as the elderly, ethnic minorities, or people with disabilities. We’ll gradually carry out these projects, hoping to give them more opportunities to get in touch with arts and literature and bringing positive impact to their lives through writing, reading or discussing.
In this respect, I keep asking myself – what is the meaning of literary creation and reading for people? It’s not just about writers or readers, but the idea that people can also become readers. What does it mean for them? Will it bring about changes in their lives? We’re exploring these questions in the process of community development.
All in all, at the current stage, Spicy Fish is working towards three directions, which includes literary publishing, overseas exchange, and community development. I believe these efforts will be empowered with the support of Hong Kong society and some resources. These are all things I'd like to achieve in the future.
In fact, literary arts administration was non-existent ten years ago. The development of arts in Hong Kong focuses more on performing arts, and, in recent years, visual arts. Literary arts, especially non-mainstream literary writing, might not receive a lot of attention. When it comes to literary arts administration, it’s possible that not many people understand what it is.
But that's exactly the job I'd like to do. As there are not many people helping local writers, they deserve a platform, so that their voice can be heard. We'd also help them with the post-writing administrative tasks. I think this sort of organization or service is necessary to give writers more personal time after finishing their work, instead of having to promote it and booking a venue to hold a press conference. I hope they don't have to worry about these tasks.
This is actually a step towards the professionalisation of the entire literary community, so I wish I can work on literary arts administration. In fact, it should not be limited to literary event planning. It’s not just planning one event, but also coming up with long-term plans to help the local literary community reach a wider readership, write better or grasp new opportunities.
There are many writer organisations of this sort in other countries, and each of them specialises in a specific area. For example, some organisations specialise in hosting writers’ residency programmes, inviting writers from other countries to live in a certain place for creative writing. At the same time, there are organisations helping writers go on exchange. There are also organisations that specialise in helping writers review their work, because aspiring writers might have written something and they are not sure if it’s up to standard. Editors will give them some comments. There are also organisations which arrange courses for writers to polish their writing skills and learn how to find a publisher when they need to.
In fact, in a sound and professional literary environment, this sort of literary organisations is necessary to support writers and be a bridge between writers and readers. So I wanted this to become my career and develop the whole ecosystem starting with an organisation. It could as well involve the development path for writers. From the very beginning when the writer is relatively young, the organisation would help publish a single piece of work on a literary platform. As a certain amount of work gets written, we'll help publish the collection. At that stage, there'd be publicity activities, interviews and media exposure, and then we'd apply for awards on behalf of the writer. It's of course the job of the publishing house to help with the promotion. In the future, we might arrange overseas exchange activities to somewhere nearby, such as Singapore, so that the writer can reach more readers and even reside there. There, the writer would have the opportunity to produce works and publish them.
As years go by, we would expect the writer to be a stable and competent writer in Hong Kong. This is not easy, but I hope that something can be done in every tiny stage to empower the writer in this journey. So it would involve a long period of time. We hope to sow the seeds so that local writers can produce excellent works. With that in mind, Hong Kong literature will deserve some attention in the international stage.
Writing and literary arts administration are two different things. Perhaps I can start with why I started working in literary arts administration. When I just graduated, I didn’t want to be a teacher. I personally didn’t have that kind of ambition for education. I didn’t want to be in the media either, because the ecology of the media at that time was not very healthy, and sometimes the pace was too fast and I wouldn't be able to write what I wanted. So eventually, when I was considering how to earn a living, I decided to work in literary arts administration.
In retrospect, I find myself quite lucky to have a job in literary arts administration at Fleur de Lettres. Spicy Fish run an arts education initiative and hired editors to publish a magazine for secondary school students. It was a one-year project. It is quite common that arts projects only last one year or a few years. When the project was over, I was fortunate to be able to work at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival for two years. That involved intensive event planning. I also got in touch with some overseas literary organisations and writers. Although those two years were very tough, it enabled me to come into contact with many people.
After that, I briefly worked at some arts institutions on promotional and administrative work. Then I got the chance to plan for the literary festival, LitStream, at the Hong Kong Arts Development Council for a year. Luckily, I gained a lot of experience in this area, including organising literary seminars, promotional activities and workshops. At the same time, I’d been working as a part-time editor at Fleur de Lettres. The nature of this job allows me to enrich my understanding of both the Chinese and English literary communities.
My development so far is not limited to a single literary publication or activity. It’s more about considering what the entire community needs and how to find resources to help. It may not be the final solution, but it can improve the situation. What kind of help do writers need so that they can make progress more smoothly? The direction we're heading to explore new plans and new resources are all considered with this in mind.
Have I achieved my initial goal? I think I start to see some results. For example, there are overseas exchange and community development programmes. They are being implemented, but it may take five to ten years to develop an organisation of a larger scale. Perhaps every single plan could be derived into an organisation on its own, or operate with stable resources. This would be the ideal plan, because it’s difficult to rely on a tiny organisation like ours to be responsible for all the support for writers, as well as the connection between readers and writers. It'd be ideal if every plan and project can become an independent organisation with its own funding. This would be the ultimate goal.
Besides, when it comes to literary events, people may now think of literary festivals or large-scale promotion. I think it’s important, especially for readers and writers to come into contact and communicate with each other. But as literary arts administrators, we should also ponder over what this community needs, or why people need literature. We need to consider these two points. When we notice issues, we can come up with plans. We hope that more resources will be invested to solve these issues resources that can also tackle the old problems in the local literary community, such as low income. These problems will hopefully be addressed in the long run.
I grew up in Guangdong. When I was a university student in 2007, I had a poetry reading where I encountered the late Hong Kong poet Leung Ping-kwan. His pen name is Ye Si. Later when I was studying at Shenzhen University, I had a lot of collaborations with Ye Si, especially on poetry translation. Upon graduation from the University of Macau, Leung Ping-kwan sent me a letter and asked whether I'd like to work with him. I felt I should seize the life-changing opportunity and started to work with him at the Centre for Humanities Research, Lingnan University in Hong Kong in 2011. We continued our collaboration on poetry translation and exchanges on poetry writing. It was Leung Ping-kwan who brought me to Hong Kong.
It's a difficult question for an immigrant. I have been moving around a few cities, including Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macau since I was eighteen years old. But right now, I feel that my home is in Hong Kong, the "home" my current life attaches to and my work contributes to. I think of myself as a Hong Kong poet, editor, translator, and scholar. It feels like we have been undergoing social turbulence together in the last decade. I came to Hong Kong in 2011 and it has been ten years. People here always feel an unprecedented epochal change looming overhead, always think about staying or leaving if the options are realistically available, and always find ways to survive, resist or even resign… It’s hard to imagine anyone who truly loves Hong Kong doesn’t identify with this feeling passed down from earlier generations of Hong Kongers.
My work with these roles grows as the city evolves. Hong Kong has forever changed my life, and I do feel that Hong Kong is my home. At the same time, I understand the identity could evaporate instantly if fate brings me somewhere else. But, wherever I go, I'm sure Hong Kong will always have a very special place in my heart, where I can always return. This I would call "home."
I became interested in writing poetry as an university student some fifteen years ago when I met American poet Steven Schroeder – my poetry mentor. Why would I be drawn to poetry? I was mesmerized by a certain power of poetry – the world of the poem instantly reveals in its totality when you reach one line or one word while reading it, especially when the image passes through the border between the abstract and the concrete. Such poetic experience is the reason I started writing poetry.
As for translation, it can be understood in two ways. One of them is textual translation. When I was studying at the University of Macau, I was at the nurturing stage as an aspiring poet. I started to learn the craftsmanship of composing a poem by translating other people's poems.
It turns out I have translated more poems than I can ever write. In addition to textual translation, another way to understand it is cultural translation. I try to bring cultures across borders, including the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong. We'd bring poets from all over the world to Hong Kong for poetry reading, discussions and other activities. This is an aspect of translation that enables cultural exchanges.
Another example is the Voice & Verse magazine. I managed to change the magazine from a monolingual Chinese to a bilingual English and Chinese poetry magazine in the hope that it can in some way connect the Chinese- and English-language poets in Hong Kong. This is also a sort of cultural translation, and it reminds me of the idea of “bridge-making”, to borrow the late prominent Chinese artist Wu Guanzhong’s coinage. I think translators are the bridge-makers, both textually and culturally.
As for editing, there's a story behind the poetry magazine Voice & Verse. It was founded in 2011. In 2015, the magazine went through a major crisis and the editor-in-chief at the time resigned. The publisher told me that the only way to save it was that I agreed to be its editor-in-chief; otherwise they would end it for good. At the time, Voice & Verse was the only regularly published poetry magazine in Hong Kong. Young poets would have lost a major venue if I hadn't come to rescue. It would have been a shame if it had ended. That’s why I decided to take over.
To me, working as an editor, especially for this magazine, is more of a sense of cultural mission and responsibility. The monetary return is actually minimal, so I don’t do it for personal profit, but as a mission to improve the ecosystem of poetry writing.
Are they connected? Yes, by poetry. My life revolves around poetry. My writing, translating, editing and research come together as a humble contribution to the local poetry community.
I consider myself a Hong Kong writer, but I won't regard my poems as part of the Hong Kong literary pantheon. I'd like to refrain from the canonization mindset. I've been writing and will continue to write what inspires me, especially about Hong Kong. I hope my work also inspires other people, but I don't think it’s part of the pantheon. The way I see it, it's much more than the verses printed on pages. As a poet, the happiest thing is to connect with other like-minded people who are fond of writing, translation, research or editing. I think the most important thing is that writing is an essential factor to enhance the quality of my life, not monetarily but socially.
In recent years, there is an issue about Hong Kong literature that concerns me. The number of venues for publishing new poems has been noticeably decreasing in the last few years, so has that for fiction. I’m working hard on translation, editing and research in hope of expanding the space for the community and encouraging young people to produce their own work. I'd say writing and other cultural work give me a sense of satisfaction and confidence.
I think Hong Kong literature consists of two parts, if we categorise according to the writing language. It enjoys an English-Chinese bilingual tradition with a polarizing spectrum of political ideology. The Chinese scholarship and the Anglophone community seldom communicate with each other. For instance, the Anglophone community understand rather little about the history and tradition of the Chinese-writing community, and vice versa. It would therefore be better if there could be more interactions between the communities in Hong Kong literature.
The first one is Ronald Mar. Ronald Mar came to Hong Kong in the early 1950s and founded the legendary literary magazine, Man Ngai San Ciu 《文藝新潮》 [Literary currents], in 1955. Through this magazine, Ronald Mar introduced a great deal of Western modernist literature to Hong Kong, and the translated literature published in the magazine inspired many then young authors who groomed to become major writers in the following decades. Although the magazine only lasted for three years, it is regarded as the most influential literary magazine in the history of Hong Kong literature. That’s why I always look up to Ronald Mar.
The second one is Liu Yichang. He was perhaps the most hard-working writer I know of. For a long time in Hong Kong, he made his living entirely on writing various columns and was still able to create fiction of very high literary value, such as Zau Tou《酒徒》 (The Drunkard), Deoi Dou《對倒》 (Intersection)、Zi Noi《寺內》[Inside the Temple]. He also became the editor-in-chief of the local literary magazine Hoeng Gong Man Hok《香港文學》(Hong Kong Literature) in the eighties. During his long career of being an editor of newspaper supplements and literary magazines, he helped many generations of Hong Kong writers realise their potential. I’d say he’s my role model as an editor.
The third one is Leung Ping-kwan, also named Ye Si. He proposed the idea of everyday poetry in the seventies. This concept has to be understood in the historical context. This particular poetic style could deliver his generation of poets' feelings of the urban transformation in Hong Kong that was not be able to be addressed by other concepts.
The concept rejects both the influence of Taiwan's puzzling surrealism and Mainland China's socialist realism on Hong Kong poetry in the fifties. It was also an alternative approach to poetry when Yu Kwang-chung brought neoclassicism to Hong Kong poetry in the seventies.
Leung succeeded in creating a poetics of the everyday, a style later adopted by many local poets to write their own sensibility in their most comfortable language. I'm especially impressed by his efforts in distinguishing Hong Kong poetry from the poetry of other Chinese-speaking areas. His profound influence over Hong Kong poetry is still visible. That’s why Leung is a poet that I admire very much.
I feel that the influences on my poetry writing came from many dimensions. The influence in the realm of poetic language that can be partly connected to the city itself is a special spatial relationship in the Chinese versification.
I noticed, in my own work, the removal of some Chinese prepositions, conjunctions, and function words. It reveals immense possibilities of the spatial relationships among images and therefore enriches interpretation insofar as to create a special type of imagistic ambiguity that evokes a sense of classical Chinese verses on both rhythmic and semantic levels. On the other hand, it’s sort of like classical poems, but not merely a quotation or allusion to a particular ancient poem. When I was pondering over the use of language, I realised that Hong Kong is exactly like that. Our living and public spaces are very small. We often remove what's unnecessary from our life and only keep what we value. It is somehow reflected in our poetry as well. Some people say that such life experience would gradually provincialise our view. Still, it is because of the limited spaces that we see immense possibilities in everyday life even in such a desperate time. This is true to both our poetic language and our observation of the world around us. This is the most significant influence that the city of Hong Kong has on my writing.
Because I have translated lots of poetry, I seem to grow an unconscious habit of producing poems that are difficult to translate. The poems are not so difficult to read, but the multi-layering density of metaphorical imagery and the poetic language inducive to ambiguity make them very difficult to translate.
When I find it too difficult, I pass the job to my translator friends, such as Tammy Ho and Lucas Klein. If I were to talk about self-translation, I’d say it is a bilingual dialogic creative process. I find it very hard to resist the temptation to rewrite the poem in the target language. As I’m the poet, I enjoy a greater extent of freedom and I usually end up rewriting the original. The cycle goes on as such. At the same time, it makes self-translation a very difficult task that could be never-ending.
For starts, I can’t change the original poems. Other than that, I don’t feel much of a difference. When I’m translating my poems, I can often change the original work according to the translation. But it’d be impossible to do so with other poets’ work.
I translate different types of poems as a kind of ongoing training. I recently translated Philip Larkin's poem This Be the Verse into Cantonese. The poem is famous for its outright frankness and has a bit of swearing... But the way that the first few lines of Larkin's "This Be the Verse" shocks you is really exceptional. I had known the poem for a long time and decided to try to emulate the effect in Cantonese. In the past I avoided translating poems with swearing words as I found them impolite, but this poem feels like a translation challenge that I'd like to take up. I think the translation works quite well. In any case, translating this poem was both a big challenge and a great fun. This is a recent work that I'm particularly fond of.
It'd be ideal that the poet and the translator know each other well both in writing and in person. They can come up with solutions to translation challenges together. Of course, it'd be ideal if both of us know the source and target languages. Sometimes, my poems are translated into other languages, such as Japanese. If I don’t know the target language, usually I let the translators do their jobs and seldom intervene. In this kind of relationship, embracing differences is the key. It’s also crucial to the translation.
Lucas Klein and I have collaborated many times on various poetry translation projects, and we know each other quite well because of other research and translation projects. He doesn't need to ask me questions in translating my poems, because he knows what I'm doing in the poems. I think his translation of my poem Sek Lau《石榴》 is precisely the kind of translation I appreciate. He agreed that it was one of the most challenging poems he'd ever translated, but he could convey the wide variety of imagery in English without asking me a lot of questions. It'd therefore be ideal if the poet and the translator are friends, and they embrace their differences.
Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine was founded in 2011 by a group of local poets and lovers of poetry. It started out as a magazine solely in Chinese. I became its editor-in-chief in 2015 and revamped the magazine in every way. I invited Tammy Ho to be the editor of our English section. Besides, I edited special features and set up a regular column to introduce world poetry through translation, such as works from Catalonia, Poland and African American poetry. Works from Brazil, Portugal and other places are also coming up. I also invited other poetry groups to contribute irregularly to the magazine, such as Kubrick Poetry, the creative writing classes at different local universities, the Outersky Poet Association in Macao, etc. As I'm very skilful in using the Adobe InDesign, I changed the magazine’s artistic outlook, page layout, fonts, cover and text paper types, etc. It has been nine years since the magazine was established, and we managed to transform what had been a monolingual Chinese publication into a bilingual English and Chinese magazine, and so Voice & Verse has an outlook that is both local and international.
Voice & Verse couldn’t have achieved its goals without many invisible efforts by Tammy Ho (English section), Matthew Cheng (poetry criticism), Keith Liu (administration), Au Yeung Sui-ping and Elaine Chow (proofreading), Peter Lui, Matthew and Lester Lau (distribution), as well as many friends from HKBU who helped us in the past – I also have to thank Kong Kei-wing and Tam Ka-wai (event). The magazine couldn’t have survived without our colleagues’ selfless contribution. We don’t even have part-time staff for the magazine, we all contribute our own personal free time to make it happen. It’s all a labour of love for poetry.
In terms of local poets’ poems, I’m mainly in charge of Chinese section. It’s not so easy to publish 35 poets’ works in every issue. I incline to reject the poems that are too obvious or too sentimental, but I’m not too selective other than that. As for the English section, I let Tammy read the submissions and decide which poems to publish. We’d not set the bar too high; otherwise it would be very hard to fulfil the mission of the magazine. But local poets’ poems only make up a small part of each issue, as we have solicited artworks, criticisms, reviews, translations, and columns. Each issue is so substantial that it’s literally a book.
When I came to Hong Kong in 2011, I was unable to find any print venue to which I could submit my English poems. Writing English poems in Hong Kong is a very lonely thing to do. There was a bilingual print publication called MUSE, which tried to promote bilingual reading in the city. Understandably it reserved little space for literary pieces. English-language poets, locals and expats alike, could only submit their works to the online CHA: An Asian Literary Journal, which was just started. As a poet who mainly wrote in English, there was not much space for publishing my own work. It’s also more difficult to find like-minded friends, especially for a newcomer like myself.
After a few years, I came to know that the English-language poets and the Chinese-language poets had little communication. They didn’t have the chance to read each other's works. After Tammy and I became friends, we've worked together on some projects, such as Issues 39-40 CHA Tenth Anniversary Special Feature. We decided that it was possible to create an English section for the magazine with Tammy as the editor. Thus, Voice & Verse became the first English-Chinese bilingual poetry magazine in Hong Kong.
The International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (IPNHK) is a biennial international poetry festival founded by Chinese poet Bei Dao in 2009. The fruit of many colleagues' selfless endeavours, the IPNHK has been so successful that it has been invited to be a member of the Word Alliance which features the most prestigious international literary and poetry festivals in the world. Is it important to the local literary community? To be cosmopolitan or to be provincial? It's up to the community. The IPNHK provides opportunities for local poets to have exchange with poets from other places in the world and maintains the worldview of poetry for the city, but it will take a long time for such cultural "bridge-making" to show its impact. Over ten years have passed and the next International Poetry Nights will take place in November 2021. We've invited poets from all over the world to Hong Kong for poetry readings, discussions and other events. They will also have exchanges with local poets. I'd say we have made some progress in terms of cultural exchange. But if the city chooses to be provincial, who am I to judge?
Yes, the anthology celebrates the tenth anniversary of Voice & Verse. Tammy and I will be editing this bilingual anthology of Hong Kong poetry as a celebration for our magazine, and we don't set out to construct a canonise Hong Kong literature. The sole purpose is celebration. In the selection process, we’ve picked outstanding poets who often publish their works in the magazine.
It is very simple – to survive. The reality of Hong Kong is very harsh to poetry. The goal is to survive uncompromised as a poet and translator. Invictus maneo.
When I first entered the university, I actually chose to study in the journalism department, and then I transferred to the Chinese Department. Even though it is only a vague desire, I have always wanted to be a writer since I was a child. In Hong Kong, there was no professional course for creative writing in the past, and I didn't know that there was such an option in the world. At that time, I took the course that I thought was the closest to writing or literature. In the Journalism Department, the writing style I came into contact with had too many assumptions about reality and was too standardised, but literature is a broader world with freedom. For me, the Chinese Department taught me how to read, but it has drawn me to the freedom and joy of writing.
I have always resisted the concept of "home", because it is overburdened with the conventional settings derived from the social system. Confucianism tends to link up the two concepts, "home" and "country", and seeks to incorporate people into the social norms at all levels. If I wish to, I would say I am from Hong Kong. It is precisely because when I was growing up, this city had little sense of national identity, nor did the authority require us to be "loyal" to it.
During my primary and secondary school years, no one encouraged us to read the so-called "Hong Kong Literature". To me, Hong Kong literature is a minority literature. It has always been systematically overlooked, and has never been defined and canonised. Perhaps that is why, I would say that I am a Hong Kong writer.
I think many Hong Kong writers have a broad vision and an experimental spirit. Many countries will regard their own literature as a kind of soft power, but Hong Kong literature has long survived within the community, without the attention of those in power or a substantial market. Hong Kong writers therefore tend to think merely about creation. The way it has been forgotten has also accidentally created a free space for the minority. Whether writing in English or Chinese, most Hong Kong people live in a biliterate and trilingual environment, and the words used in writing make people feel that they are distant from reality. I think this makes Hong Kong writers more conscious of language construction.
I admire a lot of Hong Kong writers. I have always focused on the research of Xixi’s works, and she is certainly one of the writers I admire. Even at the level of world literature, her creation is quite unique. As for the specific reasons, I have explained a lot in my paper, so I won't repeat it here. I also like Wai Yuen very much. She writes poems and prose, and I especially like the latter, many of which consistently create a peculiar character who likes to steal books and calling his friends names whenever he wants. Wai Yuen’s writing is deliberately anti-romantic and in-depth, while she is obsessed with a writing style that is tortuous and carefully laid out. Even the cover design of the book is strange enough. There is also Ng Hui-bun. In a capitalist city like Hong Kong, her writing has a feeling that reminds me of the Garden of Eden, as if every word would shine.
I think experimentation is indeed an important aspect of Hong Kong writers, but I want to add that experimentation in form and style, and more importantly, is an open attitude towards culture. I think this is the common feature of many Hong Kong writers, and this is also the expectation for myself.
In fact, my original statement is that this novel is "about the Hong Kong I have seen over the years", not "dedicated to" or "written for" Hong Kong. I have lived in Hong Kong for many years, and its immense influence is not easy to generalise. For example, the "head" in So Black does not have "Hong Kong" feature, but the Confucian ideal for the son to inherit his father's business is originated from my youth. The political changes in Hong Kong in recent years have attracted worldwide attention. Having witnessed the endless ridiculousness of the repressive regime, the daily police brutality, and the protests joined by millions, I believe that no Hong Konger can be spared by these experiences, and I am no exception. After writing 《鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩》[Eagle-headed Cat and the Music Box Girl], I set out to write a novelette inspired by the movement. During the movement, I felt speechless from time to time. This sort of speechlessness can only be expressed through creative writing, because they are thousands words behind. However, writing about Hong Kong and the experience is only a superficial connection with the city. The deeper influence of place on a person in fact lies in one's beliefs and language, and it lives within one’s writing.
Translation is an intimate action, because the translator is the most attentive reader, doing all he/she can to understand every word and sentence in the author’s work. There are mainly two English translators who have rendered my work, Nicky Harman and Natascha Bruce (Tascha). Because I can read English, I can make some comments during the translation process. Translators sometimes ask questions that I have never thought of, which in turn sparked some new inspirations on my work.
I also have had the opportunity to meet and talk with translators in other languages, but my involvement in the translation task is basically little to none. I have to say that so far, most of those who are interested in translating my work are female translators, and they are all very smart and quite a character. So, even if I cannot read the translated texts, I can still imagine that they are all great.
Tascha once lived in Hong Kong. We have had the opportunity to become friends. We applied for a literary residency programme, and together we talked about literary activities and publications. The novel I recently published is not finished yet, and she has already started translating it. Literary creation is a very personal matter, and the translator has almost become my closest partner in the process.
Titles such as Compendium seem to be born for the canonisation of literature, but the situation in Hong Kong is somewhat different. Around 1997, mainland China published a lot of Hong Kong literary history in a rush, intending to incorporate Hong Kong in the literary category. The intention was obvious. There has never been a local literary history book for Hong Kong, and this has long been an issue. Compendium of Hong Kong Literature 1919-1949 started by compiling and selecting early literary works, and it can be perceived as the preparation for writing history. This series of publications has unearthed many unknown Hong Kong writers and historical materials. In the long run, it will not only give us a better understanding of Hong Kong literature, but it can also overwrite some of our conventionalised thoughts on "Modern Chinese Literature".
The first one who proposed the idea of starting a magazine is Tang Siu Wa. She believes that our creative work is nourished by the literary magazine edited by the previous generation, and in return, we should publish a literary journal for authors younger than us. I agreed with her, so together we began to invite more like-minded people in the project.
When Fleur de Lettres was launched, we hoped that the magazine could devote more effort into the design and change the stereotype and image of literary magazines. Chi Hoi, Kong Khongchang and others were the art editors at the time. In hope of offering young authors an open platform, we didn’t want to adopt the style of peer publications. Yet, after the rise of online media, the mission of Fleur de Lettres in this regard have long been completed. I am no longer involved in the editing of Fleur de Lettres, and it might be more appropriate for the new editorial team to explain the current direction of the magazine.
It has been a long time since I participated in the editorial work of the magazine. This sort of people-facing task is really not my forte.
Although I am also engaged in literary research, I don't think of myself as a scholar. There are too many restrictions on the way academic papers are written, and it is not my favorite genre. I prefer to write literary reviews in a broader sense, and to converse with other works in different ways.
Still, I am doing research. My current plans are mostly related to Hong Kong literature, because I think that some unique and interesting aspects of Hong Kong literature have overflown the discourse of "modern Chinese literature". I seek to address them outside of the existing framework.
As for creation, it is such a vast and possible world. I just want to keep writing.
I actually find myself to be a rather creative child from the very beginning, so ever since I was a little girl, I would be very interested in drawing, reading and writing various things. When I got into secondary school, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend an elective Chinese creative writing lesson that my school was offering as an extracurricular at the time. Some of the teachers are very prominent names in the Hong Kong literary scene, including Mr Dung Kai-cheung, who is still a friend to this day. In those writing classes, I realised that creative writing, especially in Chinese, is a medium that I really enjoy because it sort of doesn’t have a lot of physical limitations to what I can do. As long as I can imagine and I can put it in words on paper, then anything is possible. I didn’t have to, for example, wait for paint to dry if I were doing painting; I didn't have to find a space to move around if I were to express myself through movement and dance; or I didn’t have to wait for the room to quiet down before I play music to express myself. So I found that writing gave me a sort of voice and outlet for my creative power since then, and the creative writing classes introduced me to the wonderful world of Hong Kong literature and fiction writing in particular.
From then on, I started writing when I was in secondary school. I started writing in a local newspaper every week and published quite a number of short stories during my A Levels, and I collected them into my first short story collection by the time I entered university and I was reading Comparative Literature in the University of Hong Kong as well as Psychology as my undergrad. After that, I went to London to pursue a Master of Arts in English at King's College London, which I hope gave me a bit more of an exposure to the literary world outside of what I'd already known. To this day, I am still very grateful that I had that sort of early exposure to creative writing and literature back in the very first year of secondary school and I’m very happy that I have been writing ever since.
I would definitely say that my home would be Hong Kong. I've been increasingly aware that I am a person who happens to live on planet Earth as a Homo Sapien, but I was born in Hong Kong, I was raised here, and I live here every day and a lot of the things that I see in everyday life becomes my influences in writing, so it is very difficult for me to imagine calling any other place home in this great planet than Hong Kong. So I would definitely say that if I were to describe my cultural identity, it would be a Hong Konger who likes to travel around and look at other things in the world outside of Hong Kong, but ultimately a lot of the stories that I am able to tell comes from here.
I definitely consider myself a Hong Kong writer. I would hope that the stories I tell add a voice to the body of works that come out of Hong Kong, in terms of creative writing. I believe very strongly that every person who writes – whether you take it as a sort of hobby or if you’re a serious person who wants to do writing for your entire life – that you have a unique voice and these stories that you tell can only be told by you. Even if we experience the same things, living in the same city, we will not be able to tell the same story. Every story counts, and I do hope that by adding my stories to the incredible range of narratives coming out of Hong Kong, we would be able to see a bit of this wonderful city that is seen through my lens and experiences.
I would say that I am a huge fan of Hong Kong literature to a point where I cannot imagine what my life would be if I hadn’t been so interested in it. A lot of te times, people like to throw around the cliché that Hong Kong has no culture, this is the cultural desert, and writing has no future or anything in this sort of city that places a lot of emphasis on pursuits other than creative arts. But I would say that Hong Kong literature has helped me see the world around me in terms of how the city came into being, how the people that we share the city with, the people who came before us, the generations before us lived their lives in the same physical space that we occupy now, and we can through Hong Kong literature, imagine what kind of life we can live in Hong Kong in the present or in the future. So it is something that is very dear to my heart and I am very passionate about it.
If I were to sort of describe what I think Hong Kong literature is through a general idea, I would say that it’s such a passionate and diverse body of works, because, like I’ve said, Hong Kong isn’t particularly a place that rewards people financially or otherwise for being creative. We’re not exactly known for encouraging people to pursue a career in arts. Despite all of that, generations and generations of writers have worked so hard to put the stories out there for us to read, and I know a lot of people are still doing it including myself. For us all to pursue this without a lot of monetary gain or fame or anything more tangible or rewarding that comes with it, that takes a lot of passion collectively. So I would say that we are a bunch of people that are very passionate about what we do and we are willing to do it whether people are reading it or not, and I am glad to say that I see a lot of people appreciating Hong Kong literature and sharing this kind of passion. The sort of voice that Hong Kong literature likes to give off is that we each are allowed to define our own experiences. There’s no one unified way of going about writing about this city, or there’s no one tradition in terms of writing style that everyone has to follow. Everyone is allowed to invent their own, or engage in dialogue with what has come before us in terms of the lineage of work that has been around before we started writing or reading. So I think it’s a very sort of healthy balance of respecting tradition while stating your own claim as a person with a unique voice. These are the things that I think characterises Hong Kong literature to me.
Basically every time people ask me who are the writers that I admire, I would always start with Xi Xi. She’s a personal hero of mine and I’d like to think that she’s a good friend. I have the incredible privilege of knowing her in person these few years, but way before I met her and became her friend, I had been admiring her work from a distance ever since I started learning about this thing called literature. When I was a student in the Chinese creative writing classes as an extracurricular activity in secondary school, I was introduced to her poetry, her prose, her short stories and her novels, and every single piece of work that I’ve encountered that came from Xi Xi spoke to me in a way that transcends sort of artistic… it’s a sort of connection that is not just because it’s an incredible story, but that I can see that she sees the world in a similar way that I do. Xi Xi sees the world in a very gentle way. She focuses on the little details in everyday life, the goodness and kindness in a lot of it without ignoring a lot of the suffering or the inevitable pains that we as human beings may share as we go through our lives. It gives me a lot of inspiration and a sense of companionship that there is this great writer living in the same city that I am, who has been writing for her entire life and telling stories that still speaks to me.
I have this amazing opportunity of meeting her and become her friend these few years, and I’ve also been very fortunate to be able to present her works in various ways including helping edit one of the special issues in Fleur des Lettres, or Zi Faa《字花》, a local literary magazine with a special issue dedicated to Xi Xi last year, and I've also adapted two of Xi Xi’s famous short stories, A Girl like Me, and The Cold, into a Cantonese-language chamber opera. So that was a very innovative way of going about both in terms of chamber opera and taking Hong Kong literature from the form the written text to a different genre of art. Both personally as a reader and as a creative person and as an editor, I find her work to be incredibly inspiring and that I really really couldn’t imagine what kind of person I would be if I hadn’t met this great person and had been introduced to her work.
The other writer that I have always found very inspiring to me is the late and great Lau Yi-cheung 劉以鬯. As a person who primarily writes short stories and fiction, his dedication to writing — both in terms of writing a lot of works very quickly, so that we get to see a lot of different styles from him, and his obsession with creating new forms and new ways of telling stories, both of these things are very inspiring to me and influential to my own personal writing style. So I was also introduced to his works when I was in secondary school doing creative writing after class. I remember him saying in an interview that you have to try something new every time. It might not be perfect every time, but you have to try and do something new. That is a sort of mantra that I’ve given myself when I first started writing short stories particularly. I had to produce one short story every week for the newspaper when I was seventeen years old, so it took a lot of work to try and come up new ways to tell a story when you have to produce works so quickly and so consistently for over a year, but Lau Yi-cheung used to write in newspaper columns as well. He's very famous for being able to write so many stories at the same time. Some he would characterise as something is just for a, perhaps, a more "lowbrow audience", but some he would be writing for his own artistic pursuits and pleasure, and I find his tenacity in writing and his ability to produce a huge amount of good works quickly and innovatively to be very inspiring. So I have always tried to follow in that direction, challenging myself to find new ways to write short stories and pay a lot of attention to the form and language of short stories and how they actually play into the theme of the short stories so that the form also helps tell the story. So Lau Yi-cheung would definitely be on the list of writers that I like from Hong Kong.
Last but not least, another writer that I really really admire would be Ye Si who also passed away recently. I had the opportunity of meeting him when I started becoming interested in creative writing. When I was a teenager, I would go around the city with some of my friends who also shared the same passion to attend a lot of sharing sessions and public speeches given by local writers. A lot of the times after that, we would go and have tea in a restaurant nearby. For some reason, I seemed to keep running into Ye Si and he had been very kind and very encouraging to young people. I am sure a lot of writers and students in Hong Kong who have had the opportunity of meeting him would agree that he is a very warm presence, and he is not shy in showing his support for people that he thinks have sort of talent in creative writing. I’ve always admired Ye Si’s poetry, although I rarely, or almost never write poetry. Ye Si’s poetry really touches me in a lot of ways. For example, he would be able to take everyday experiences and present them through a lens of knowledge, through intertextuality and speaking to cultures outside of Hong Kong, or speaking to moments in history, or in art, or in film. The sort of idea that he had with using literature as a way to communicate with other art forms and with other people, is something that I find fascinating and very important to me as well. So when I was twenty years old, I published my first book, and at that time, I was invited to an interview with a journalist in a café. I didn’t know that Ye Si would actually be in the same café at the same time as he was being interviewed by the same newspaper. When I arrived at the café, Ye Si greeted me very kindly and the journalist recognised that we knew each other, so she invited Ye Si to comment on my works. I was very nervous because I was almost a nobody who had just published her first book as a twenty-year-old person who was still very very nervous about whether I actually have what it takes to be a good writer, or whether the book that I had just published was up to par when I knew that there were so many great writers already with their brilliant books that had inspired me so much, and I was just a newcomer to the scene. But in the café, Ye Si was so kind and generous with his words that he praised my works and said that he was very pleasantly surprised that such a young person was able to produce stories that were so interesting. That is a sort of anecdote in demonstrating how I see Ye Si as a writer from Hong Kong who sort of paved the way in a lot of things and was not shy in giving out compliments and encouraging the younger generation to pursue their passion in creative writing. I think that combined with the admiration I already had for his poetry and his other forms of writing, there’s a special place in my heart for Ye Si, definitely.
I would definitely say that I find a lot of similarities in my own writing compared to Xi Xi's. That could be because I started learning about creative writing by reading Xi Xi's work, and also because I do feel like we see the world in a very similar way. I would sometimes like to joke that I find myself to be from the same planet as Xi Xi in a sense that we seem to naturally gravitate towards certain topics and ways of connecting with the world. For example, Xi Xi is very well-known for her childlike wonder of everything that happens around us including the most mundane of things, perhaps a new laundromat that suddenly opens in your neighbourhood, or whether the lines in the post office have been shortened because fewer people are actually posting physical letters in this age of technology, or we would pay a lot of attention to the news that happen in the world, and go about speaking about these incidents or issues in a way that shows that we care, but we do not go about screaming angrily. Rather we would engage in a sort of conversation or present a way of trying to understand it in our gentle and soft-spoken manner, but still with the very distinct point of view.
I find that to be something that I have a lot of connection with in terms of Xi Xi's work and I try to do that with my own writing as well. Most prominently, the third short story collection I published called Lam Jip Dik Sei Gwai 《林葉的四季》 which is about a ten-year-old boy who finds fascination with everything in the city, and particularly the elements of nature that we find in this concrete jungle. For example, he would be drawn to the little bird that you see flying around in Central; he would pay a lot of attention to the dogs walking on the street; or he would like to defamiliarise a lot of experiences in daily life, so he would think that the person carrying a tray of freshly baked pineapple buns is actually a performer in a circus because he could lift something so easily and without dropping it, and ruining all the bread; or he would think that a squid in the window of a Cantonese barbeque shop is actually an alien, or that the person who sealed the top of a cup of bubble tea perfectly to a point where you can flip it over without anything spilling over must be a rocket scientist who found the way to defy gravity. I find that using this sort of defamiliarisation helped me understand the world in a completely different and childlike perspective, which could actually lead me to some new ways of seeing the world and some truths behind it. I think a lot of Xi Xi’s work also employs a similar tactic in understanding the world as well.
I would say that there's a tradition of using some of the techniques that Xi Xi's known for by other Hong Kong writers, especially those who engage with the form of fiction. Most specifically, I was thinking about how Xi Xi started very famously wrote these. I do think there is a tradition in writing about Hong Kong that we can probably trace back to Xi Xi about trying to describe Hong Kong by giving it a nickname that is unique to each writer. You probably all know that Xi Xi famously wrote Marvels of the Floating City, which is treated as a very famous political allegory of the situation of Hong Kong when it was still a colony of Britain and the fate of the city after 1997 was being discussed. By deliberately misreading paintings of Magritte, Xi Xi was able to create a narrative about a floating city that we can recognise as Hong Kong, but was not explicitly stated so. I think this sort of way of talking about Hong Kong opens up a lot of possibilities of the writer presenting what she thinks Hong Kong is to her and what it could be. I think this sort of space created by giving Hong Kong a nickname is inherited by generations of writers after her. So we see Dung Kai-cheung writing in a lot of ways that weaves together real pieces of history with fictional stories that speak to that piece of history. In particular, I was thinking about the book Atlas, if I’m not mistaken, where he basically wrote a sort of half-true-half-fake history about a lot of things in Hong Kong.
There are also a lot of writers after Xi Xi who have created various nicknames of Hong Kong and try to define the city or describe it in a way that is very very unique to each writer. I have also tried doing this in the first book that I published.
So when I was writing about real-life events that happened in Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world in my first short story collection, I gave Hong Kong the nickname of City Y, because I felt like I needed that safe space created by a nickname and the form of fiction for me to understand and present what I saw as reality, because at that time, I was acutely aware that I was only a very young person. I was about seventeen or eighteen at the time. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about the real world of Hong Kong or how life actually works, but I was confident that I knew what I saw, what I experienced, and the emotional connection and intellectual thoughts that I had when I saw the news at the time. By giving Hong Kong the nickname of City Y, I felt like I could safely explore what real-life events in Hong Kong meant to me. For example, what does it mean if a tree fell in Hong Kong and killed a girl that was similar to my age? Or what did it mean when there was swine flu in Hong Kong? Those are very new ideas to me as a young person and if I were to state a claim as an authority in analysing why trees fall in Hong Kong, or how infections and viruses work in a public health context, that would definitely not be unconvincing and that would make me very nervous actually. But in fiction, I was able to create a fictional city to speak about it and to address these real-life issues just like Xi Xi did. So I would say that that is my way of engaging with a sort of tradition, that a lot of fellow writers in Hong Kong in generations before me and the same generation as I am have been doing that we can probably trace back to Xi Xi. I would definitely say that there is a thread in a sort of literary tradition in Hong Kong that is heavily involved with Xi Xi.
The city of Hong Kong is definitely very influential in my writing and who I am as a person. I would go so far as to say that I would definitely not be the writer that I am today if I weren’t born and raised here. I am fascinated by the history of Hong Kong. I would go and do research about it for fun and try to bring that element in my own fiction. I am also really fascinated by the hybrid use of language that Hong Kongers are so used to. We speak Cantonese as our mother tongue most of the time for most people in Hong Kong, but at the same time, our language is actually influenced a lot by English, which is also an official language of Hong Kong. We would have words taken from other cultures and languages, such as from mainland China, from Taiwan, most of that through popular culture or reading, because we all write in written Chinese. We would also borrow words from Japanese or from Korean, even from other languages in the world. That is something that is very natural to us, and sometimes we can even switch between languages, just to address a point or to speak to a different audience. I think that is very interesting in seeing how this sort of language influences can affect writing in Chinese in Hong Kong. Recently, I’ve been experimenting a lot with bringing Cantonese into the written form. I’ve been exploring how to use Cantonese in the form of a chamber opera, which is something that not a lot of people have done, and I don’t see a lot of people doing it in the world, and I am very proud that I get the opportunity to do that by adapting two of Xi Xi’s short stories into a Cantonese-language chamber opera.
I also find Hong Kong to be a place where I was able to engage in a conversation with via my writing and the various other things that I do about literature. I am very lucky that I see there are people in Hong Kong, or perhaps even outside of Hong Kong, who enjoy my stories and find that they present an aspect of Hong Kong that they find relevant and thought-provoking or enjoyable in general. That makes me feel like I truly belong to this place called Hong Kong, because the things that I speak about, the language I use are all from Hong Kong. You would be seeing people on trams in Hong Kong in my stories; you would see them eating the sort of foods that we are all familiar with; and all these stories would be told using written Chinese in a way that stays true to all these strange language influences from all over the place that actually defines the sort of way that we speak in Hong Kong. So I would say that writing about Hong Kong sort of helps define who I am, and I am glad that I was able to use my stories to speak to everyone who are willing to join me in conversation by reading one of my stories.
I think every writer would have a unique relationship with their translator. Recently I’ve been working very closely and frequently with the very talented Jennifer Feeley, who you may know as very famously the translator of a lot of the important works by Xi Xi. Jennifer and I met in Hong Kong once. At the time, she didn’t really get to speak to me a lot because she was quite busy with a lot of engagements and I was quite busy with my engagements. But afterwards, we connected on the Internet and started talking, and found opportunities where she could try and translate my works because she’d heard from Xi Xi and other people that my short stories are quite interesting. That sort of started our collaboration as writer and translator. The way we work together is that we work rather closely. She would ask me a lot of questions when she finds things that she is not clear about in the stories. Sometimes, it’s because I used some rather obscure references in Cantonese or reference to Hong Kong culture that she might not be familiar with, or sometimes I might just make a typo or make an error in my original writing. She’d jot notes down and send me questions, and I am always happy to answer them or sort of present to her my ideas or intentions behind doing certain things in the stories.
I think this sort of collaboration worked a lot for us because we are very open to each other in terms of asking questions and getting feedback, and that Jennifer is a translator who is not afraid of a good challenge, if that story is worth her engaging in that sort of challenge. Sometimes I do find that I don’t make life easy for anyone who wants to translate my stories, because I use so much Cantonese, so much wordplay that a lot of tiny things in the stories could take a lot of time searching for a solution to the trick that the language imposes. But Jennifer is always up to the challenge and she always surprises me with all these great and innovative ways of taking my stories from Chinese to English, and having it received so well in the English readership. So I am very glad that we found each other and have such a good working relationship, and I do feel that translators are very important to writers, both as companions in the creative pursuit that could be very lonely if you don’t have people in your corner rooting for you, and you don’t hear a lot of feedback from readers, but also as someone who truly understands your work as a translator, or who is willing to help you reach a wider readership by taking your writing from one language to another – that’s a readership to another. That would be something very encouraging and very beneficial to a writer, if they can find a very good translator willing to be their friend and who can do an excellent job in translating the works and helping share them with more people. So I would definitely say that the relationship between the translator and the writer is a very personal one, and a very professional one at the same time, and a very special one.
Writing the libretto to a chamber opera is one of the most challenging and wonderful things that I’ve ever had the opportunity to do. Firstly because I did not have any formal training in the form of chamber opera, and I had to learn very quickly along the way by finding good references and teachers from various fields, who might have different tools in their toolkits that could help me in writing a good libretto. So I was looking at poetry to figure out how I could go about with the language aspect of it because I would like my libretto to have a very poetic language; I would turn to very experienced readers of Xi Xi’s stories, to try and make sure I understand all the nuances in the original stories, so that in my adaptation, I can stay true to the spirit of Xi Xi’s short stories. I also spoke to some friends who actually studied music in university, who probably had some ideas about what composing and working with a composer means; and our composer Daniel Lo is actually incredibly incredibly helpful in the process, because he is an incredible teacher, who has the talent of making things very simple for you, and explaining things so quickly that you feel confident working with him that you can ask him anything and he would help you understand some of the difficult points in the working process. I am very glad that I had these people around me who were able to share their knowledge and wisdom with me. So that whole learning process and trying to gain confidence as a first-time librettist was very new to me, because when I started working on the libretto of the Cantonese chamber opera, I had already been publishing my short stories for over ten years, and for me to start jumping into a new genre, as someone completely new, that took me some time in learning to pick up this art form and to build up the confidence in myself, and I am very glad that I had that kind of experience to be a newcomer all over again.
Another thing that makes writing a libretto very different from my own writing is that, writing a libretto is a collaborative process. To my understanding, the form of the chamber opera has the primary goal of allowing the singers to showcase their beautiful voices and vocal techniques. That relies on beautifully written music, but the music often relies on the libretto, which is the first thing being written in the case of our collaboration between me and our composer Daniel Lo. Understanding that the writing is an important foundation to the whole performance, but also a tool to serve the purpose of presenting great music and great singing sort of shifts the power balance in the collaborative process as well.
When we were working together on the libretto, I would write a first draft based on an agreed-upon story outline that the composer and I had talked about, but I would write whatever I want in terms of the language, in terms of how I want to use metaphors and all that. After I had written the first draft, I would sit down with the composer and we would discuss how we can reshape the structure of what I had written to a form that is both true to my vision as a creative writer and a librettist, and to the composer’s vision of what he needs from the libretto to be able to write good music. After that, I would take the draft back home and rewrite it in a way that would make everybody happy and meet the very high standards that we all have for ourselves and the team, and come up with a very polished final product, which will still be further polished along the way when we actually start composing or start rehearsals.
It can actually last very long in terms of time if we were to do this very properly. We do have that kind of luxury working on this project, to spend, I think, about a year or so on just writing the libretto itself. Usually, when I write my own stories, it could, maybe, take a few days, or maybe up to a month to finish a short story, but the libretto took so long with so many revisions and polishing that I felt like I made a diamond because it was made with so much concentration, and so much pressure placed on myself to make it perfect. That was a sort of moment that I find that this, perhaps, is what art can be like, where you seek perfection to this sort of extent where you would rope your friends in and help you grind on it until you have it perfect. So I think that experience was also very unique compared to writing short stories as well.
In terms of translation, the libretto that I’ve written this time for the chamber opera commissioned by the Hong Kong Art Festival is also translated by Jennifer Feeley, who is a translator of my short stories and Xi Xi’s works at the same time. So she is a perfect fit for translating this particular libretto, because she would have the knowledge of Xi Xi’s works as the original form; she would know what kind of language I usually use to write; she also takes this project very seriously because she is also a huge fan of Xi Xi’s work, and we share that sort of passion and willingness and desire to make this project as perfect as possible, so when we were talking about how the translation can happen, I actually wrote her quite a number of notes on the margins of the libretto telling her exactly what references I used. For example, if I were talking about a phoenix crown, I would tell her that’s actually something very common to Hong Kongers. A lot of brides would wear a phoenix crown when they were getting married in a traditional Chinese gown, and a lot of Hong Kong brides would like to dye their hair just before their weddings, usually a shade of blonde and I would tell her that a lot of older generations of Hong Kong people doesn’t really approve of very dramatic colours in the hair. These kinds of cultural references would be a sort of hint for the translator to see what I was going for in terms of the imagery I wanted to evoke when the audience sees the libretto or the surtitle screen, what my intentions were or the intertextuality I brought into the libretto. In the original story of The Cold by Xi Xi is very famous for referencing classical Chinese poetry and contemporary poetry by Ya Xuan and I brought that aspect into my libretto as well, but sometimes not necessarily referencing the exact lines or exact poem from the original. So I would also mark those on the margins so that Jennifer would know which poems I was speaking about. I feel like in this process working with Jennifer as the translator, I was able to revisit the libretto and understand what I did in the process of writing it and polishing it, and to understand all of the complex elements that actually went into it. It sort of like an analyst or a critic. I find that sort of experience really fascinating as well because I rarely do that with my own work. Having to communicate clearly and constantly with so many people involved in the production of chamber opera, I find that the process of communication is in itself an education to myself as a writer as well. These are the very unique things that I’ve experienced as a librettist.
I was actually interested in this magazine since I was a teenager. When Fleur des Lettres was first founded in 2006, I was in secondary school and I was just starting to be very interested in Hong Kong literature, and I would go with my friends to a lot of cultural events or to listen to writers’ talk about their work in local book stores. I still remember going to the launch party of Fleur des Lettres when it was in 2006. Back then I already knew that this magazine was edited by a group of young people in their late twenties or early thirty years old. This magazine would address a lot of interesting cultural phenomenon that are very thought-provoking and make literature sound a lot of fun. Also it had this… they are very dedicated to giving a space for up-and-coming writers to have a voice in the magazine. So back in the day, they would have a special section dedicated to younger people who might not be an established writer yet, to send in their work, and if it’s good enough, they’d publish in the magazine, and the editors of the magazine would actually write their comments in the magazine. I found that it was a very encouraging and interesting way for me as a young person to understand what good writing could look like, or what other people see in my writing that they find fascinating.
Ever since getting to know this magazine back in the day, I’d been a reader and contributor to the magazine throughout the years, and after I finished my master’s degree in London and came back to Hong Kong in 2017, I was invited to join the magazine as an editor and I’ve been in this position ever since. I’ve really enjoyed being able to carry the torch and keep this magazine going because there’s this really interesting tradition to this magazine where the editors would always be kept at an average age of around thirty years old. People would join the editorial board and leave after a couple of years, after they feel like they’ve done all they have, or that they want to try something else. This is a sort of way that Fleur des Lettres tries to keep things fresh and to bring in the perspective of young people so that it can speak to the issues that are relevant to us today without the feeling that it’s the same old people doing the same old things over and over again, for decades and decades. I am glad that as a person of the age range of a typical Fleur des Lettres editor, I was offered the opportunity to join them in their work and I am really enjoying doing this and I hope to continue doing it for a while.
One of the things that I think characterises Fleur des Lettres in terms of what it does in the Hong Kong literary scene is that we create discussions and spaces for people to think about issues that are interesting. For example, when we as editors curate a feature special, we would always be asking ourselves why we are presenting this particular topic and whether the form that we are presenting it in does the best job in presenting those things. When we invite writers to contribute to our features or when we plan interviews with interesting people who might have something exciting to say about the topics we would like to discuss, we always keep that in mind the question of whether what we are trying to say using the magazine is relevant and digs into the issues deep enough that it gets people to think about things a little bit differently. We do have a pretty high standard with ourselves as editors, and I'd like to think that readers see Fleur des Lettres as a benchmark of what good writing can look like. I've heard that a lot of people would think that Fleur des Lettres has a really high standard in terms of what kind of writings we would accept from creative writers, and once you made it into the magazine, that means you've made a sort of standard, or you’ve reached a certain height. I am not necessarily sure if that is the case with a lot of people, but I do know that some people feel that way.
When I was starting as a creative writer, I felt that way too. I think that speaks to a sort of legacy of the magazine… when it first started having… when the magazine first started to have a section especially dedicated to new and emerging writers, and now we also try to do that perhaps in the form of the print magazine Fleur des Lettres or we also have an online magazine where we would accept writings from all over the world and we would accept a lot of writings from young people in Hong Kong. We would also try to help young writers in Hong Kong publish their books through Spicy Fish Cultural Production, which also publishes Fleur des Lettres the magazine. So a lot of these things we are doing, we are trying to do make sure that high quality writing from local writers especially the up-and-coming writers would get to have a voice through our platform as a magazine and a cultural production agency that helps publish things and helps send writers to cultural exchange programmes around the world. I’d like to think that we are giving opportunities to people who have a real talent and can produce good work and try to help them find a bigger readership. I think that is sort of how I would characterise the work I see being done by Fleur des Lettres.
The radio programme "Book Review" by RTHK is very interesting. It started its first episode in 1983. So it's been on air for almost forty years right now. It has a tradition of inviting local writers to be one of the hosts of the radio show and talk about literature, books and reading and publishing; issues that perhaps would not be so popular with other channels, such as Commercial Radio or commercial television stations because RTHK doesn't really have the kind of burden of having to shoulder financial gain of all of its programmes. I feel like "Book Review" is a very rare opportunity for literature to be discussed in the public using the wave lengths of a public radio. So I think that in itself is already a very unique and important thing to make sure there is a voice of literature freely accessible to everyone every week. The legacy of this programme being hosted by Hong Kong writers gives me a sense of having to make sure to do the best work I can as a radio host because the long lineage of hosts before me, a lot of them are very prominent writers in Hong Kong and they have their very unique perspectives in reading and how they’d go about discussing these books and making them sound interesting to the general audience. When I tried to imagine what the show would look like with me as one of the hosts, I would also try to make sure that I honour that legacy that is set in place by the generations and generations of hosts before me. So I would ask myself whether the books that I would like to talk about on air address important issues or they bring a fresh perspective in terms of storytelling, or whether that writer has interesting and important things to say. If I find that it is suitable, then I would invite these writers to come onto the show, share with us their work processes, what inspired their writing, how they felt about publishing their recent works. I find that it’s often both enjoyable to myself as a host and the audience, as well as for the person who is being interviewed, because a lot of times, writers in Hong Kong or people who are interested in the arts don't really feel appreciated on a day-to-day basis. We sort of unfortunately live in a city where we often prioritise professions that are more prestigious in terms of earning a lot more money than someone who'd be a writer or an artist, but by giving writers a platform on public radio, a lot of people are very excited and feel like this is a very significant form of recognition because there is this show that is willing to have them on and give them time and space to talk about their work and possibly get the tens of thousands of people who listen to the show interested in what they do. I find that to be important and enjoyable to myself as well. I find that everyone I meet would definitely have something to teach me and to teach everyone. There would definitely be things that only that person knows. The way they speak about something we are familiar with might inspire us to see the world in a different light too. So I feel like by being one of the hosts on "Book Review", I was able to engage in direct conversation with a lot of great minds in Hong Kong and sort of carry the torch in giving the opportunity to many great writers in Hong Kong to present their work on such a public platform. I hope they’ll be able to keep on doing that and be better at everything that I do on the radio show.
When I first joined the show "Book Review" as a new host, I had already been working as an editor at Fleur des Lettres quite some time, and my experience as an editor of a literary magazine is that they are no less important than creative writers or publishers because editors of magazines actually curate a space for people to tell their stories and present their works and writings. The way they create that space and maintain it through each and every issue that they publish periodically is something very important. They would have their own editorial decisions. They would have their own perspectives and what they want for the magazines. The sort of stories that they want to tell by piecing together different contributions from writers, from photographers, illustrators, translators and many other people who might be able to bring something new to the magazine. So when I first joined “Book Review”, I thought it would be exciting to show people what the different magazines in Hong Kong are doing.
Before I started the series on the show, I didn't really realise how many magazines there were and are starting to be published in Hong Kong. Even during the first year of me hosting the show, there'd been new publications coming up in Hong Kong targeting different readerships. So we have new magazines that wanted to teach local secondary school students how to write good book reviews; there are new magazines that wanted to show people that serious literary criticism is worthy of having its own publication in Hong Kong so that literary criticism can help contribute to the discussion around literary works and perhaps even help inspire the creation of new texts and new ideas. So I feel like by inviting so many different editors from different magazines to the show, I was able to learn from them both as an editor myself and as a member of the audience who may not be familiar with these magazines, but through their sharing of what they do with the magazines, and what they envision is a good magazine, we are able to see how these people are actually shaping the way we think and see the literary world around us or getting to understand and feel their passion of their work in itself is already very encouraging, because working as an editor, particularly as an editor of a literary magazine in Hong Kong is definitely not one of the most profitable professions that you can do. It has so so much work involved and it asks for so much knowledge and wisdom from you as a person that it sometimes almost seems like it's not worth it if you calculate how much money you might make from all of the hours of hard work that you put into it.
But despite all these, there are still so many people who put in so much effort into the magazines that they take care of and with so much passion in doing it on such a high level that I always find myself inspired by their passion and their hard work and every time after speaking to them, I know that I am not alone in what I find important and interesting and I would feel that there're people out there who, are just like me, who all still like literature and are willing to put in the effort in helping create spaces in magazines for people to present their works. So even just by engaging in that kind of personal connection with the guests on the show, I feel like I learnt so much from them that I just want to keep on doing this, helping people see that Hong Kong literature has so much fun and great platforms of publishing in it. Perhaps some of the new readers would be inspired by the show to pick up a copy or perhaps even subscribe to some of them. That would be a really grand wish that I ultimately hope that we would be able to achieve. Even if we don't get any new business for the magazines, I genuinely genuinely hope that their stories and sharing would inspire people because at least I am very inspired.
I assume that by anthologising, you mean the collection of writings from more than one writer into one cohesive book. And if we are talking about that kind of anthologising, I think it's very important because it is a way of presenting to the reader of the anthology the result of great research. I would imagine that the person who puts together an anthology would need to read very broadly in the area from which he is collecting the works. He needs to know the characteristics of each and every writer and whether that particular piece or writer is worthy of being in the anthology, or specifically what it can contribute to the narrative presented in the anthology, or what significance it has by being in it. So I would say that an anthology is the end product of a hugely labour-intensive and very important research work that involves aesthetic appreciation. It involves knowledge of literary criticism and it also involves a sense of what is important to the readers of this generation that prompted the need to have this anthology.
I think that to readers, it is a great way to start to learn about an area of literature. For example, personally I've collected anthologies of poetry that are surrounded by various themes. I've read poetry anthologies that are surrounding a particular generation of poets from a particular place. I have read poetry collections centred around the theme of bereavement or love. Personally, my short stories have also been included in anthologies of short stories being published and written in a certain period of time in Hong Kong or in themed anthologies, for example, there would be anthologies writing about nature in Hong Kong. I feel like these categories that the stories are put into help us understand the theme much better. As a reader, it’d be easier and quicker to just go to the anthology than to do the huge amount of reading that the editor of the anthology must have done to be able to put it together. I find that some readers actually got to know my works through anthologies as well. Some of the works that have been collected in anthologies I have not yet put into my own short story collections, but before I was able to put into my own book, some readers already found them in anthologies and would like to take them and make them into a different art form and present them in a different way, or even teach them in the university. So I think it would be an important way of disseminating works of literature and to connect with readers who might not have a lot of time or the ability to read so broadly and understand each and every writer by reading their individual personal publications. I feel like the anthology is sort of like a literary magazine or a department store if you will, where you get a curated collection of pieces that a reader can approach easily and start their own reading journey with.
In terms of Hong Kong specifically, I would say that anthologising about Hong Kong would be very good in getting people more excited about reading works from Hong Kong. Recently there have been debates online from overseas whether Hong Kong has no literature, written by people who were born and raised here, or sometimes even as an editor myself when I was thinking about who might be a possible candidate for us to approach for asking about if they would like to contribute to our magazine, we would sometimes open up an anthology as a sort of sampler to see what styles they write in, what sort of themes they are interested in or who is actually actively publishing. I feel like it’s sort of, even, like a phone directory of sorts for writers in terms of me as an editor needing that sort of information. So there are a lot of ways for anthologies to be used by different people who want to get to know the literary scene very quickly, or with a specific goal in mind, and I feel like Hong Kong literature in particular needs that. I definitely hope that more and more people would be able to put more anthologies about Hong Kong literature together.
There's always the cliché that Hong Kong is a cultural desert and that nobody likes to read, nobody is willing to pay good money to go see a theatre performance, but they are willing to spend a lot of money on an all day breakfast and a latte. I find that these clichés are sometimes true, especially if we think about how underpaid a lot of creators and editors and art administrators are in the city. But despite all of these challenges, there are still so many people in Hong Kong who are passionate and talented and competent in doing all of the work in culture that they do. We have people who are very passionate about becoming great art administrators and help artists reach a bigger audience. We have writers and artists who push themselves to actualise the best work that they can. There are also people who are very passionate readers, consumers of culture and literature, who would take time out of their busy schedules to come to a poetry reading or go see a movie that a local movie director has produced or buy their books and put them on a bookshelf – you know how important that is because Hong Kong is such a teeny-tiny place that allocating precious real estate area in your home to a book can be a sort of investment and recognition of worth. I would say that the cultural scene in Hong Kong is sort of weirdly encouraging to me in that way because even though a lot of people who produce or consume cultural products in Hong Kong are on the margin and not really on the spotlight all the time, they still do it and that must be something that they are so passionate about that they are willing to do it despite all of the sort of let-downs from perhaps not getting recognised by society a lot, or not earning a lot of money or sometimes even being questioned or you yourself questioning whether it’s still worth it to be an editor or be a writer. I think by seeing that there are still so many people who are passionate about it, I remain very hopeful that the cultural scene of Hong Kong will remain very creative and very energetic and still willing to put the best work forward whilst on the margin and not on the spotlight all the time.
I think as a writer and as a person, there's this innate drive within me to be creative and for self-actualisation, so it gives me pleasure to be able to put out a good piece of work that I knew that I had pushed my abilities as an artist and that I have made my craft better by creating better stories. But there's also this very human instinct for wanting to connect with other people. I am not particularly a very outgoing person in real life, but I find that through writing, I am able to engage in conversation with other people in the city and without having to actually physically engage with them face to face. A lot of times, the stories that I produce are able to even travel further than I physically can to readership outside of Hong Kong, or perhaps even, I would imagine, perhaps even if I died and someone found my book, my stories would still be able to tell them something about the experiences I had as a person in Hong Kong as of this moment. So these very natural instincts of wanting to do the best you can and to connect with other people and to communicate, I think they really do drive my writing, so in terms of a writer, I would still want to continue to better my work and keep on working hard at producing high-quality writings and try my best to show them to more people so that we can have a wider discussion and get more people interested in Hong Kong, or the form of short stories, or in reading and writing. That would be something that I would really like to achieve.
In terms of editing, I find that editing is a very important thing to me because I like to invite people to join discussions and to hear voices from different perspectives, and being an editor allows me to do that with the platform of a magazine. I feel like that is a responsibility and a privilege. Being an editor means that you have to put in a lot of work and be selfless in a lot of ways, and since so many people before me have done that, and created so many magazines that we still read to this day including Fleur des Lettres, that I now work at, I feel like I have a sort of responsibility to help take care of it in my own little way until it’s time to let the next generation of editors take it over and continue this legacy and maintain that space for everyone. So now I would try my best to take care of the area of work that is allocated to me in the magazine, and I hope to continue to be able to bring in new and exciting voices and give spaces to people who might have good stories to tell, and show them to a wider readership. That would be the sort of goal that I want to achieve as an editor.
My interest in literary translation comes from my learning experience. I majored in English Studies and Comparative Literature for my undergraduate studies. Most of the time, when we were reading World Literature, such as European novels and drama, we learnt about the texts through translation. The only exception was English literature because we could understand the original text. So literature and translation are inextricably intertwined.
For example, there was a course in our undergraduate studies entitled "European Novels". There was another one called "European Drama", and "Modern Chinese Literature". We used English as the medium of instruction. When comparing and analysing works of different literary traditions, it was inevitable that translation would be involved. Translation and literature, in fact, have always been inextricably intertwined.
After I graduated with my Bachelor's degree, I went on to study an MPhil. My thesis involved examining root-seeking literature in mainland China from the perspective of magical realism. As we know, magical realism, from a macro perspective, includes a wide range of works. From Kafka to the contemporary novelist Angela Carter, their works are all associated with magical realism. When we examine root-seeking literature from this angle, we'd touch upon translation issues. But this was yet to be a comprehensive research in translation, until my PhD thesis, which was a relatively systemic and comprehensive examination of translation based on theories and the whole literary system.
My research centred on a Hong Kong literary magazine in the fifties called Man Ngai San Ciu 《文藝新潮》 (Literary Current Monthly Magazine). The chief editor was Ronald Mar. During the study, I learnt a lot about translation, and the effect of translation in the process of cultural activities. Especially when we consider Mar’s translation project for the Magazine with reference to the context at the time and compare it with the situation in mainland China and Taiwan, we notice that it has its own unique features. That’s why translation and literature have always piqued my curiosity.
As for my upbringing, similar to a lot of students at my age, I grew up in a bilingual society. I came across many literary works from different places. Influenced by different cultures, I’ve developed a natural sensitivity to translation because I learnt about different cultures in the world through translated works.
If we look even further back in time – as I mentioned that Hong Kong is a bilingual region – I used to borrow translated novels from the public library. At the time, I'd wonder about the meaning of some expressions, as I encountered some terms in the novels translated in Taiwan which were different from our everyday expressions. For example, I did not know what "pu-ou" (僕歐) meant. It is in fact a transliteration of the word “boy”, which was commonly used in Taiwanese translations. From this little example, we can see that translations are presented differently in different places. When a novel translated in Taiwan arrives at the public library in Hong Kong and is borrowed by a reader like me, I would hit on some new stimulations and questions. We can see that translation is an interesting issue. I think this little example can demonstrate the relationship between translation and my background.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I have always been captivated by translation because it intertwines with literature. My current role is mainly to teach translation and cultural studies. I think that as a scholar and a researcher, if I have actual translation experience, that can be valuable to my teaching and research. Talking about translation theories and cultural topics without actual translation experience, in my opinion, is rather unconvincing. If one has certain translation experience, e.g. having translated 300,000 words, he or she will understand the difficulties and challenges of translation, as well as the possibilities. You will be more confident and catch the gist in an accurate manner. That’s why I think translation is never a burden, but a vital tool to my teaching and research.
My home is, for sure, Hong Kong. I was born, bred and educated in Hong Kong. I have also been working and have built my own family in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is absolutely my "home". How would I describe this home? I think Hong Kong is a bilingual city, a multicultural community. It carries a lot of values, thoughts and emotions, and it is a part of my life. If I were not in Hong Kong, I would definitely have become another person. Hong Kong is also a place that has given me countless opportunities to learn and experience. Hong Kong is, unquestionably, my home.
As for my cultural identity, many would say Hong Kong is a place where East meets West. This is absolutely right. We, on one hand, have inherited Chinese tradition. On the other hand, because of historical reasons, we have been a British colony for 150 years, and we have been deeply influenced by the West. This is not only about the system, but when people have long lived under this kind of system, our thoughts and the way we approach emotions diverge from the traditional Chinese society. So if I have to identify myself culturally, I think I have, on one hand, inherited certain traditional Chinese values, and on the other hand, have had the opportunity to learn from the western culture.
I would also like to add another point. Apart from the meeting point of East and West, we can also consider Hong Kong in the context of East Asia and Southeast Asia. For example, my father was born in Kuching, Malaysia. It’s because my grandfather went to Borneo for work, got married with a local Malaysian and my father was born. Due to a lot of reasons, my father went back to China, and then came to Hong Kong to dodge the draft imposed by the Kuomintang (the Nationalist Party of China). I didn't know why but I felt very familiar the first time I went to Malaysia. I think Hong Kong is akin to Southeast Asia and East Asia. You can find those traces in Liu Yichang's and Wong Kar-wai's works. If I were to describe my cultural identity, apart from Chinese and Western influence, Hong Kong is also closely connected to Southeast Asia and East Asia. To put it simply, I would consider myself a product of a bilingual and multicultural society.
I am genuinely interested in Hong Kong and Chinese literature, as well as Taiwanese literature. In comparison to mainland Chinese literature, I've in fact translated more Hong Kong literary works, especially Dung Kai-cheung's writings. As for mainland literature, I've translated some works of early contemporary literature, including the written correspondence between Lu Xun and Liang Shiqiu regarding their contrasting views on translation. As for Hong Kong literature, I've translated some works by Dung Kai-cheung and some shorter writings by Ye Si. I've also worked on the translation of Sinophone Malaysian literature. There is, in my opinion, a strong relationship between Hong Kong literature and Chinese literature. When I was in secondary school, we'd been introduced to the literary works from the May-Fourth movement, as well as contemporary literature in Hong Kong, mainland China and Taiwan. This is an important feature of Hong Kong literature.
If I were to characterise Hong Kong literature, there are two distinctive features that I would like to point out. First of all, it's the openness entailed in Hong Kong literature. In comparison to the literature in mainland China and Taiwan, the community in Hong Kong has been enjoying a relatively comprehensive access to the literary works since the May-Fourth Movement, and, at the same time, has been introduced to the writings from other countries. This is connected to the unique political environment in Hong Kong. In addition to its openness, another important feature of Hong Kong literature, in my opinion, is that it can elucidate the complexity of this modern city. The pace of life in such an international metropolis as well as our way of feeling and thinking are often encompassed in Hong Kong literature. I think this is also a remarkable feature of Hong Kong literature. We can see its openness on one hand, and its uniqueness as literature created in such an environment.
Among all the Hong Kong writers, the first writer whom I like is Ye Si, Leung Ping-kwan. The most impressive feature of his writing in my view is that it has shown me how to perceive this world from my own perspective. Especially when I was reading his works in secondary school, which was in the seventies and eighties, I felt that he was a genuine Hong Kong writer, depicting the local community and the tiniest things around us from a unique Hong Kong perspective. This is the point that stands out to me, that we need to see the world from our own perspective, create our own values and think about our relationship with others. This is the unique feature of his work.
The second Hong Kong writer I admire is Liu Yichang. I find him very interesting. He already engaged in cultural and literary events when he was in Shanghai. After the Communist Party established its rule in the mainland, he came to Hong Kong, and devoted himself to literary activities for a certain period in Nanyang. The impression he gave me is that he could find his place in different cultures and unveil something that people usually didn't notice. This is extremely remarkable.
The third Hong Kong writer that I admire is Dung Kai-cheung. I think his strength is that he is contemplative and meticulous. All these features as well as his perseverance and seriousness are demonstrated in his novels.
All in all, the three writers that I admire are Ye Si, Liu Yichang and Dung Kai-cheung.
The first time I collaborated with Muse was because of my mentor Martha Cheung. She herself was a very talented translation expert. She introduced me to the editor of Muse, Mr. Frank Proctor. I helped him translate two chapters of Dung Kai-cheung’s novel Si Gaan Faan Si《時間繁史》 (the Histories of Time) for the first time in 2007. The more recent collaboration was the translation project of Tin Gung Hoi Mat.Heoi Heoi Jyu Zan《天工開物.栩栩如真》 (The History of the Adventures of Vivi and Vera). We’d also worked together from time to time.
Muse is a very interesting magazine, and is completely different to other literary magazines. Its mission was to promote the literary culture of Hong Kong in the form of a bilingual magazine. I am under the impression that it was made with conscientiousness, and the design was vivacious. The founder, Mr. Frank Proctor, is a sincere and genuine editor who is extremely passionate about Hong Kong literature. I think he contributed tremendously to the promotion of Hong Kong literature, because there are fewer bilingual magazines in Hong Kong, and it is remarkable to see such a genuine person devoted to Hong Kong literature.
What are the difficulties and challenges I’ve encountered in the process of translation?
The first challenge is that he used specialised terms. in this novel, Dung Kai-cheung conveys his feelings and observations about life through the description of five everyday objects. That includes a sewing machine, the radio and all kinds of objects that we find in daily life. Many terms are involved, such as the structure of a clock and the components of a sewing machine. All have to be… Not only did I have to know the names of parts, but also learn how they operate. So it was like reading an encyclopaedia. But this was not difficult for me to solve, as long as I could find some reference books and understand how the objects work.
The second difficulty lied in the culture-specific system and names in Hong Kong. We knew that the novel would be published in North America, and I had to use American spelling instead of the British system, but Dung Kai-cheung and I discussed with the publisher Frank Proctor, that it was not appropriate to adopt American English for everything. For instance, in the Hong Kong education system, we would say Form 3, Form 5 and so on. That is because we adopt the British system in Hong Kong. If we conform to the North American style, it would be a bit strange. So we had to make some decisions on the culture-specific terms, and we did not want to obliterate the characteristics of Hong Kong by making changes to accommodate to the habits of North American readers. Regarding this point, Dung Kai-cheung and I had reached a consensus that, if our expression and context were clear enough, it was not difficult for North American readers to understand the content related to the unique culture and situation of Hong Kong. This was the second challenge.
The third aspect, which I believe is the greatest challenge for me in the translation process, was the texture and rhythm of the translation. This is the most difficult to grasp. I have always used a specific method, to take care of the details of the source text and maintain the structure of the novel and even tiny details, but I still hope the translation will have a kind of texture and rhythm so that the readers would know that the story happens in Hong Kong.
My intention was to translate this novel as a Hong Konger, who was born and bred here in Hong Kong. I hope that readers can sense it from the texture and rhythm of the translation, instead of thinking that it was translated by a native Briton or American. This was my intention and my aspiration. That’s why, in the translation process, the most important things to me are the rhythm and texture.
I just mentioned that I had to maintain the details and meaning of the source text. It should also be intelligible and readable. These are the most basic requirements, but I strived to create a piece of translation, of which the texture and rhythm could give readers a "Hong Kong" feeling. This was the greatest challenge I gave myself and I wanted to create this kind of effect.
I think the writer and I… I've mentioned that I've spent more time and effort on the translation of Dung Kai-cheung's work. When we were working together, I think we were collaborators, and this relationship was based on mutual respect and assistance. We worked together to finish a project. I was very lucky. I've heard a lot of translators and authors have different kinds of communication difficulties, but I was very lucky. Dung Kai-cheung had his absolute trust in me from day one. He said, "Just rewrite this novel in English". He placed as much trust in me as he could. Author’s trust and respect are what translators long for. It was a pleasant experience from the beginning.
My usual practice is to complete the first draft by myself without other interference, unless I encounter some problems that I cannot solve. Before I started my initial draft, I discussed with Dung Kai-cheung some basic issues, such as how to translate the book title and names, and we reached a consensus. But I seldom interact with the author when I am working on the first draft. This, on one hand, is the author’s respect for me, and, on the other hand, it's my own way of working, because I think the translation consists of many voices, among which one is the author's voice and another one is the translator's. As I've said, I was very lucky that Dung provided me a lot of space, respect and support. I planned to discuss with the author which aspects to improve on after having the first draft. In the translation process, after I completed the first draft, I sent it to Dung. He told me his suggestions after reading it, and we had further discussions. So the whole process was very pleasant and very smooth.
I would like to add that, in the process of translation, I struggled with a particular issue and I could not find an appropriate solution. That is the translation of the book title. The title of the source text, Tin Gung Hoi Mat.Heoi Heoi Jyu Zan《天工開物.栩栩如真》, consists of eight words, but it embodies a profound significance. How can it be expressed accurately in a concise manner? It is a considerable challenge. Dung and I spent a lot of time on this issue and the current title is actually his suggestion. We can see that the author and the translator, in this case, worked together efficiently. Both of us had different input and reached an agreement very easily. It was overall a very pleasant experience and a valuable learning process.
The literature and cinema of Hong Kong are closely connected. Since the fifties, many writers have taken part in film production, for example, as screenwriters. Many literary works have been adapted into films as well, so we can see that the literature and cinema of Hong Kong are closely related. This topic has been studied by many scholars, including Prof. Leung Ping-kwan. My interest, on the other hand, lies in the linkage between literature and cinema in the translation aspect. When film adaptations are created, that can be regarded as a sort of conversion and translation process from text to image, and we can come up with a lot of observations in that process. I’m interested in what we find when we look at that process from the perspective of translation… in the things we find in literature but not in film.
There are two examples. I’ve written two articles, one of which is about Stanley Kwan’s Lan Yu (《藍宇》), adapted from an internet novel. Another Hong Kong director, Wong Kar-wai, adapted a martial arts novel by Jin Yong into Ashes of Time (《東邪西毒》), and another short story Intersection (《對倒》) by Liu Yichang into In the Mood for Love (《花樣年華》). For these two novels, if we only watch the films, we would not be able to observe some of the details and this is an issue prompted in the process of adaptation.
I personally think that the relationship between cinema and literature can take many different forms. Some people think that adapting a novel always implies being unfaithful to the source text, but I'd say that’s a rather traditional, incomprehensive view. In many cases, there are many complex and different aspects between novels and movies that can be explored, and my next research project is also about this.
There are two aspects. In the personal aspect, translation is always a learning process to me. I always feel like a student. Challenges can be found in every piece of translation and I can learn a lot from that. Different writers have different styles, concerns and topics. Every piece of work is a new challenge to the translator. So translation, personally, is a learning process.
For example, when I was translating Dung Kai-cheung’s novel The history of the adventures of Vivi and Vera, I felt like rewriting a novel. I’d noticed a lot of issues that I’d never considered before. I could even say that’s a process of self-discovery. When converting a meaning from one language to another, you must ponder over it and pour your feelings, observations and thoughts into the translation. This is a form of self-expression. So this is a learning process that enables self-discovery and expression.
From the readers' perspective, I hope that my translation can bring a piece of work to somewhere far away, so that the readers who have no access to the source text can read it through my translation. If that can arouse the readers’ interest, I’d be very satisfied.
As I've mentioned before, I put a lot of emphasis on the texture and rhythm of the translation. Perhaps I can read an excerpt and discuss what strategies I'd used, why I’d translate it that way and what effect I’d like to create.
This is actually a short excerpt from a 300,000-word novel. It’s about a minor character called Ah-yiu. Apart from this excerpt, this character doesn't appear anywhere else in the novel. The narrator knows Ah-yiu since he is a kid. He is a spoilt kid. In the novel, he is portrayed as a distorted, violent person. But I found it interesting that Dung Kai-cheung could reflect the complexity of a human being with tiny details. This character is very negative on the surface, but the details can show his complex feelings and yearning.
The excerpt I am about to recite is about how Ah-yiu taught another kid how to fold paper planes. We can see the complexity of this character, as I've mentioned earlier, including his yearning and frustration.
Let me read the source text first:
阿耀懂摺很多次飛機,尖頭的火箭機飛得最快,但容易墜落,彎翼的旋轉機姿態最優美,但難以控制方向,最普通的紙飛機反而最穩定。小男孩很快就學懂摺不同類型的飛機,但投擲技術卻遠遠不及阿耀哥哥,飛機不是掉到巷子裏去就是撞到對面樓宇的外牆上,有一次還飛進一家人的睡房窗子裏,裡面有個小女孩伸出頭來,聽見阿耀猿叫幾聲就嚇得連忙縮回去。至於阿耀的飛機,則以越來越純熟的軌跡滑翔到泥水塘上,優雅地降落在那朱古力奶般柔滑甜美的水面上,跕開膠糊感的波紋,凝住半天,慢慢地沒入泥淖裡,爛成一堆茶渣。阿耀攀住鐵窗框,額頭抵着生銹的枝條,以囚犯的憂鬱目光,盯着那些曾經翱翔的紙飛機殘骸,眼神就好像和它們一樣,不惜墜毀與腐朽,往那空中縱身享受那片刻的飛躍。
Now I'm going to read the translation:
There was an afternoon when Ah-yiu taught the boy how to fold and fly paper planes. They threw them out of the window and competed to see which could land in the puddle on the empty construction site nearby. Ah-yiu could make different paper planes: a rocket plane that was fast but fell easily, a spiral plane that looped beautifully but had no direction, and the basic dart. The dart is the most common and most steady. The boy was not particularly good at constructing these flying ships. His planes often plunged into the streets or crashed against the buildings. One plane flew into a bedroom: a little girl popped out her head but sank back behind the window as soon as she heard Ah-yiu howling. Ah-yiu's planes flew much better. With ever greater efficiency, they glided onto the puddle, gently rippled the chocolate-milk-smooth surface of the muddy water, and stayed afloat as if they would stay there for all time, until sinking slowly to the bottom of the small pool, like tea leaves in a cup.
Ah-yiu clung to the iron window frame, his forehead against the rusty bars. With the melancholy eyes of a prisoner, he gazed at the plane wrecks, as if wanting to say how he longed for that leap into the air – even at the price of destruction. (p. 184-185)
As I've mentioned just now, I picked this excerpt to share my favourite passage within this 300,000-word novel. I've discussed it with Dung, and he said not many critics would talk about this kind of passage.
This is probably because of my identity as a translator, as well as my literary interest. I think this kind of detail, in particular, can illustrate Dung’s characteristics as a writer. We've mentioned that Ah-yiu is a complex character, and we can see from this excerpt the yearning and frustration of such a violent, distorted character.
In the translation process, I attempted to stick to the source text and pay attention to almost every single detail. There are some places where literal translation was used, e.g. 朱古力般柔滑甜美 as "chocolate milk smooth surface" in English. In these sentences, I did not avoid literal translation if it worked. Other times, I may not completely adopt the sentence structure in the translation. My usual practice is to first find out the most important words in a sentence or paragraph. Some terms and key words are indispensable and cannot be omitted under any circumstances. I’d therefore organise the paragraph based on these details. In many cases, the source text may be ABCDE, but it's not necessarily the same in the target text. Sometimes, E is placed first, and sometimes D is placed first. I think in this regard, the translator has absolute freedom to change it, if there is a good reason.
As mentioned earlier, what I want to achieve is to create texture and rhythm in the translation, as well as to express the most important information of the source text. For example, in the excerpt above, I especially value the yearning and frustration of the character Ah-yiu. When translating, I’d find out some key words and reorganise them.
As for the rhythm, my view is rather simple. From one paragraph to another, through the rhythm of the text, however fast or slow it is, I would like to preserve the author’s unique way to perceive and observe.
In this excerpt, I tried my best to achieve this – this is actually the excerpt that I translated most carefully. It is also a passage that I like in particular, although not all critics would agree with me, but I think this passage can illustrate some of my thoughts and observations when I translated this novel.