Category: Exclusive—Fiction
-
Chris Song’s Note: Liu Yichang’s 劉以鬯 (1918–2018) short story “Riot” 動亂, set against the backdrop of the 1967 Hong Kong Riots, is a hauntingly experimental meditation on violence, urban alienation, and the blurred boundary between the living and the inanimate.…
![[TRANSLATION] “Riot” by Liu Yichang, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/liu-yichang-and-chris-song-1.png?w=1024)
-
Ma Ka Fai’s note: These are selected excerpts from my novel Once Upon a Time in Hong Kong III (雙天至尊), forthcoming this year. The story’s protagonist, Hon Tien-Yan, is a passionate martial arts enthusiast and an ardent admirer of Bruce Lee.…
![[TRANSLATION] “Master Ip and the Dragonling” by Ma Ka fai, translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/ma-ka-fai-e9a6ace5aeb6e8bc9d.png?w=1024)
-
“Article 5.3: Under no circumstances shall any citizen go to the capital.” This is one of the most serious of all our laws. Anyone who grew up in my village of Orfetel, only a few days’ travel from the ruins…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “In Farghestan” by Matt Turner](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/farghestan6-1.png?w=972)
-
Artwork by Raimonda I suppose you’ve seen obituaries shared on WeChat. People post them thoughtlessly, almost as if it’s routine. It feels strange, doesn’t it, that a life concludes in such a trivial manner? I used to find it unsettling,…
![[EXCLUSIVE—FICTION] “A Social Post” by Edward Allen](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/a-social-post-by-edward-allen_illustration-by-raimonda-1.jpg?w=1024)
-
Chris Song’s note: Roses in the Floating World 浮世薔薇 is the debut novel of Luwei Rose Luqiu 閭丘露薇, bearing an autobiographical touch as it recounts the lives of three generations of women—Miss Zhao, Ruolin, and Xiaoyu. The narrative follows these…
![[TRANSLATION] “𝑅𝑜𝑠𝑒𝑠 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 [An Excerpt]” by Luwei Rose Luqiu, translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/luwei-rose-luqiu-and-chris-song_cha-an-asian-literary-journal.png?w=1024)
-
Chris Song’s note: Haixin 海辛 (1930–2011) was one of Hong Kong’s most prolific realist fiction writers. His deep curiosity about various professions and the lives of ordinary people in Hong Kong, combined with his broad taste in literature, allowed him…
![[TRANSLATION] “Spirits of Cicadas” by Haixin, translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/haixin-e6b5b7e8be9b_chris-song.png?w=1024)
-
Chris Song’s note: Lü Lun’s “Piano Day” tells the story of May, a Garbo-like beauty who uses her piano sessions to extract tributes from men, ensnaring both T and P in a web of emotional temptation and entanglement. Like Lü Lun’s…
![[TRANSLATION] “Piano Day” by Lü Lun, translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/lu-lun-e4beb6e580ab_cha-an-asian-literary-journal.png?w=1024)
-
Andrea Lingenfelter’s Note: In “The Legend of a Funambulist”, Lawrence Kwok-ling Pun 潘國靈 takes us on a journey with the tightrope-walker Mantra from his origins in the former Soviet Union, through Cold War Europe, and on to sojourns in New York,…
![[TRANSLATION] “The Legend of a Funambulist” by Lawrence Kwok-ling Pun, Translated by Andrea Lingenfelter](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/lawrence-kwok-ling-pun-e6bd98e59c8be99d88-1.jpg?w=1024)
-
Chris Song’s note: In “A Night Flight”, the passengers endure days of eerie silence and mounting despair, with many succumbing to death and some choosing to leap into the night. The story draws a haunting parallel to the Flight MH370…
![[TRANSLATION] “A Night Flight” by Liu Waitong, translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/liu-waitong_cha.png?w=1024)
-
About the story “The Singing of the Bluebird” 蓝鸟啾啾: A Chinese man who grew up in poverty on a riverboat studies hard and becomes wealthy. After moving abroad, he marries a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Western woman. Enchanted by stories of his childhood among…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “The Singing of the Bluebird” by Yuan Jinmei, translated by Kevin McGeary](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/yuan-jinmei_kevin-mcgeary.png?w=1024)
-
Paul Bevan’s Introduction: This story comes from a series entitled Ways and Pathways. Each story in the series follows an individual, a man or woman, as they walk from point A to point B, and sometimes back again, and focuses…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “A Walk Around the Square” by Paul Bevan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/partial-eclipse.png?w=1024)
-
Vanessa Yee-kwan Wong’s Note: “Nausea” was published in Wong Bik-wan’s 黃碧雲Tenderness and Violence 溫柔與暴烈 (Cosmo Books, 1994). Inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel of the same name (La Nausée, 1938), the story encourages an existentialist reading of Hong Kong’s political precarity…
![[TRANSLATION] “Nausea” by Wong Bik-wan, Translated by Vanessa Yee-kwan Wong](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/wong-bik-wan-1.png?w=940)
-
Chris Song’s Note: Lawrence Kwok-ling Pun’s 潘國靈 short story “Twenty Years Since Losing the City” 失城二十年 is a sequel to Wong Bik-wan’s 黃碧雲 canonical short story “Losing the City”, which gruesomely explores the despair Hongkongers felt upon the 1997 Handover and the…
-
Chris Song’s Note: Liu Yichang’s 劉以鬯 (1918–2018) short story “Lunar New Year’s Eve” 除夕 imagines the last day of Cao Xueqin 曹雪芹 (1710–1765), author of The Dream of the Red Chamber 紅樓夢, who is believed to have died on Lunar New Year’s…
![[TRANSLATION] “Lunar New Year’s Eve” by Liu Yichang, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/liu-yichang-copy.jpg?w=1024)
-
Chris Song’s Note: Xu Nianci 徐念慈 (1875-1908), from Changshu, Jiangsu, was a Chinese writer, editor, and translator in the late Qing dynasty who mastered English and Japanese in his early twenties and was skilled in mathematics and writing. In 1904,…
![[TRANSLATION] “A New Tale from Mr Faluo” BY Xu Nianci, TRANSLATED BY CHRIS SONG](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/a-new-tale-from-mr.-falou-e696b0e6b395e89ebae58588e7949fe8ad9a2.png?w=880)
-
Chris Song’s Note: Chan Hay-ching’s 陳曦靜 short story “Boda’s Borders” 寶達的邊境 was originally written in Chinese and was first published in Hong Kong Literature Bimonthly 城市文藝, No. 105 (April 2020). It was later included in her collection Rocky, a Stray Dog…
![[TRANSLATION] “Boda’s Borders” by Chan Hay-ching, translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/chan-hay-ching-and-chris-song.png?w=934)
-
Chris Song’s Note: Xu Dishan wrote “The Gills of the Metal Fish” 鐵魚底鰓 in either 1940 or 1941 when he was living in Hong Kong. Different from his previous fiction with various religious elements, “The Gills of the Metal Fish”…
![[TRANSLATION] “The Gills of the Metal Fish” by Xu Dishan, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/image3-1.jpeg?w=1024)
-
Kendall Heitzman’s introduction: “Project Babel” was published in Japanese in the Tokyo Shimbun on 26 November 2022. It first appeared in English in my translation at a reading on 22 September 2023 at the University of Minnesota. An abridged version was…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Project Babel” by Li Kotomi, Translated by Kendall Heitzman](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/kendall-heitzman-and-li-kotomi_cha-an-asian-literary-journal-copy-1.jpg?w=1024)
-
TH: We are pleased to present Chris Song’s English translation of Mary Wong’s short story “Christmas Shopping” 聖誕購物, which is collected in Surviving Central 中環人. The story won the 25th Secondary School Students’ Best Ten Books Award. Ⓖ🅁Ⓞ🅄Ⓝ🄳……🄵Ⓛ🄾Ⓞ🅁 “It’s better…
![[TRANSLATION] “Christmas Shopping” BY MARY WONG, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/like.png?w=873)
-
TH: Wong King Fai’s short story “The Girl Without a Face” 無相女 was published in the Hong Kong Literary 香港文學 magazine in 2009 and is included in the author’s collection Hong Kong: Mock City 香港：重複的城市. In 2023, it was shortlisted…
![[TRANSLATION] “The Girl Without a Face” by Wong King Fai, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/girl-without-a-face_cha-an-asian-literary-journal.jpg?w=1024)
-
TH: In this very short tale, Guru T Ladakhi presents a defiant woman proud of ownership of her body and choices, unafraid of the gossip and speculation of others. Artwork by Anastasi Holubchyk. I know a great grandmother. She is…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Tall” by Guru T Ladakhi](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/anastasi-holubchyk1.png?w=940)
-
[Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997: All Entries] TH: Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997, in 28 sections, was written originally in Chinese by Mary Wong and serialised in Ming Pao 明報 in 1997. The pieces, translated into English by…
-
[Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997: All Entries] TH: Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997, in 28 sections, was written originally in Chinese by Mary Wong and serialised in Ming Pao 明報 in 1997. The pieces, translated into English by…
-
[Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997: All Entries] TH: Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997, in 28 sections, was written originally in Chinese by Mary Wong and serialised in Ming Pao 明報 in 1997. The pieces, translated into English by…
-
[Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997: All Entries] TH: Diary of the Absurd Life in 1997, in 28 sections, was written originally in Chinese by Mary Wong and serialised in Ming Pao 明報 in 1997. The pieces, translated into English by…
Cha 