Category: Exclusive—Translation
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Editor’s note: We are delighted to present an essay by the distinguished translator Howard Goldblatt, whose work has been instrumental in introducing modern Chinese fiction to English-speaking readers. In his essay, Goldblatt reflects on his translation of Liang Xiaosheng’s My…
![[MY DESTINY] “Me and 𝑀𝑦 𝐷𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑦” by Howard Goldblatt](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/howard-goldblatt-my-destiny-and-me-for-cha.png?w=1024)
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Editor’s note: We are pleased to present the first chapter of Liang Xiaosheng’s My Destiny, translated by the renowned Howard Goldblatt, whose work has played a defining role in bringing modern Chinese fiction to an English-speaking readership. Readers interested in…
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Editor’s Note: “Digital Distances: Social Media, Intergenerational Conflict, and Female Visibility in Contemporary China” is the third in a series of three essays, together entitled “Glimpsing the Other Shore: Distance, Difference, and the Feminist Gaze in Contemporary Chinese Women’s Writing”,…
![[ESSAY] “Digital Distances: Social Media, Intergenerational Conflict, & Female Visibility in Contemporary China” by Caterina Petroselli](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/distances3.jpg?w=593)
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Editor’s Note: “The Body as a Site: Class, Migration, & Geographic Distance in Contemporary Chinese Women’s Fiction” is the second in a series of three essays, together entitled “Glimpsing the Other Shore: Distance, Difference, and the Feminist Gaze in Contemporary…
![[ESSAY] “The Body as a Site: Class, Migration, & Geographic Distance in Contemporary Chinese Women’s Fiction” by Caterina Petroselli](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/distances2-1.jpg?w=596)
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Editor’s Note: “Distance & Difference: Feminist Frameworks in Zhang Li’s An Anthology of Short Stories by Chinese Women” is the first in a series of three essays, together entitled “Glimpsing the Other Shore: Distance, Difference, and the Feminist Gaze in…
![[ESSAY] “Distance & Difference: Feminist Frameworks in Zhang Li’s 𝐴𝑛 𝐴𝑛𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑦 𝑜𝑓 𝑆ℎ𝑜𝑟𝑡 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑏𝑦 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑊𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑛” by Caterina Petroselli](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/distances1.jpg?w=597)
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[ESSAY] “Shaped by Hong Kong, Sharpened by Wudang: Gigi Chang’s Translation Practice” by Debra Liu For those of us influenced by the legendary Jin Yong (Louis Cha) Legends of the Condor Heroes series, yet unable to read lengthy works in…
![[ESSAY] “Shaped by Hong Kong, Sharpened by Wudang: Gigi Chang’s Translation Practice” by Debra Liu](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/gigi-chang.jpg?w=1024)
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Read Zheng Wang’s essay “A Gaze Across the River: On Translating Zhang Zhihao” HERE. Editor’s note: These translations, rendered by Zheng Wang, bring together a decade-spanning selection of Zhang Zhihao’s poems that dwell on family, rural landscapes, ageing, grief, desire,…
![[TRANSLATION] “Ten Poems” by Zhang Zhihao, translated by Zheng Wang](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/zhange28098s-profile-photo.jpeg?w=591)
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Editor’s note: Zheng Wang’s essay reflects on his encounter with the poet Zhang Zhihao and the process of translating his poetry across languages and generations. It traces their meeting by the Yangtze River into a broader meditation on rootedness, memory,…
![[ESSAY] “A Gaze Across the River: On Translating Zhang Zhihao” by Zheng Wang](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/https-__www.poetryinternational.com_en_poets-poems_poets_poet_102-28920_zhang.jpg?w=336)
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[ESSAY] “Fieldnotes: Bund and Flood” by Aizuddin Anuar Translator’s note: This is a translation of my own work, originally written in Malay and titled “Nota lapangan: ban dan banjir” (2025), which was published in MediaSelangor in Malaysia. Through a series…
![[ESSAY] “Fieldnotes: Bund and Flood” by Aizuddin Anuar](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/jelai-river_bund-aizuddin-anuar.jpg?w=1024)
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Translator’s note: Chi Ta-wei’s 紀大偉 short story, “Beneath His Eyes, in Your Palm, a Red, Red Rose Is About to Bloom” 他的眼底, 你的掌心, 即將綻放一朵紅玫瑰 (1994), is a queer, prophetic, postmodern, posthuman, drug-fuelled cyberpunk pastiche, a descent into a stygian labyrinth…
![[TRANSLATION] “Beneath His Eyes, In Your Palm, a Red Rose is About to Bloom” by Chi Ta-wei, translated by Nathaniel Isaacson](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/e-08897.jpg?w=1024)
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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)
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Earlier this week, the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2025 was awarded to the Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai “for his compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art.” Coverage in outlets such…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Whose Words Win the Nobel? On Translators and the Question of Literary Recognition” by Kabir Deb](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/copy-of-copy-of-taken-as-strictly-true-neuroscience-and-sinology-in-laszlo-krasznahorkais-f09d90b7f09d9192f09d91a0f09d91a1f09d919ff09d91a2f09d9190f09d91a1f09d9196f09d919cf09d919b-f09d918.png?w=1024)
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Chris Song’s Note: Selected from Hong Kong author Lok Fung’s acclaimed short story collection The Charred City, “A Wayward Wisdom Tooth” recounts the tale of Shevon Kam, a driven beauty executive who endures a decade-long struggle with a decaying wisdom tooth—a…
![[TRANSLATION] “A Wayward Wisdom Tooth” by Lok Fung, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/alireza-heidarpour-46cfxprdjni-unsplash.jpg?w=1024)
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Jacqueline Leung’s note: “果實微溫,” pronounced “gwo sud mei wun,” translates literally from Cantonese as “warm fruit” and phonetically echoes “grocery run.” When Stuart Lau Wai-shing attended the Iowa International Writing Program in 2017, a bus would arrive each Tuesday morning, ferrying…
![[EXCLUSIVE] “Warm Fruit” by Stuart Lau, translated by Jacqueline Leung](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/stuart-lau_jacqueline-leung_cha.png?w=1024)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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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)
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There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
![Protected: [EXCLUSIVE] “Ashen and Split: A Correspondence with Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng” by Alex Tan](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/qnh_history-draft.png?w=1024)
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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)
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[TRANSLATION] “The Singing of the Bluebird” by Yuan Jinmei, translated by Kevin McGeary About the story: 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…
![[TRANSLATION] “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)
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Chris Song’s Note: “The Charred City” conveys the manic restlessness Hongkongers felt after 1997. The story is set in the stifling social atmosphere of post-Handover Hong Kong, which was “charred”, ironically by pervasive celebratory fireworks. The protagonist, at the behest…
![[TRANSLATION] “The Charred City” by Lok Fung, Translated by Chris Song](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/lok-fung-cha-an-asian-literary-journal.jpg?w=1024)
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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)
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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…
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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)
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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)
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Lin Huiyin, 1904-1955 (Unknown author/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain) Mike Fu’s Note: I find myself drawn to Chinese writers situated at the interstices of history, culture, and language, and whose literary works demonstrate a hybrid subjectivity, whether overt or implicit. Lin Huiyin…
![[EXCLUSIVE] Two New Translations of Lin Huiyin by Mike Fu](https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/mike-fu-translations.png?w=1024)
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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)
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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)
Cha 