David Hawkes (1923-2009) and the Translation of The Story of the Stone is the fifth and final lecture in the series ‘On Culture & Translation’. It was presented by John Minford at the Hang Seng Management College on 12 March 2016.… Read

Arthur Waley (1889-1966) and the Translation of Chinese Poetry is the fourth lecture in the series ‘On Culture & Translation’. It was presented by John Minford at the Hang Seng Management College on 5 March 2016.… Read

It must however always be borne in mind that translators are but traitors at the best, and that translations may be moonlight and water while the originals are sunlight and wine.… Read

John Minford has provided the notes (class handout) for the Introductory Lecture in his series of talks under the title ‘On Culture & Translation’, previously published in China Heritage. The notes are reproduced below; a PDF version can be downloaded here.… Read

… felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken … — John Keats *** In February and March 2016, John Minford, co-founder of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology and a leading literary translator of Chinese, presented ‘On Culture and Translation’, a series of five public lectures at the Hang Seng Management College 恒生管理學院 in Hong Kong where he is Sin Wai Kin Honorary Professor of Translation and Culture 冼為堅榮譽教授 (中國文化與翻譯) in the School of Translation.… Read

Other People’s Thoughts is a section in the Journal of the China Heritage site. It is inspired by a compilation of quotations put together by Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans), one of our Ancestors, during his reading life.… Read

The Eighth Day of the Fourth Month 四月初八 is celebrated as the Buddha’s Birthday. Falling on the 3rd of May 2017 the festivities are sandwiched between China’s 1st of May International Labor Day 國際勞動節, a public holiday that lasts until the 2nd of May and marked by a long weekend, and Youth Festival 青年節 on the 4th of May.… Read

One of the many abiding legacies of Confucius is his legendary work as an editor. The Mentor-Exemplar of Ten Thousand Ages 萬世師表 is famed for editing the classic Book of Songs 詩經, thereby creating China’s earliest work of literature while at the same time establishing a tradition of censorship: according to legend he edited some 3000 folk songs and poems down to a scant 305 for the edification of his disciples.… Read

Christopher Rea’s The Age of Irreverence: A New History of Laughter in China (University of California Press, 2015) was awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize (Post-1900 China) at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in March 2017.… Read

The New York-based photographer Lois Conner’s work is featured on the masthead of this site and on that of China Heritage Annual, which was launched in March 2017. Lois and I met in New York in the summer of 1996, and since then we have worked together on many projects (a list of our collaborations is given below).… Read

Here we remember and commemorate the work of Wang Xiaobo 王小波, a writer of prose and fiction who died twenty years ago. In a celebrated essay titled ‘The Silent Majority’ 沈默的大多數, Wang wrote about what he called the yin and yang of public expression in China, or the World of Silence and the World of Speech: …people keep silent for any number of reasons, some because they lack the ability or the opportunity to speak, others because they are hiding something, and still others because they feel, for whatever reason, a certain distaste for the world of speech.… Read

In the 1980s, after completing his monumental translation of the first eighty chapters of The Story of the Stone 紅樓夢, David Hawkes retired with his wife Jean to an old stone farmhouse called Bryn Carregog (Stony Hill), in the mountains of Mid-Wales.… Read

The name Wang Xifeng is a byword for guile, treachery and cunning. A brilliant creation among the many brilliant creations of Cao Xueqin, author of the eighteenth-century novel The Story of the Stone (The Dream of the Red Chamber), Wang is familiar not only to students of Chinese literature, but to anyone who has dealt with people whose personalities are distorted by authoritarianism, patriarchy and the myriad forms of repression resulting from hypocrisy.… Read

The Fourth of April 2017 marks the day for ‘sweeping the tombs’ 掃墓, a festival on which respect is paid to loved ones and forebears. Known since ancient times as Qingming 清明, ‘Clear and Bright’, it is the Eighth Day of the Third Month (depending on the year, this can be the 4th, 5th or 6th of April according to the Gregorian Calendar).… Read

The day was fine, the air clear, and a gentle breeze regaled us, so that on looking up we responded to the vastness of the universe, and on bending down were struck by the manifold riches of the earth.… Read

Here we introduce two more figures in The Teddy Bear Chronicles 縫熊誌, created by the Hong Kong writer and teddy bear artist Xi Xi 西西, and translated by Christina Sanderson. The teddies and essay below feature Xi Kang 嵇康 and Ruan Xian 阮咸, two of the famed Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 竹林七賢.… Read

In modern China (as in so many other countries), changing fashions have reflected the shifting political and cultural landscape of the country. The success of the 1911 Xinhai Revolution not only saw the abdication of the last Chinese emperor, it also ushered in the Zhongshan Suit 中山裝 (known in the international media as the Mao Jacket) designed for the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan), an item of clothing replete with revolutionary symbolism.… Read

China Heritage Annual is a new series produced by China Heritage, the online home of The Wairarapa Academy for New Sinology 白水書院. Along with the China Heritage Journal it is a successor to China Heritage Quarterly, an e-publication produced under the aegis of the China Heritage Project from 2005 to 2012.… Read

An Educated Man is Not a Pot: On the University was edited in 2016 to commemorate Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys, d.2014), one of the Ancestors of China Heritage, and my mentor.… Read

The Man With the Key Is Not Here 管钥匙的人不在 Karin Malmstrom & Nancy Nash   The Man With the Key is Not Here 管钥匙的人不在 offers ‘Sixteen Chinese Key Words’ (pun intended), or ‘Everyday Mantras’, and their layered meanings, that Chinese watchers of China know to be on the watch out for.… Read