PATHLIGHT NEW CHINESE WRITING SUMMER / 2013 Wang Anyi Yi Sha Bai Hua Bi Feiyu Li Hao Zang Di Jiang Yun Lu Nei Yang Li Speed Photo by Qiu Lei PATHLIGHT / SUMMER - 2013 1 Photo by Wang Yan PATHLIGHT SUMMER / 2013 Summer 2013 ISBN 978-7-119-08377-3 © Foreign Languages Press Co. Ltd, Beijing, China, 2013 Published by Foreign Languages Press Co. Ltd. 24 Baiwanzhuang Road, Beijing 100037, China http://www.flp.com.cn E-mail: [email protected] Distributed by China International Book Trading Corporation 35 Chegongzhuang Xilu, Beijing 100044, China P.O. Box 399, Beijing, China Printed in the People’s Republic of China CONTENTS Fiction 004 Wang Anyi _ In the Belly of the Fog _ 4 Tradition and Rebellion: A Conversation with Wang Anyi _ 12 Bi Feiyu _ The Deluge _ 18 A Professional Interest in Suffering: A Conversation with Bi Feiyu _ 36 Jiang Yun _ The Red Detachment of Women _ 46 Li Hao _ The General _ 58 Lu Nei _ Keep Running, Little Brother _ 66 A Yi _ Two Lives _ 88 Ren Xiaowen _ I Am Fish _ 100 Su Cici _ The Zebra That Didn’t Exist _ 110 Sheng Tie _ The Train Was Clean and Cool _ 122 Poetry 132 Bai Hua _ Small Town Tale, Village, 1977, Mock Nursery Rhyme, The Illusion of Life, Thoughts Arising from the Pig _ 132 Yang Li _ Fated, An Old Poem, The White Horse, Courthouse (I) _ 138 Yi Sha _ Rhythm is What Matters, Memories Evoked by Reality, Notes on Mt. Erlang, Cross-eyed _ 142 Zang Di _ Remembrance Series, Transmission Series _ 146 Ma Yongbo _ Night Traffic, Letter to My Wife, at Mid-Autumn Festival, Fragment of a Memory From 1977 _ 150 Recommended Books 154 Translators 156 Fiction 王安忆 Wang Anyi Wang Anyi was born in Nanjing. In 1980 she attended the Chinese Writers’ Association Literature Academy and in 1983 participated in the Iowa University’s International Writing Program. In 1987 she became a writer at the Shanghai Writers’ Association and in 2004 took a professorship in Chinese at Fudan University. She has pub- lished the novels Song of Everlasting Sorrow, Age of Enlightenment, Scent of Heaven, Bao Town, San Lian, Uncle’s Story and Tian Xian Pei. She has won the National Short Story Prize, the Mao Dun Literature Prize, the Lu Xun Lit- erature Prize, the China Times “Kai Juan” Book Prize, and Malaysia’s First World Chinese Literature “Hua Zong” Prize. Her works have been translated into English, German, Dutch, French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, and Vietnamese. 4 PATHLIGHT / SUMMER - 2013 In the Belly of the Fog By Wang Anyi hat this particular couple should appear the trip stretch out into a single line in the darkness. on this particular overnight train seems Of course, even a local night train like this one unnatural. has a soft sleeper carriage! Passengers come and go so T Most of the passengers on this local frequently here that the door to the car is always open, train over the plains of the northern border are farm- and the light always on – though, perhaps because of ers. They all wear winter clothes of dusted blue or a scant current or a bad battery, it shines only weakly. black, while at their feet lie satchels of the same color The soft-sleeper passengers are hardly peasants, yet and over-stuffed shape. Occasionally, a flame of bright- they also wear heavy, dark clothing against the north- ness flickers between them, the peach-pink or blue- ern winter. Their eyelids are swollen, presumably from green of a woman’s ski jacket, the gold hoops at her lack of sleep, blurring the contours of their North ears. Yet the color is a bit offensive, and does nothing Asiatic features. The dusky lamp above throws down but make the ambiance of gray depression all the more shadows of all sizes and shapes, and people sit sub- disappointing. Outside is only pure black – probably merged in shadows, each husbanding untrustworthy ten or eleven o’clock at night. Human shadows flicker motives and expressions. The tracks are quite old, and to and fro over the double-paned windows, followed the train wobbles heavily. At every switch in the rails by threads of tiny lights that run across the glass like it slams loudly, followed by a full-body shiver, as if hairline cracks, then vanish instantly. When the train the old train were gritting its teeth and jumping right arrives at a station, the windows all light up, admitting over. Followed by more wobbling. The soft-sleeper the shadows of those without. Yet the light dispersed compartment wall blocks the light from outside, so the into the train car washes out the view of things inside. scenery inside doesn’t change when the train nears a The recycled air from the heaters, the moisture of hu- station. Even as passengers go out and come in, it can man breath and the miasma of tobacco collect into one be hard to tell the difference; new people and empty clearly visible gaseous entity that oozes between bod- beds are all hidden in darkness. Mid-winter. North ies. Then the train leaves the station, the light on the China. The same people, the same winter clothes, the windows fades and dies out, and all returns to shadow. same North Asiatic faces. The scenery inside the car condenses and turns in on The man and woman get on the train separately. itself. There is one instant when everything stands out, When the man enters the soft-sleeper car, the woman outlines become sharp, yet it all falls back into void is lying on her bunk. Light from the station shines moments later. But the train moves so slowly and stops into their compartment. On the floor, which has lost so frequently that soon enough this brief instant of its paint to years of salt water and will never be clean clarity loses its ability to attract attention. So even this again if the stains go any deeper, sits a low-cut deer- subtle transformation sinks out of sight, and time and skin boot. The material has turned gray-black, with a PATHLIGHT / SUMMER - 2013 5 _ Wang Anyi few patches of the original yellow still vaguely visible. the light that slips around it from the corridor. Appar- The boot’s collapsing top with its soft wrinkles identi- ently, that space is quite bright. She feels the owner of fies it as real deerskin. From one angle, one can even the voice has arrived. His shadow, like his voice, cuts see the embroidered flower pattern at the top. The a clear outline of itself amid a hazy atmosphere. He other boot is lost in a shadow somewhere. The train leaps through the door, and leaps again over to the stands a while at the platform, then pulls away. This bunk opposite her, where he sits down. The two out- boot is also lost to the darkness, becoming a formless siders are now face-to-face. pile of shadow. The man judges that the owner of the Her body and her face are in shadow, but this sets boot is a woman, and certainly not from anywhere off the brightness of her eyes. They sparkle with a along this line. The woman wakes up on her bunk. quiet light. Not slept in three days, have you? he asks Her lazy consciousness is being invaded by a voice her with a smile. The grey background makes his skin speaking in a crisp Beijing accent. This accent rings appear particularly white. His face is one of the hand- strongly in the throat, and it sounds sharp, even a little some types one finds in the north: long, with single cold, compared to the heavy northwestern accents eyelids, long-tailed eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips. around it. This voice hops and flows around the com- The legendary Pan An, Adonis of ancient times, prob- partment with unnatural vivacity, stirring up the dull ably had a face like his. His height is obvious even miasma of heavier sounds. It brightens up the leaden when he’s sitting down, as his two long legs occupy the space, as if carrying its light with it. She determines space between the bunks. His shoulders are broad and that it is a new voice. It breaks through the utterly un- flat, his waist narrow – very well-shaped. He rests his exceptional surroundings, and brings the wide outside elbows on his knees and stares at the eye gleaming at world in along with it. Yet by doing so it only makes him from the shadow opposite. He has no way to guess this little world seem more remote, as if it has gone her age, yet this eye is enough to give him a fairly clear on its solitary route and been forgotten. She turns her impression. He knows this must be the owner of the face from the wall toward the interior of the compart- deerskin boots. The train has just made another stop, ment. The voice is coming from the corridor beyond. and now sets off again. Station lights pass the windows It sounds cheerful, which already seems out of place in one by one, and the deerskin boot on the floor comes this environment. Soon after, a figure is silhouetted in in and out of view, its top still softly crumpled. When the doorway. This figure not only does not adumbrate he first asked her this facetious question, she had be- the inside of the compartment, it actually intensifies gun to respond, yet swallowed it at the last minute.