I do not agree that Lu Xun is obscure. He's the father of modern Chinese literature, for pity's sake. Because he is not published--for reasons that confound me--by an American publisher, his work is not as well known in the States as it should be. Read the following:
Lu Xun
b. 1881 d. 1936
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I much love literature and to find out about a literary giant that I'd never heard of was like finding lost gold. Lu Xun's writings aren't readily available in English, no major American or British publishing house distributes them, but I am lucky to live in the San Gabriel Valley of California and I found a good bookstore that had an English section. They had the True Story of Ah Q and other works by Lu Xun. I know that reading Lu Xun in English translation is like looking at a bit mapped black and white image of a great painting, but still I am able to tell that Lu Xun produced great literature.
Lu Xun (or Lu Hsün) is called the father of modern Chinese literature. His first story "A Madman's Diary" is considered the first story written in Modern Chinese. The classic Chinese literature by Lao Zi (or Lao Tze) and Confucius for example were written in literary Chinese which is different than the language spoken by everyday folks. Any scholar worth his salt would have written in this literary style. Lu Xun chose to begin writing the way people talk. At the same time though, he was well educated and learned and, I am told, used the language very colorfully and had a large vocabulary. In no way can what he did be considered "a dumbing down".
Lu Xun is a pen name. His real name was Zhou Shuren. Lu Xun wrote stories, poetry, essays, literary criticism and literary history. His stories were published in literary journals of the time and were then collected and published as books. He has three volumes of short stories.
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Photo of Lu Xun and Drawing of Ah Q
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His first set of stories was published as the book "Call to Arms" or Na Han. Na Han could also be translated "Cry Out". This collection included arguably his most famous story "The True Story of Ah Q". These were written between 1918 and 1922. In his preface to Call to Arms he told where the stories came from:
When I was young I, too, had many dreams. Most of them I later forgot, but I see nothing in this to regret. For although recalling the past may bring happiness, at times it cannot but bring loneliness, and what is the point of clinging in spirit to lonely bygone days? However, my trouble is that I cannot forget completely, and these stories stem from those things which I have been unable to forget.
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"Wandering" or Pang Huang was his second collection of stories. These stories were written in 1924 and 1925. The name of this second collection, Pang Huang, is puzzling to me in a way as it is translated as "Wandering" when literally pang huang seems to mean unsettled agitated. I think of wandering as meaning travelling around looking at things. But in Chinese, idiomatic expressions are found in different areas and in this case the unsettled and agitated must mean wandering about. I think maybe in English we might use the term rambling rather than wandering to imply the itchy feet agitated and unsettled feeling that leads to the rambling life.
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His third collection of short stories was called "Old Tales Retold" or Gu Shi Xin Bian and is what it sounds like. He retold old Chinese stories from his own perspective. This collection was published in 1935 and included stories that were written over a thirteen year period in the 1920's and thirties. In the introduction to the eight stories included in "Old Tales Retold" Lu Xun wrote:
In some places the narrative is based on passages in old books, elsewhere I gave free rein to my imagination. And having less respect for the ancients than for my contemporaries, I have not always been able to avoid facetiousness.
The free rein Lu Xun gave his imagination and his unavoidance of facetiousness made for some funny stuff. The story "Leaving the Pass" about Lao Zi and Confucius (Kong Zi) made me laugh aloud reading it.
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Another major work by Lu Xun is Wild Grass or Ye Cao a collection of prose poems. These were written in 1924 and 1926, roughly the same time period the stories of Wandering were being written. Some might consider some of the poems in Wild Grass to be his most pessimistic or macabre. I'd say "yes and no" to this. He writes in the introduction:
The fire under the Earth churns, quickly moving up; once the lava gushes forth, it will burn away all the wild grass, as well as the deep-rooted plants, then there will be nothing left to rot.
Translated by Wang/Gallaher
Wild Grass is a work of dreams, including nightmares. Dogs speak, insects buzz and the sky tries to hide itself from us, the onlookers.
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Works by Lu Xun that are available in English are:
Call To Arms (Short Story collection)
Wandering (Short Story collection)
Old Tales Retold (Short Story collection)
The True Story of Ah Q. (Novella included in Call to Arms).
Wild Grass (Collection of Prose Poems)
Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk (Collection of Essays about Lu Xun's Youth)
A Brief History of Chinese Fiction (Large study of pre-modern Chinese literature)
Selected Stories of Lu Xun (From Call to Arms, Wandering and Old Tales Retold) This book is now on the web in English!!
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories (Translated by William Lyell)
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Obtaining the Books
I say these books are available in English, but good luck finding them in English language bookstores. And good luck finding them in Chinese bookstores in English. Like I said earlier, I don't think any major publishing house distributes them. Why a publisher like Penguin doesn't distribute Lu Xun is beyond me. So I will give you the reader information to maybe be able to get ahold of Lu Xun's works in English. The address I have for the publisher and distributor of the books mentioned above are:
Publisher: Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, China
Distributor: Guoji Shudian, PO Box 399, Beijing, China.
An American publisher does publish "Selected Stories of Lu Hsün." This is probably your best bet for getting some of Lu Xun's stories. It is conveivable that you might even find this book in a bookstore. They also sell a video of the "New Year's Sacrifice" from Wandering, "The True story of Ah Q" as its own book and a 4 volume set called "The Selected Works of Lu Xun" for only $29.95. And they have a website--click on the link below to go there. The pertinent info for this company is:
China Books and Periodicals
2929 Twenty-Fourth St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
Tel: 415-282-2994
Fax: 415-282-0994
They have a great web site. They are great. Support them.
I bought my copies at Sup Books in Monterey Park which is in a shopping center at the north-west corner of Garvey and Atlantic. The address is
Sup Bookstore
111 N. Atlantic Blvd. Suite 228
Monterey Park, CA 91754
Tel: 818-293-3386 or 293-3387
Fax: 818-293-3385
(BTW I am not afiliated with any of these places. This is not an advertisement for any of them. I'm just trying to make it possible for people who might want to read Lu Xun to find the books).
Another book that is available was translated by Fang ZhiHua. It is entitled Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century. It contains "The Diary of a Madman," "New Year's Sacrifice," "Kong Yi Ji" (all three by Lu Xun), "Spring Peach" by Xu Dishan, "The Class Teacher" by Liu Xinwu, "Li Shunda Builds a House" by Gao Xiaosheng, "Ah, Xiangxue!" by Tie Ning, and "Buddhist Initiation" by Wang Zengqi.
You can get Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century by calling Garland Publishing in CT (their warehouse) at 1-800-627-6273 and asking for "Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century" under the name Zhihua Fang. The ISBN number is 0-8153-0532-X. Their mailing address is Garland Publishing, Inc., 1000A Sherman Avenue, Hamden, CT 06514.
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A Note on the translation and footnotes
The translators of the books by Lu Xun mentioned here are Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang. They seem to have done a good job. The book also contains numerous footnotes that are helpful to understand the references made in the stories, but also contain some of the silliest communist-tinged drivel you'll ever hear as well.
I talked to a true scholar/translator in this field about the Yang and Yang translations. I asked about the integrity of their translation and recieved this answer:
Regarding your question about the translations of Lu Xun's works, I would like to say that the older translations are fluent but not faithful, since those translators aimed to make the reading easy. There are many instances in their translations when wrong words are used, phrases omitted, and sections taken out. Still, the existing translations are acceptable. My collection contains three of Lu Xun's stories, i.e. "The Diary of a Mad Man," "New Year's Sacrifice," and "Kong Yi Ji." My translations are much more faithful, so much so that I think they may seem hard to read, but without being faithful it is almost impossible to convey the tone and style of his writing. Some people have read my translations and have really enjoyed the distinct styles and tones in the stories.
This was from Fang ZhiHua. Thanks for the input. Fang has translated a number of Chinese stories including some of Lu Xun's. For info on Fang's book see the above section.
Alternative Opinion
I received mail from Feng Xu concerning this Lu Xun site. Included was a comment on the above paragraph by Fang ZhiHua. It read:
The translators are Yang Xianyi and his wife Gladys Yang. In addition to Lu Xun, they have translated into English the Dreams of Red Mansions, the best of the best Chinese classic literary works, and many other Chinese classics such as Selected Plays of Guan HangQin, Shui Hu. Based on what I have read and remembered, their translations are not only faithful, but also fluent and elegant. By any measure their work should be considered as a landmark and the best representative of Chinese translation art. Their extraordinary talents are manifested in the English translation of the Dreams of Red Mansions, which are filled with translators nightmares: puns, poems, proses...(You may have been aware of the rich associations, colorful symbolic language used in classic Chinese poetry, hence the difficulty of translation).
My point here is that I don't agree with the 'true scholar' on that Yang's translation is only on the 'acceptable' level, as quoted in your homepage. And we should bear in mind that Lu Xun's works, like many Chinese literture masterpieces, have many different versions, which could give rise to some discrepancies in translated versions....
And I have received yet another opinion. This one from Lin Dai-yu.
I feel it proper to point you in your studies of Lu Xun to the more classical antecedent of his work, the "Hong Lou Meng" of Cao Xueqin. Xueqin's work was the true origin of the vernacular style, and much, if not all of Lu Xun's work bears a direct debt to The Dream of the Red Chamber. I would strongly suggest obtaining the huge, but beautiful translation of David Hawkes and John Minford (Penguin: 5 vols.). It is most faithful, while not sacrificing the poetry of either language.
As regards the Yang Xianyi / Gladys Yang duo, I would only say that I can second your opinion, and make it a bit more severe. Their translation of "The Dream of the Red Chamber" was particularly disappointing, and goes to show you how much more important it is to be a native speaker of the language that you are translating a work into. In fact, the translations coming out of Beijing are of such a uniformly low quality that I wished there were more translations of books I need outside of that agency -- the only thing impelling me to buy their books is the fact that I can't find them anywhere else.
Alas!
I thank these three people for commenting. Translation is a tricky thing, especially with a writer of the caliber of Lu Xun so its not unexpected to get differing ideas and opinions.
If anyone else wants to comment please do so.
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Lu Xun stories in simplified chinese
You can get stories from Na Han and the complete YeCao from this ftp site.
This site also has a number of Lu Xun works in simplified characters (.gb format).
If you get these files you will see they are in .gb format. If you want to read the files you need to have a Chinese system with the proper programs or have some programs that can read the files without a Chinese system.
You also may not like the simplified .gb files as well as the traditional characters (.bg5). Here is a link to a site where you can get readers and gb to big5 converters. Follow the directories to the platform you use. The link is to the site maintained by the IFCSS. The ftp site is ftp.ifcss.org/pub/software.
For the Mac you want Hanzi Converter to convert the .gb files to big5. Appropriately this is in the convert directory as HC-1.5.hqx in the mac section of the ftp site.
To read you want a program called MacHanzi. MacHanzi reads simplified (.gb) and traditional (.bg5 or .b5) character files. MacHanzi is in this directory at the site. If you have the Chinese Language Kit you don't need any of these viewer programs (but you knew that all ready).
For dos a program called dingdang is great for reading the files. But this program reads only simplified character (.gb) files. Ding Dang is in this directory at the IFCSS software site. It's called dddos13.zip. There is also a windows version at that site.
For converters look in the convert directories for whatever platform you use.
But the best way to read Lu Xun or other Chinese text on the web is to download Chinese viewing systems that work with browsers. Chinese Yahoo has a page that links to most of these programs here
And this great site can show you how to make your own viewer for Chinese using Explorer or Netscape with fonts that are available.
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This Lu Xun page is not yet finished. I plan to add some more, but when I cannot say for sure. Maybe sooner than later--at least I hope.
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This Lu Xun page is my newest addition to my web site. Please let me know what you think, if you like Lu Xun, if you heard of something new etc...I always appreciate feedback.
gallaher@hsc.usc.edu
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