Tag Archives: Cao Shuying

Chinese Poetry in Translation on Hong Kong Protesting

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Recently I posted about my translations of poetry by Liu Waitong 廖偉棠 on Hong Kong Protesting. In fact, the site, edited by Tammy Lai-ming Ho, editor as well of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, is quickly becoming a go-to site for new translations of contemporary Chinese poetry.

Tammy Lai-ming Ho, editor of Hong Kong Protesting

In addition to Liu Waitong, Hong Kong Protesting has published two poems by Cao Shuying 曹疏影, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, and two poems by Derek Chung 鍾國強, translated by Tammy Ho herself.

Here is an excerpt of one of Ho’s Chung translations:

FORGET NOT

Forgetting is near. What are we rushing to clamber over?
Blood and sweat of three million people only to demand a fictive rope?
Are there balloons up there? Only billowing clouds 
As though the screaming across the city has muted its own cries
Turning into fists lashing out helplessly

Is our energy running low? Are the long streets still beating?
The heavy thump in Pacific Place resounds in Fanling
Red and white plastic barriers blossom in Golden Bauhinia Square
Taller than the people. Tomorrow, ah, there’s still tomorrow
Tomorrow the wealthy and powerful will start feasting
Indifferent to the rancid-smelling blood that rises from their heads

莫忘

忘記就在後頭我們要趕著跨越什麼呢
三百萬人的汗血只為索取一根虛懸的繩子？
上面有否氣球，答以積雲臃腫
彷彿昨夜喊啞了的滿城吶喊
化作一拳一拳打在那裡也無所著力

是沒有力量了嗎長街是否仍在敲打
太古廣場那一下重音如今在粉嶺回響
都說金紫荆只盛開紅白相間的水馬
比人民還高，明天，啊，還有明天
明天那些權貴擺下的盛宴
不避葷腥如頭上升起的一抹血色

Follow the links above for more.

Tsang on Liu Waitong’s “Wandering Hong Kong with Spirits”

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The “Writing Hong Kong” issue of Cha features Janice Tsang’s review of Wandering Hong Kong with Spirits 和幽靈一起的香港漫遊 by Liu Waitong 廖偉棠 (Zephyr Press / MCCM Creations), with translations by Enoch Yee-lok Tam, Desmond Sham, Audrey Heijins, Chan Lai-kuen and Cao Shuying.

Tsang writes:

While reading Wandering Hong Kong, I was constantly reminded of the idea of “disappearance” in Ackbar Abbas’ book Hong Kong: Culture and the Politics of Disappearance—disappearance not in the sense of vanishing and irreparable loss, but of displaced appearances. Photography is very potent in demonstrating this kind of “disappearance,” as it simultaneously captures and freezes time in a frame, while also creating the realm of the image in the form of the artist’s own unique representation. One is also always aware of selectivity and perspectives when doing photography.

Liu Waitong’s poetry is very much in tune with his observations of the world as a photographer.

Click on the image for the full review.

Nogues on Hong Kong poet Liu Waitong

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In a piece titled “‘The protests became a poem‘: Liu Waitong’s ‘Wandering Hong Kong with Spirits,'” new on Jacket2, Collier Nogues reviews Wandering Hong Kong with Spirits 和幽靈一起的香港漫遊, by Liu Waitong 廖偉棠, with translations by Enoch Yee-lok Tam, Desmond Sham, Audrey Heijns, Chan Lai-kuen, and Cao Shuying 曹疏影 (Zephyr Press & MCCM Creations). To my knowledge, this is the first time Jacket2 has paid any attention to poetry translated from Chinese.

Nogues asks, “What is it to be a Hong Kong poet writing now?” She answers:

For Liu Waitong, it means to be accompanied always by ghosts. But it means also to seek them out and keep them company in turn — to haunt with them. Working through questions of displacement, citizenship, and competing visions of Hong Kong’s and China’s future, Liu’s poems insist that a careful attention and receptivity can be revolutionary. For Liu, that attention is what we owe our pasts and each other.

She continues:

Christopher Mattison, the director of the Atlas series of translations of Hong Kong Chinese literature into English, points out in his introduction that it would be a mistake to brand Liu primarily as a political poet. Rather, Mattison says, Liu is a careful observer of Hong Kong, and many things in Hong Kong are inherently political. Perhaps it’s just a matter of emphasis, but I’m not certain that I agree with Mattison here; while it’s true that Liu is indeed a “poet of longing,” as Mattison suggests, “of past eras, former loves, lost neighborhoods, and poetic mentors” (xvi), nothing on that list is separable from politics in the poems or in Hong Kong more generally. When Liu elegizes the demolished Central Star Ferry Pier, for example, he is not only lamenting the loss of a familiar landmark, but also pointedly indicting Hong Kong’s real estate market, which incentivizes the replacement of historic sites with new, more profitable development. In Liu’s poem, the pier shakes its head and sings into the cold rain: “It all will finally disappear to become a postcard sold / for ten dollars. This Hong Kong will disappear and become real property / with an unspecified mortgage” (93).

Click on the image above for the full review.