“People gone; buildings empty: this is the fact of daily life in the countryside,” lamented the author Liang Hong in her bestselling account China in One Village. It was a grim portrait of her home town – its vitality ebbing as the forces of modern life drained it of young people, polluted its water, exploited its resources and even turned the local school into a pigsty. Its quarter of a million sales reflected not just her distinctive writing, but the familiarity of the story. As urban China prospered with the…
Tag: Chinese literature
British Museum offers to pay translator after plagiarism row
The British Museum has offered to pay a writer for her work after she alleged her poetry translations had been plagiarised in a landmark exhibition. Earlier this week, the museum removed a segment of its China’s Hidden Century exhibition after Yilin Wang said she did not receive any credit or reimbursement for her translations of the work of Qiu Jin, a Chinese revolutionary. On Thursday, the museum said it had apologised for the “unintentional human error” and “offered financial payment for the period the translations appeared in the exhibition as…
China’s ‘rotten girls’ are escaping into erotic fiction about gay men
“The hand around his waist held him tighter, their bodies pressed closer together, and Xie Lian’s struggling hands were firmly folded and crushed against his own chest; unable to move. His lips were still securely sealed, the kiss deepening, and a stream of gentle, chilled air slowly passed through.” A god kisses a ghost king, and a love story, movie deal and KFC sponsorship are born. The kiss appears in the book Heaven Official’s Blessing, a danmei or “boys love” story. Danmei is romantic fiction about men or male beings…