Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom: What’s China Reading?
[Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of China’s Brave New World—and Other Tales for Global Times (2007). His commentaries have appeared in publications including the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal Asia, Newsweek, and Lettera internazionale.]
It’s fascinating to imagine what Mao Zedong (1893–1976) might make of 21st-century Nanjing, with its modernistic high-rises, colorful styles, and sprawling bustle. The city’s bookstores, in particular, would likely surprise him with their independence and variety. Xianfeng Shudian, or Vanguard Books, my favorite bookshop, would be startling down to its décor. The walls sport photographs of experimental Western writers like James Joyce, the kind of authors dismissed as decadent and bourgeois in the 1960s and ’70s, when the only foreign novelists deemed worthy were those with unimpeachable political credentials. (Mark Twain was one such acceptable writer; his criticism of missionaries and 19th-century imperialism fit in nicely with Mao’s views.)
Most appalling to the party chairman might be the store’s philosophy section. When Mao governed China, the only philosophical tracts sold by the state-run Xinhua (New China) Bookstore chain were by Marxists. Now, at Xianfeng, though you won’t find works by contemporary Chinese dissidents or the Dalai Lama, you can buy Chinese editions of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, books by French literary critics, and even the writings of fervently procapitalist American economists....
Now, the Chinese world of reading is very different indeed, with one major shift being that it is no longer a rarity, as it was when Iacocca’s memoir appeared, for a best-selling Western publication to quickly gain the status in China that it had at home. By 2005, for example, conspiracy-loving Chinese readers could find a translation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) at any local bookstore—or order it online, a practice as routine in Canton as in Kansas City. This book, as well as Brown’s Angels and Demons (2000), hovered near the top of China’s bestseller charts throughout 2005.
Then there is the Harry Potter phenomenon, which says a great deal about the transformation of the Chinese book world. By the early years of the new century, “muggles” living in Chongqing and Chengdu were eager to find out what the world’s favorite wizard was up to in his struggle against “He Who Must Not Be Named.” So, naturally, work on authorized Chinese translations of the final Harry Potter books began as soon as they were published. But young—and not so young—Chinese fans of Potter author J.K. Rowling have often been too excited to wait for these official editions in their native language. Some jumped the gun by buying English versions: The British and U.S. editions of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) at one point held both top spots on China’s bestseller list. Others turned to pirated Chinese editions, not all of them created with quick profits in mind. Some have been offered for free on Web sites run by bilingual Hogwarts aficionados.
It would be misleading, though, to imply that Chinese reading and publishing habits now simply mirror European and American ones. There are key differences. For example, books based on Web ventures have made a bigger impact in China than in the West. A good example is Outsider (2005), a tale of young love and teen angst by 20-something South Korean Internet novelist Lee Yoon Se (pen name Guiyeoni). Still little-known in the West, her stories have inspired movies and won legions of fans from Tokyo to Manila....
Read entire article at http://www.hemispheresmagazine.com
It’s fascinating to imagine what Mao Zedong (1893–1976) might make of 21st-century Nanjing, with its modernistic high-rises, colorful styles, and sprawling bustle. The city’s bookstores, in particular, would likely surprise him with their independence and variety. Xianfeng Shudian, or Vanguard Books, my favorite bookshop, would be startling down to its décor. The walls sport photographs of experimental Western writers like James Joyce, the kind of authors dismissed as decadent and bourgeois in the 1960s and ’70s, when the only foreign novelists deemed worthy were those with unimpeachable political credentials. (Mark Twain was one such acceptable writer; his criticism of missionaries and 19th-century imperialism fit in nicely with Mao’s views.)
Most appalling to the party chairman might be the store’s philosophy section. When Mao governed China, the only philosophical tracts sold by the state-run Xinhua (New China) Bookstore chain were by Marxists. Now, at Xianfeng, though you won’t find works by contemporary Chinese dissidents or the Dalai Lama, you can buy Chinese editions of Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, books by French literary critics, and even the writings of fervently procapitalist American economists....
Now, the Chinese world of reading is very different indeed, with one major shift being that it is no longer a rarity, as it was when Iacocca’s memoir appeared, for a best-selling Western publication to quickly gain the status in China that it had at home. By 2005, for example, conspiracy-loving Chinese readers could find a translation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) at any local bookstore—or order it online, a practice as routine in Canton as in Kansas City. This book, as well as Brown’s Angels and Demons (2000), hovered near the top of China’s bestseller charts throughout 2005.
Then there is the Harry Potter phenomenon, which says a great deal about the transformation of the Chinese book world. By the early years of the new century, “muggles” living in Chongqing and Chengdu were eager to find out what the world’s favorite wizard was up to in his struggle against “He Who Must Not Be Named.” So, naturally, work on authorized Chinese translations of the final Harry Potter books began as soon as they were published. But young—and not so young—Chinese fans of Potter author J.K. Rowling have often been too excited to wait for these official editions in their native language. Some jumped the gun by buying English versions: The British and U.S. editions of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005) at one point held both top spots on China’s bestseller list. Others turned to pirated Chinese editions, not all of them created with quick profits in mind. Some have been offered for free on Web sites run by bilingual Hogwarts aficionados.
It would be misleading, though, to imply that Chinese reading and publishing habits now simply mirror European and American ones. There are key differences. For example, books based on Web ventures have made a bigger impact in China than in the West. A good example is Outsider (2005), a tale of young love and teen angst by 20-something South Korean Internet novelist Lee Yoon Se (pen name Guiyeoni). Still little-known in the West, her stories have inspired movies and won legions of fans from Tokyo to Manila....