Chinese Literature and Culture 18: Chinese Literature and Culture, #18

By Dongwei Chu

Editorial: A Movie Is Not a Movie

by Chu Dongwei

2020 will be remembered in history as a very special year. For much of the first half of the Chinese lunar year, cinemas were closed in the country due to the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic. Filmmakers and cinemas ready to make another big harvest with the annual Chinese New Year blockbusters found their fortune gone in a day. A few smart movie producers quickly switched to online video platforms and found an alternative success.

Back in the seventies and eighties of the last century, watching a movie was a big treat for the rural and urban communities. When the man with movie reels on his bike came, it was like a festival. The crowd gathered in an open-air meeting ground or a sports field regardless of wind and rain. Both the scene and the story on the screen stuck in the memory forever.

For a very long time, the movie theater occupied a central place in the cities. Movies and pop corn constituted the romance of young people. However, by the turn of the century, the movie theater waned. Rows and rows of seats became empty in the big cinemas. Entertainment diversified and watching movies in cinemas for many people became a thing of the past. Today, as the movie industry regained its vigor through improved acoustic and visual effects thanks to the development of technology and variety of content targeted at different demographic groups, the cinema has once again flourished in the key locations of a city except that, this time around, it came in multiple showrooms in one location equipped with comfortable sofas, and of course with heftier ticket prices. Open-air screening has become very rare and may technically be no longer possible.

The history of the movie theater is the history of the modern world as the movie is part and parcel of modern life. Whether you are a man or a woman, young or old, rich or poor, you get connected with modern life through the movie and you have your own version of the history of the movie as you experience it.

Zhu Shanpo's short story, "Visitors from Deep in the Mountains," recommended for translation by Xiao Su, another story-writer, serves as a reminiscence of a piece of Chinese life in modern history. Art, as useless as it is for practical purposes, plays a dominant role in the nourishing of the soul. In this beautifully written story, the content of the movie is never relevant, it is watching itself that matters. Interwoven with fate, resignation, pursuit of happiness, love, and human compassion, the sad, peaceful love story outside the movies touches a deeper part of our heart.

In this world of fast tempo, access to the movie theater has become increasingly easy, but can we sit quietly and enjoy it like before?

A trip to the cinema is a get-away from the real world for a brief moment. So, watch a movie if you can.

For the convenience of language learners, the story is published in bilingual format.

To go with this issue, we have two poems by Alice Tan, also in bilingual format.

Finally, I would like to apologize for the late publication of the current issue while rejoicing that CLC has survived thus far. It will move ahead as all of us will.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Leaves
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201612511

Dongwei Chu

Chinese Literature and Culture as a book series and peer-reviewed academic journal is edited by Dr. Chu Dongwei,  Fulbright Scholar, Professor of Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China. Chu has published Lin Yutang as Author-Translator (2012), Translation as a Business (2003), Chinese translation of Will Durant’s On the Meaning of Life (2009), and English translation of The Platform Sutra and other Zen Buddhist texts in The Wisdom of Huineng (2015). He is the founder, editor and publisher of Chinese Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed journal of translations from the Chinese in collaboration with Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou Zilin Cultural Development Limited and IntLingo Inc., New York. He is also a contributor of short story translations to St. Petersburg Review, Renditions.

Book preview

Chinese Literature and Culture

ISSN 2332-4287 (print); ISSN 2334-1122 (online)

www.clcjournal.com

Editor-in-Chief

Chu Dongwei

School of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

New Leaves®

Jointly published by IntLingo, Inc., New York

& Zilin Limited, Guangzhou

Volume 18

Contributing Editor

Fraser Sutherland

CONTRIBUTORS

Alice Tan (Tan Chang)

Chu Dongwei

Zhu Shanpo

TRANSLATORS

Chu Dongwei

Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 18, November 20, 2020

Edited by Chu Dongwei, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Copyright © 2020 Chinese Literature and Culture through Chu Dongwei.

All rights reserved. No part of this book, which is meanwhile a CLC journal volume, may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of Chinese Literature and Culture represented by Chu Dongwei except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISSN 2332-4287 (print)

ISSN 2334-1122 (online)

CONTENTS

Editorial: A Movie Is Not a Movie

Fiction

Visitors from Deep in the Mountains