Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 17: Chinese Literature and Culture, #17

By Dongwei Chu

Featuring "Remembering Blackfish in Black Pool," a short story by Zhang Wei, translated by Chu Dongwei:

How much ink is needed to dye such a stretch of sand black! Decades have passed but its color is as before. People nowadays don't know why there is such a large stretch of black sand amid the dozens of square miles of brown soil and sand, but I clearly remember that here in this place there was originally a black pool and the day the pool was filled it dyed the mud and the sand black.

Over the years, the pool of dark clear water has often come into my dreams to flash in front of my eye. I still remember how I lingered all day around the pool watching black fish swimming to and fro, their bodies like charcoal and their eyes sparkling like crystals. Because the water was too clear, all the scales of a black fish were visible.

The pool was located below a sand ridge northwest of our little thatched cottage. When and how did it come into being? And why didn't the loose sandy soil drain it? Today it is all a mystery. In the boundless wilderness, similar mysteries abound that are simply not explored.

On the two sides of the pool grew some wild copal trees, and when autumn came, a big frost cast red the leaves and petioles, which gradually fell off, some into the pool, some onto the edge of the pool. We collected copal tree leaves, weaved them into hats, which we put on our heads, and mimicked various animal sounds....

Beside the pool were some eroded wood stakes, which often carried some mushrooms. When you picked the newly grown mushrooms, some new ones would quickly grow. It was an interesting place that held a mysterious appeal, quiet, deserted, unfrequented except for visits by one or two children. On the sandy ridge on the right of the pool there were two weed-covered mounds said to be two graves. What kind of people had come to this remote corner to build the graves? Everyone wondered.

Then I heard the legend of Black Pool...

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Leaves
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201136932

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.

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Chinese Literature and Culture

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

www.clcjournal.com

Editor-in-Chief

Chu Dongwei

Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

New Leaves®

Jointly published by IntLingo, Inc., New York

& Zilin Limited, Guangzhou

Volume 17

Contributing Editor

Fraser Sutherland

CONTRIBUTORS

Ikegami Sadako

Liu Jingrong

Qi Jingyun

Zhang Wei

Zhu Su-e

TRANSLATORS

Chu Dongwei

Li Bo

Chinese Literature and Culture Volume 17

Edited by Chu Dongwei, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies

Copyright © 2019 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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