C. T. Hsia, Who Brought Chinese Literature to the West

C. T. Hsia (Hsia Chih-tsing), a scholar who helped introduce modern Chinese literature to the West in the 1960s, providing close analysis and the first English translations of writers who are now widely recognized, died on Dec. 29,2013 in Manhattan, where he taught at Columbia University for three decades. He was 92.

Dr. Hsia (pronounced shah) arrived in the United States in 1947 with a plan to study English literature and then return to China to teach it. By 1951 he had earned his doctorate at Yale, writing his thesis on the realist poet George Crabbe.

But while Dr. Hsia was studying in the United States, Mao Zedong was settling into power in China and purging the country of dissent and Western influences. Dr. Hsia decided to stay in America.

Unable to find a job teaching English, he joined a Korean War propaganda project, overseen by Johns Hopkins University, to help write a manual on China. The research took him deep into a topic he had largely ignored as an ambitious undergraduate in Shanghai: Chinese literature. In 1961 he produced his seminal work, “A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 1917-1957.”

In 662 pages, the book offered extended English translations of novels that he then discussed using close textual analysis.

“It’s a singular work,” said Wei Shang, who teaches premodern Chinese literature at Columbia. “He was the first to write the literary history so that other scholars have something to rely on. Although they may disagree with him, they cannot ignore him.”

To his critics, Dr. Hsia was improperly using Western standards to judge works produced in an ancient Asian nation. And the new canon of Chinese literature he sought to create, they said, was limited by his political biases. Why, they asked, was he so dismissive of the leftists who supported the rise of Communism? Why did he pay so little attention to Lu Xun, considered by many the father of modern Chinese literature and much admired by Mao? Why so much praise for Eileen Chang, a largely nonpolitical and relatively low-profile writer at the time?

“He ignores the fact that new China is not just an unfortunate accident but the reckoning of history,” A. C. Scott, a China scholar working at Columbia, wrote in The New York Times in 1961, though he called the book “a helpful guide.”

But the book was undeniably influential. Dr. Hsia had essentially helped create a new academic field. He was hired to teach at Columbia that same year.

Dr. Hsia, colorful and contentious, did not back down from critics. He argued that Chinese writers suffered from an “obsession with China” and that they did not embrace universal human concerns that transcend China’s borders.

Ms. Chang, who wrote “The Rice-Sprout Song,” “Naked Earth” and other novels, was dismissed by some as a pulpy romance novelist. (She died in 1995.) Dr. Hsia admired her partly because she focused on themes of everyday life without taking political stands.

“That was truly a radical judgment by any standard, and yet the next 40 years saw Eileen Chang rise to the highest highs,” said David Der-wei Wang, a professor of Chinese literature at Harvard whom Dr. Hsia mentored. “Everybody loves Eileen Chang nowadays.”

Hsia Chih-tsing was born on Jan. 11, 1921, in what was then a modest section of Shanghai. His father, Ta-tung, was a banker before the Communist takeover in 1949. Dr. Hsia and his older brother, Tsi-an, both became interested in English literature when they were teenagers. Dr. Hsia graduated from Hujiang University in 1942 and taught at Peking University before receiving a grant to study at Yale.

After “A History of Modern Chinese Fiction,” Mr. Hsia went on to write other influential books, including, in 1968, “The Classic Chinese Novel.” He also wrote essays about Chinese poems, plays and prose from beyond the modern area that was his specialty.

Much of his work was banned in China for decades. A heavily abridged version of his first book was published in mainland China in the mid-1990s. Learn more at The New York Times.

Do Brands Need a Chinese-Language Address on Web?

Most of China's internet is in Chinese, but URLs aren't.

To the average Chinese consumer, McDonald's brand name isn't "McDonald's" -- it's 麦当劳. But internet users there must still navigate to the mcdonalds.com.cn web address, a cumbersome process for non-English speakers.

Though China's fast-expanding internet is largely in Chinese, most URLs remain stubbornly stuck in Roman lettering, a holdover from the internet's English-language origins. Now change is afoot, but it's unclear how big the impact will be for brands.

Most of China's internet is in Chinese, but URLs aren't. Most of China's internet is in Chinese, but URLs aren't.

ICANN, the agency in charge of internet addresses, is rolling out a host of new gTLDs -- what comes after the dot in a web address -- beyond standards like .com and .org. Some are in foreign languages, including Chinese, making it easier for brands to have fully Chinese-language URLs.

Why would that matter?

Proponents say matching a brand's URL with its Chinese name will boost search-engine optimization, and that it's just good sense in a market where stakes are so high. About 591 million Chinese people are online, which is just 44% of the population, meaning there's lots of room for growth.

"Internationalizing domain names will help Chinese customers and internet users identify the brands they are familiar with," said Zheng Song, head of China for ICANN. It will also reduce phishing, he said. When URLs use Roman type, Chinese users are more susceptible to scams guiding them to a phony bank or e-commerce site trying to snatch personal information.

Many Chinese-language gTLDs are to debut in early 2014. A few foreign companies, such as L'Oréal and Volkswagen, have sought gTLDs to match their Chinese brand names. Amazon bid for suffixes in several Asian languages, while Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba wanted .alibaba in English.

Steep price
The application price for a new gTLD is a steep $185,000, and so far ICANN has only received 72 applications for Chinese-language suffixes. Read more,please go to Adage.

Ladies From Shanghai

Spanning fifty years and two continents, The Valley of Amazement is a tale of three women, connected by personal rebellion, betrayal, and a mysterious painting called "The Valley of Amazement."  As with all of Tan's novels, we are swept into the pivotal moments of Shanghai's history and the emotional turmoil of mothers and daughters, heritage and individuality, race and culture, ​and the damaging residue of secrets that lead to misunderstanding upon misunderstanding, from one generation to the next.  Lulu, Violet, and Flora, each of a different racial mix and status, must question what is fated from birth, where they belong, and what they can still change.

 The story opens in 1905, in a first-class courtesan house in Shanghai, Hidden Jade Path, run by Lulu Minturn, an American woman with Yankee ingenuity and an unknown past. Her daughter, Violet, is unaware of the identity of her father, until she is left behind in Shanghai during the exodus of Americans when the Qing Dynasty falls. Sold into a courtesan house of low repute, fourteen-year-old Violet is groomed as the "virgin courtesan," a fate she resists, until she meets an older courtesan, Magic Gourd, who counsels her on the stupidity of clinging to American pride. She teaches her errant student how to be a popular courtesan who flourishes with business cunning and a practical assortment of tricks of the trade.  In the world of flowers, Violet matches illusions to each man's romantic sense of himself, while avoiding the greatest peril a courtesan faces: believing that the illusion of love she has created is real.

Amy Tan by Rick Smolan

For the next two decades, Violet takes us on a careening journey steered by self-will, reckless desires, and clear-eyed resolve. That pursuit takes us into the boudoirs of courtesan houses and the homes of Western sojourners and opportunists, who have made the International Settlement in Shanghai their fiefdom during the boom years of foreign trade.  An older, more resigned Violet leaves Shanghai to become a poet’s wife in a murky hamlet that lies in the shadows of five impassable ​mountains.  Across an ocean, in San Francisco, Lulu reflects on impetuous decisions that led to tragedy.  She recalls her lonely girlhood, the shocking behavior of her father, and the moment she first saw the painting of "The Valley of Amazement"--as well as its beguiling painter​.  A long-awaited letter, passed from hand to hand, finally reaches Lulu and she goes to the bucolic Hudson River Valley, the inspiration for the painting, and also where lies and truth can finally be unearthed.
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   Ultimately, this is a story of the many hard facets of love that underlie fragile hope and the near impossibility of forgiveness--territory that Tan hones with characteristic humor, insight, and poignant truth. Read more at Amy Tan's website.

China in My Mind -Why I Write River of Dust?

Virginia Pye

When I tell people that

I have recently published a novel set in China, one of the first questions they ask is whether I’ve been there. My response seems to be a letdown. The expectant look on their faces shifts as they wonder why I chose to write about a place I’ve never visited. Sometimes I sense incredulity. What makes me think I can write about China?

My grandfather, Watts O. Pye, was one of the early missionaries to return to China after the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In Shanxi Province, he oversaw the building of a hospital, schools, a library and roads that brought famine relief. The Reverend Pye died young, but my father, Lucian W. Pye, remained in Shanxi with my grandmother, living in the mission compound under Japanese occupation. He finally left China for college, returned with the Marines at the end of World War II, and went on to become a renowned Sinologist and the author of over 20 books on Asia, and China in particular.

 
My grandfather and father’s accomplishments, though, don’t make me an expert by inheritance. And yet, I’ve always a felt strong tie to China. I grew up in a house crowded with Chinese paintings, ceramics and furniture. My best childhood friend and I invented rituals with a tiny white Ming cup that we thought possessed special powers. I spent countless hours lying on a deep blue Oriental carpet covered with cherry blossoms, staring up into a painted scroll along whose ribbons of clouds I imagined traveling into the distant, shrouded mountains.

When the time came for my parents to move to a retirement home, I sat on that same rug and went through boxes of onionskin pages with faded blue type on which my grandfather had recorded his impressions of the eerie beauty of Shanxi. His journals captured my imagination in the same way the Chinese objects had when I was a girl, but now there was the specificity and poetry of a Victorian-era gentleman’s language to further embellish my sense of that distant land. Although I had always felt pride about my grandfather’s humanitarian work in China, I was ashamed of his religious zealotry and colonial perspective. Now, the arabesques of his prose conveyed his love of those rugged plains and rolling foothills covered with loess, a yellow dust that blew in from the Gobi Desert, as well as his respect for the Chinese people — thus deepening my grasp of his contradictory position there.

Book written by Pye

But impressions from childhood confirmed years later as an adult still don’t make me an expert. My father, on the other hand, was a recognized one. His colleagues at M.I.T. and at the John K. Fairbank Center at Harvard were called “China watchers.” For decades, in fact, that’s all they could do since China was closed to American visitors.

When he did finally visit in 1972, he brought back trinkets and clothing — cheap red and gold Mao buttons, quilted jackets in workman’s blue, olive green caps and the most ubiquitous souvenir of the time, Mao’s Little Red Book. My father spread his loot in our living room amid the Chinese antiques, stark reminders of Communism’s rejection of the delicate, evocative artistry of the past. I sensed from him that these strange new items now served as reminders that China, while suddenly open to Westerners, remained beyond the grasp of our understanding. Being permitted finally to see it firsthand had not brought outsiders closer to true understanding.

My first writing mentor, Annie Dillard, once told our college class that if you ever have the choice between visiting a far-flung place or reading a book about it, choose the book. She had just returned from a trip to Alaska and said that the only thing she hadn’t known about already from her reading was the sunflowers. Apparently, in midsummer, as they work to follow the sun circling tightly overhead, their stalks twist until their bright, oversize heads break right off their slender necks. She offered a quirky, maniacal smile and said that a book containing that tidbit would be worth reading.

This is how I feel about the China in my mind. My favorite books have always been those of far-off lands. The Middle East shimmered in Durrell’s “The Alexandria Quartet,” and while I didn’t necessarily understand Egypt any more precisely after reading all four volumes, that exotic landscape imprinted itself upon my teenage mind. Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” Maugham’s “Painted Veil” and Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River,” each revealed colonialism’s inherent flaws through the trials of unforgettable characters. These books gave me a first glimpse that there were countries resistant to Western understanding and that any presumption otherwise was an act of supreme hubris inevitably ending in the white man’s deserved downfall. More at New York Times