NüVoices

In a special two-part podcast, Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant discuss their work translating Jin Yong's legendary wuxia series Legends of the Condor Heroes from Chinese to English, a revered martial-arts and fantasy odyssey among Chinese language readers around the world. Guest host and NüVoices member Cathy Tai moderates the conversation.
In this episode, Gigi and Shelly talk about the challenges of bringing Condor Heroes to life in English (such as translating elaborate fifity-page fight scenes), wuxia's cultural significance of Chinese pop culture, and the life of Jin Yong—author of the Condor Heroes. Stay tuned for part two!

Hello from our summer hiatus! While we're away, the pod squad is thrilled to share episodes from podcasts we love and admire. This week, we have an episode from Time to Say Goodbye, a podcast about Asia, the Asian diaspora, politics, and international solidarity. Thank you to hosts E. Tammy Kim, Jay Caspian Kang, and (formerly) Andy Liu for letting us cross post this episode. Kudos to our podcast co-host Cindy Gao, for introducing this cross post and briefly emerging from dissertation work.
(Description below courtesy of TTSG. Episode was originally aired on February 1, 2022.)
"This week Andy talks with the director (Jessica Kingdon) and producer (Kira Simon-Kennedy) of the new film Ascension, a documentary about working life in contemporary China. Ascension has received critical acclaim and garnered major awards and nominations, including being shortlisted for the Academy Awards!

The film features scenes of quotidian working life in a period when the government has begun to promote the “Chinese Dream,” spanning textile and sex doll factories to etiquette school and social media influencers all the way to luxurious water parks and tropical vacation resorts. Together, these scenes raise provocative questions about China’s blindingly rapid development, the uneven pace of upward mobility, and whether China is an exotic outlier or a recognizably modern society, comparable with life in the US and other societies worldwide (all to music by Dan Deacon)."

This week, veteran food journalist Clarissa Wei joins us on the NüVoices podcast! Clarissa was previously a senior reporter for Goldthread - a publication incubated by the South China Morning Post - where she created over 100 videos about Chinese food, culture, and cuisine. Now based in Taipei as a freelancer, Clarissa has recently reported on cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China for VICE, the end of Zero-Covid in Taiwan for The New Yorker, and the sustainability of food systems for her Whetstone Magazine podcast entitled "Climate Cuisine".

Clarissa's forthcoming book, Made in Taiwan: Recipes From The Island Nation, is expected for release in 2023.

On the pod, Clarissa talks about how she first got into food journalism, finding stories while backpacking in China, and her current freelance projects while based in Taipei. She also discusses her thoughts on authenticity discourse around diasporic cooking and her passion for elevating Taiwanese stories for international audiences.

This episode was hosted by journalist Solarina Ho, who is based in Toronto, Canada. This is her NüVoices podcast hosting debut!

This week, we have host Chenni Xu to discuss the new book of an old friend from her expat days in Beijing, Qin Qin (formerly Lisa Qin), Model Minority Gone Rogue: How an unfulfilled daughter of a tiger mother went way off-script, which debuted earlier this year in Australia and New Zealand and was published by Hachette.
In this episode, Qin Qin discusses her journey of transformation into her true self, challenges along the way of this reconstruction, and also her writing journey and the road to publishing. Qin Qin and Chenni also discuss their similar upbringings, expectations, and how to break out of those constrictions -- successfully or not. Qin Qin's spiritual, career, personal and her own sexual identity figure into her "Becoming" story.

Today’s guest, Anne Henochowicz, works at the intersection of literature and human rights. She has translated leaked propaganda directives and subversive Weibo posts, investigative journalism and poetry. She is currently the translations coordinator at China Digital Times and a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. She also leads the NüVoices chapter in Washington, D.C.

In this episode, Anne and Cindy Gao talk about the translator's relationship and responsibility to the original texts and their authors, the beauty and nuance of great translation, and the impact COVID-19 has had on the tone of online discourse and translated works.

Links to the translations mentioned in this interview:

• Tang Danhong, “Tarim, My Uyghur Friend,” China Channel, Aug. 2020, https://chinachannel.org/2020/08/28/tarim-uyghur/
• He Xiaoxin, “How Far Can I Go? How Much Can I Do?” China Digital Times, Aug. 2015, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2015/08/he-xiaoxin-how-far-can-i-go-and-how-much-can-i-do/
• Tang Danhong, “Chairman Mao Is Dead!” China Channel, Oct. 2017, https://chinachannel.org/2017/10/12/chairman-mao-dead/
• republished Jul. 2019 in Mānoa: A Pacific Journal of International Writing, https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/42693/print),

Translated poetry:

• Yu Xiuhua, “Mourning Li Wenliang,” China Digital Times, Feb. 2019, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2020/02/translation-a-poem-for-dr-li-wenliang-and-a-call-for-free-speech/
• Meng Lang, “To China, to the Bystanders,” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Jul. 2019, https://www.asiancha.com/wp/article/to-china/
• Also, check out Yu Xinqiao’s bilingual book of poetry, The Last Lyric, translated by Yunte Huang, at https://www.spdbooks.org/Products/9780998743837/the-last-lyric.aspx.

Some writing:

• "Huang Xueqin: 'To Resist Tyranny, Start Small,'" China Digital Times, Dec. 2019, https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2019/12/huang-xueqin-to-resist-tyranny-start-small/
• "Of Rice Bunnies and Grass-Mud Horses," China Channel, Feb. 2018, https://chinachannel.org/2018/02/27/rice-bunnies-grass-mud-horses/
• "Finding a Common Thread: A History of Chinese Language," Los Angeles Review of Books, Aug. 2016, http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/chinablog/common-thread-history-chinese-dialects/

Finally, some links to works by the authors mentioned during the interview:

• Yu Xinqiao: https://www.s