When you think of female scholars, who do you think of?
This list must not be long, because —
female
It has never been the mainstream of academia.
Whether it is a university chair or an academic publication, the more you go to the top of the ivory tower, the smaller the number of women.
In fact, when a woman decides to pursue an academic career, the limitations she faces are everywhere:
"The female doctor is the third kind of human being..."
"History proves that academia is not a women's turf..."
"What is the use of reading, girls always have to marry..."
At the higher education level, voices such as these try to prevent women from stepping into the door of scientific research. And when they enter the university system, "vocations" such as childbirth and housework squeeze them out of more opportunities...
However, even if we continue to encounter depreciation and suppression, we still see more and more women participating in academic careers and merging into the academic community. For them, academic research is not only a career and a hobby, but also a way to recognize themselves and find ways to get along with the world.
So we had a naïve idea: let more female scholars be seen.
When women decide to pursue an academic career, how many obstacles do they need to overcome? Is there an academic tradition that belongs to women? In the "son-preference" academic system, how do female scholars who are wading forward find their own references? Who are their companions?
With these questions in mind, we invited female scholars from different fields and countries such as sociology, history, journalism and communication, literature, etc., some of which are well known to the public, and many more of which are still outside the spotlight. Their experiences are similar and very different. They represent different generations of female intellectuals, passionate about knowledge, and have experienced confusion and frustration. Their stories tell the story of the dissatisfaction and confusion, ambition and dreams of most modern women.
Hopefully, one day, we won't have to add the word "female" before "scholar."
—
The series will be officially published by Nova Press this summer under the tentative title of Interview Series for Women Scholars (Series I). In addition to the six scholars who have been published (in order of release, He Guimei, Huang Yingying, Lu Ye, Zhang Li, Mao Jian and Bao Huiyi), the list of scholars to be released in the future includes (in order of age below):
- Allie Russell Hawkheeld (Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, USA, author of Strangers in the Homeland, Working Moms Don't Leave Work, etc.)
- Chizuru Ueno (Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo, Japan, author of Misogyny, Patriarchy and Capitalism, etc.)
- Deng Xiaonan (Professor, Center for Ancient Chinese History, Peking University, author of "The Law of the Ancestors" and "Aspects of the Election System of Civil Officials in the Song Dynasty", etc.)
- Dai Jinhua (Professor, Department of Chinese, Peking University, author of "Floating Out of the Historical Surface" and "The Boat Involved in the Ferry")
- Liang Hong (Professor, School of Liberal Arts, Chinese Min University, author of "Ten Years of Liang Zhuang" and "Records of Liang Zhuang")
……
This is the sixth in a series of interviews with women scholars. The interviewee was Bao Huiyi, associate professor of the Department of English at Fudan University. Due to the limitations of new media space, this article is an excerpt, and the full version will be included in the new book "Women Scholars Interview Series (First Series)", hoping that everyone will continue to pay attention to the "Women Scholars Interview Series".
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Interview Series with Women Scholars
No.6
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Huiyi Bao
■ Young writer, born in Shanghai in 1985, Ph.D. in medieval literature at University College Dublin, Ireland, formerly taught at Trinity College Dublin, is now an associate professor of the Department of English at Fudan University, and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences of Peking University.
■ He has published more than ten translations of the critical collections "The Writing Room", "The Rose of Sharon" (co-authored), "Portrait of a Young Translator", the essay collection "The Emerald Isle Chronicle", the English academic monograph "Shaping the Sacred: The Pearl Poet and the British Medieval Sensory Culture", the Chinese monograph "The Art of Medieval English Lyric Poetry", and more than ten translations such as "Only Loneliness Is Constant as New", "Ariel", and "Good Bones".
Written | Xiao Shuyan
"Although she was a success in the narrow field of academic research, she must have understood what strange life she had chosen for herself: confined to small rooms in libraries and cellars, immersed in the manuscripts of the dead, a career spent in the realm of silent dust."
More than a decade ago, Bao Huiyi read such a passage when translating the novel "The Hermit" by american writer Paul Oster. She had not understood why this girl, whom everyone regarded as a nerd, had impressed her so much, and later learned that it was a sympathy, a sympathy, or pity for the same disease. This passage can be used verbatim to describe Bao Huiyi herself, when she buried her head in a precious medieval manuscript, copied one by one on parchment, when she immersed herself in the magnificent poems of the poet, and translated them carefully in her mind.
For readers, Bao Huiyi has multiple identities: she is a poet who writes the poetry collection "I Sit on the Edge of the Volcano"; she is also a writer who has received numerous reviews for the literary criticism collection "The Writing Room"; and she is also a translator who has published more than ten translations, including Elizabeth Bishop's "Only Loneliness Is Everlasting", Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" and Margaret Atwood's "Good Bones"... In contrast, her identity as an associate professor at Fudan University's School of Foreign Chinese And Literature, as well as a researcher of medieval English and medieval manuscripts, is little known. But all identities, in the final analysis, have to do with language, with the beauty of language.
Bao Huiyi consulted the 9th-century Persian manuscript "Chronicles of the State of Daolibang" at the Malek Library in Tehran, Iran. Photos were provided by respondents.
"The poet's job is to make the language a mystery, and the translator's job is to decipher it and write new mysteries on that basis." (Portrait of a Young Translator, Bao Huiyi) If so, then she is both an excellent puzzle solver and a keen puzzle solver.
"The poet is the purifier of language ... To purify language is to purify our life experience, to purify all the dizziness, joy, pain, shame, obsession, mystery that are injected into our marrow without consent... It is necessary to polish all the language that has been worn and eroded, to make the language of the public personalized again, and to make the language of the general precise again. ("I sit on the edge of the volcano", Bao Huiyi) Therefore, she does not feel the "public knowledge" style of flag waving and exporting views, does not like the politicized literary labels such as "feminist writers", and only wants to use delicate and subtle words to promote the silent change of moisturizers.
"On the one hand, the almost manual labor part of the translation, the distraction that resembles meditation, has steadily held me up in the storm of academic research and personal creation, saving me from the frequent collapses brought about by the inevitable frustration. On the other hand, as a writer, the process of translating excellent works has invaded, expanded and renewed the sensibility of my own language, and the invisible struggle or reconciliation between my linguistic elves and this kind of aggression, is something I am excited to see happen to me. Translation was never her main business, although she worked tirelessly and published 10 translations between the ages of twenty and thirty. But because of this, translation became her leisure work to breathe a little outside of the heavy academic pressure. In the typical medieval view of the author, the translator is closer to the existence of the "writer" than the original.
Portrait of a Young Translator, by Bao Huiyi, Fudan University Press, September 2020.
No wonder Bao Huiyi sighed that heaven was the appearance of a medieval writing room.
But the university campuses of the 21st century are not, after all, the writing rooms of medieval European churches.
Stepping out of her study, Bao Huiyi wants to stand on the podium of the Department of English Language and Literature to preach and teach, and as a "green pepper" (young teacher), she also has to accept the cruel test of the "either ascend or go" system of modern colleges and universities. Although the lectern setting in the classroom, which symbolized authority and hierarchy, was always contrary to her ideal concept of teaching, although standardized, fast-paced academic production did not conform to the academic laws of the humanities, especially the study of medieval English and medieval manuscripts. On the Douban page of the American drama "English Department Chair", which discusses the plight of modern colleges and universities, Bao Huiyi left a self-deprecating sentence: "Is the medieval literary wife with only three people in class my future..."
But as a modern person, Bao Huiyi can only make her small changes under the established system.
She and Jiang Linjing, a young teacher in the Department of German Language and Literature, and Chen Jie, a young teacher in the Department of French Language and Literature, became acquainted with the common confusion of poetry, wine and "green peppers" and established the "Rose of Sharon" literary group, and because of this confusion, she discussed literary traditions and literati romance, and finally evolved into an informal class with poetry and wine.
She enjoyed the rights granted to her by the School Registry to replace the teaching materials of Advanced English with Umberto Echo's The Book of Legendary Lands, and to crammed into the Introduction to English Literature the works of 16 writers from different regions with different themes.
Bao Huiyi in Fudan Six Teachings "Introduction to English Medieval Literature" Class, 2018. Photos were provided by respondents.
She is reluctant to let her writing conform to the rules and be mechanical, and even academic papers hope to meet her own aesthetic standards in terms of language style, as "good-looking" as the literary reviews she has written to the media and the public.
The changes in teaching, coupled with the number of papers required by the college promotion system, coupled with her personal desire to create endlessly, coupled with the translation work she devoted herself to in order to release the pressure of writing papers, cost her sleep time. Most of the time, I slept three to four hours a day, and when I rushed to the draft, it was compressed to two hours. Before the evening class, there was no energy, so I bought a cocktail and quietly poured it into the coffee cup, using the help of alcohol to wake up and refresh my mind.
"I've become someone whose eyelids are jumping every day," Bao Huiyi, barely opening her eyes for an interview, described the feeling as "it's like there's an elf in my eyes making trouble there, and you can't tame it." Sometimes I can't help but get excited to find someone who can see how obviously my eyelids jump. ”
In this state, she talked for three or four hours, until night fell, the café near the school turned into a bar, and the waiter served seasonal cocktails for tasting. She couldn't help but taste an extra small cup and open the box again. The following is an exclusive interview with Bao Huiyi by a reporter from the Beijing News.
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Interview with Huiyi Bao
All the aura,
All appear in the fragments of mental emptiness
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PART 1.
Academic and Institutional
1.1
It's like a juggler with a ball in his hand,
A paper is being revised, a paper is being submitted, and a paper is being written
Beijing News: Looking at your state, is it very hard to come in the morning?
Bao Huiyi: I am in a trance now, just finished a five-hour class, in a state where makeup is also spent and people are fainting. Mainly sleep too late, about (in the morning) 5:30 a.m. sleep, 7:30 a.m. If I can't sit for ten minutes and can't relax, I might order an alcoholic drink and cheer it up.
I really slept too little and my eyelids kept jumping. Take revenge sleep on weekends. I basically sleep one day and one night every ten days, the other nine days may sleep three hours, four hours, yesterday it was two hours. I think it's no problem to sleep for four hours, but two hours is still not enough.
But it's a lot better than the first four years I was on the job, before I got my tenure. At that time, I often fell asleep on the couch in the office. I didn't want to sleep, I just told myself, just squinted for a while, slept for half an hour, and set an alarm clock, which rang every once in a while. But I was so tired that I went straight to sleep. I often wake up suddenly at one or two o'clock in the morning, but I can't sleep there because I didn't have anything to do the next day's class and I couldn't wash up. The office building closed at half past eleven, and I had to go downstairs and knock on the door of the room, feeling guilty when I thought about it.
Relatively speaking, there is now a lot of thin water, but it seems that it is still not enough. I've always wanted to slow down a little bit, hoping to find my own rhythm. There may still be a bit of inertia now, although the pressure from the outside world may not be as great as then, but it has really formed an inertia.
It's actually quite scary. On the one hand, I feel that I am so efficient that I can write one or two books a year; on the other hand, this is indeed at the expense of chronic sleep deprivation. This directly led me to be in a state of overdraft of my body, and I could obviously feel the loss of memory.
But what to do? I stayed up late last night, until five o'clock this morning, because I finally paid off a 500,000-word book manuscript debt, a book that had dragged on for two years. I thought about giving up many times last night, I think there are five more classes tomorrow, and interviews, let myself go, the world will not collapse on this day. But another voice told me that tomorrow you will actually let go of your own, don't drag it out any longer, just finish it.
I'm in a state of return to the light now, and you've witnessed a historic moment for two and a half years. But paying off the book signed in 2018 now can no longer bring me any ecstasy.
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
Beijing News: An end is a new beginning, and it is going to enter a new state of writing.
Bao Huiyi: Before, it has been extracted into a gyroscope by the "non-ascending or walking" system. It's like a juggler with a ball in his hand, a paper is changing, a paper is being cast, and a paper is being written. The minimum requirement for myself now may still be three papers a year, but I think it should be a little slower.
But before slowing down, you must first pay back the original account. I could only restrain myself from signing more contracts for new books. Two new book translations were submitted in 2020 and no new books were translated in 2021. The translation process is also very long, I translated a novella collection by an Irish writer in 2016, which has not yet been published, the author's copyright period has passed, the translator's copyright period has also passed, and the publisher has to re-sign it. So you can't keep thinking about it, forget it after handing it in, and after five years, you are very happy to see that there is another translation that has not yet been published.
I really like research, reading and writing, and I am very happy to work for me, which is why I can constantly motivate myself, although there is no external hard standard that requires me to produce how much academic achievements in a year, but I have an internal driving force.
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
Beijing News: This long-term state of anxiety and busyness will make you forget your love for this career? Or does it make you need to rethink why you're doing this?
Bao Huiyi: I have been thinking about this for the past two years. But I really can't think of any results.
Wasn't there a joke before? Someone organized an online academic conference to invite scholars from all over the world to participate, and most of the replies from European scholars were, "I'm going to a cave for a vacation now, no signal, unstable, but I'll get back as soon as possible when I come back in September." The reply of American scholars is, "I'm sorry, I have more office affairs now, and I will definitely reply within two days at the latest." In one spoof version, an American professor set up an automatic reply to a message: "I'm doing kidney removal surgery right now, but you can call my ward at a certain time, and I can always roll over from the operating table to answer the phone..."
Especially for the humanities, this rhythm I think is fatal. The humanities don't have as many new, groundbreaking studies, and many important ideas and inspirations need to be slowly brewed in the later stages.
1.2
All the inspiration, all the insight,
All appear in the fragments of mental emptiness
Beijing News: Previously, humanities scholars could spend ten or twenty years to make a study after a large amount of accumulation, but now if there is no academic achievement within 6 years, they will lose their teaching positions. Therefore, more young scholars will choose short and fast research projects, while more research with important value has not been done.
Bao Huiyi: Especially for young scholars, this mode of thinking is very fatal. At first, I thought that "if I don't ascend, I will go" is just a legend, "How can I be driven away if I am so good?" "For two years, I was slowly writing a monograph, and in my own way, I wrote some readable articles about the Middle Ages that were between creative writing and academic writing. But I didn't think at all that the latter are not academic achievements, nor are translations, they are all power generations for love. Later, I was kindly awakened, "Your monograph is converted into a paper at most, if there are only books and the paper is not enough, you can't even report the name, and you are settled." "[So I] thought bitterly and dropped the book.
In the humanities, the birth of results was very slow, especially in medieval studies. To make your heart thinner and your hands slower, the whole process cannot be rushed, because if you write a wrong word, your parchment will be wasted. It is precisely the need to hold your breath and play against the void in a high degree of concentration. And many times it is necessary to relax the spirit, to feel the rhythm of the universe, to feel the wind blowing on the body. Moments like this make me feel like I'm a "human" again, and realizing this makes me feel like I want to cry. And all the flashes of inspiration, all the insights, come at this moment. But how natural were these free time.
Now think about the PhD period as heaven, there weren't so many distractions in Ireland. Although it is also very hard to study for a doctorate, compared with the fact that a person is broken into three or five people after work, the doctoral period is purely only a matter of scientific research. Now every day will receive as little as 50, more than three-digit emails, not including advertising, the current reply is 8, 9, 10, just to reply to the email will take nearly 2 hours, some to provide materials, some to provide writing content.
Bao Huiyi lives in dublin next to the forest, 2014. Photos were provided by respondents.
WeChat is even more evil, removing the time of email buffering. I've been fighting and I really can't get a timely response. The way I have found now is to reply in the car on the way back from work, to ensure that the affairs on WeChat are handled before returning home, and when I get home, I can start to produce something; I will return to the email in the early morning. These two dials a day are actually very consuming, which is equivalent to three or four hours a day, which cannot be said to be trivial, but it is indeed something that interrupts the train of thought.
It is precisely this that I find contradictory. Teaching itself is a very interesting and rewarding thing, but the pile of forms it involves and the pile of soulless work that it involves will surely follow. I couldn't cut it, just went to class, and disappeared after class, impossible.
Recently, because of my graduation thesis, I was called by undergraduates at two o'clock in the morning. The student was in a hurry, knowing that I must not have slept yet, and asked me if I could make a phone call now, and her anxiety would infect me immediately. She said the paper had a big problem, but it would be submitted tomorrow. When you encounter a big problem, how can you solve it in one night? But still have to talk, a chat for 2 hours. The student is also a momentary emotion, and the big problem in his eyes can actually be solved after clarifying his thinking. But at that point, if I didn't answer the call, he might just get stuck there and make impulsive decisions like Yanbi.
Why did my aura, my insights, appear every day, every day, when I was in Ireland? I still hope to have a large section of empty space. Emptiness is not the same as lying flat, it is important, and all our important intellectual activities are born in the gap between things. But the problem now is that this gap is not allowed, and there is only so much time per day. I don't know if it's just me.
1.3
Independent scholars, who do not make a living from academic research,
Nor do we give up academic research,
That in itself is a dignity
Beijing News: The humanities do not necessarily have direct and clear research results, but the energy you spend and the homework you do may be presented in another aspect. However, you must have a predictable research result in order to apply for a project or apply for funding.
Bao Huiyi: This is a paradox. Especially for field research, going abroad does require financial support. I do manuscript research, and sheepskin manuscripts are distributed all over the world. For example, if we look at manuscripts, sometimes the library will not approve it without financial support and letters of recommendation, which I think is an "academic snobbery", but it is also a global phenomenon. Many good independent scholars will be limited as a result.
In our context, independent scholars, or "folk scientists," carry a pejorative or mocking connotation. But I think the word is very good, you neither make a living from academic research nor give up academic research, which is a dignity in itself. Independent scholars should have been a passport for the noble. But now, without the support of academic institutions or academic funds, research is difficult to carry out.
My colleagues in Ireland are the same, asking every day, "How's it going to beg for food today?" "Filled out 13 pages of the form today", "PPT for demonstration today"... I don't know when it started, but the research plan before the study began has been detailed to what results will be produced and which chapters can be divided. Only by running to the last visible and conclusive bibliographic chapter can the fund be applied for.
I don't think that's right. Ideally, approval should first look at your academic level, which is easy to judge by your past academic achievements; then look at whether you have enough enthusiasm for a certain discipline, you should submit a personalized material; and finally your professional endorsement, which is composed of your historical academic resume. Instead of talking about it like this, everyone is talking about it, but in fact, we all know that actual research does not necessarily carry out this way.
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
Beijing News: Many female scholars have mentioned that they have not dared to have children in the past few years when they first entered school, and they are afraid of missing the deadline of "non-promotion and departure" (short-term employment to long-term employment) because of maternity leave. It seems that many times, in the academic system, female scholars are particularly easily overlooked and restricted.
Bao Huiyi: Although I don't have this problem because of Dink, I can understand this very well. Jiang Linjing, a young teacher in the Department of German Language and Literature, was absent this semester and went on maternity leave, and she gave birth to her second child. In fact, foreign countries are advocating that if women want to take maternity leave, the period should be postponed for one year. Teacher Jiang just enjoyed a tenured teaching position when he was the eldest, otherwise the pressure would really be particularly great. But she is relatively good, and she got a tenured teaching position in three or four years, which may not be the norm. Most female scholars with production plans will have concerns in this regard, not to mention the second child.
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PART 2.
Language and writing
2.1
Teaching itself can be a stimulus to writing
Beijing News: What was the first course you opened?
Bao Huiyi: I first opened two courses at the same time, one was English writing for international students, and the other was English literature introduction. The text I chose was half fiction, half poetry, 8+8, which would cover up to 16 writers. Because it is an introduction to "English Literature", I also deliberately chose English literature from different regions, Ireland, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as Chinese and some ethnic minorities. It wouldn't be interesting if it was just a Western canon. And each region has its own literary history.
But I'm tired of taking classes like this, because every week is something new. When I first came back, I basically spent the whole week preparing for classes and attending classes, and basically did not have time for my own writing and scientific research. It may take a year to gradually distribute the time.
Beijing News: Will this hit your own writing and translation creation?
Huiyi Bao: There is indeed a blow. Depending on your attitude, teaching itself can also be stimulating. Because I often "smuggled goods", such as advanced English, I can use uniform teaching materials, but I give them Umberto Echo's The Book of Legendary Lands, which tells about fictional geography in literature. On the one hand, I think it is okay for juniors to read Echo, although it is english translation (from Italian to English), on the other hand, it is more interesting to turn a so-called intensive reading course into a class in art history, intellectual history, and literary history at the same time. Fudan is still relatively good at this point, and teachers can freely choose what teaching materials to use. Because it is my favorite writer and favorite text, the preparation itself is also a stimulus, stimulating me to form a virtuous circle and then write something.
But this is also what I gradually figured out, "it can be taught like this." After practicing for a few years, the feedback from students is also very good, so never underestimate the learning ability of students, and you have to try to know.
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
Beijing News: In terms of your professional field, before you returned from Ireland, did you know what the research situation in China was like?
Huiyi Bao: My research involves Old and Middle English poetry, geographical imagination in medieval literature, medieval and Renaissance natural history and sensory history, and graphic interaction in manuscripts. Before going abroad, I think that this research is still very lacking, because the information is relatively closed, whether it is reading resources, teaching resources or academic communities, it is basically not enough. But after returning home, I found that one of the reasons for this has changed in the past few years is that more PhDs who have studied abroad have returned, some of them have gone earlier than I have, and they have been studying there longer, 7 years, 8 years, and then two or three years later.
Today, many people think that in picture books or graphic novels, images that serve the text are illustrative, examples, and illustrations. But in the Middle Ages, although some of the manuscript images were for decorative purposes, more manuscript images and texts were separate and had their own lives. Although the text is in the center and the image is surrounded by the text, the image often challenges the meaning of the text, so the image cannot be purely used as a decoration, but must be considered in conjunction with the text. It also provides an open space for interpretation, an open spirit that I like myself.
Alain de Lille has a famous Latin quote that I particularly like, to the effect that everything in the world, like us, is like a book like a painting, in a mirror. This sentence can be understood as "like a book, a painting or a mirror", and can be understood as "like a book or a painting in a mirror", because books and paintings are mirror images of each other, and I personally prefer the interpretation of the latter. Books are words, expressions that I am more accustomed to, but the painting holds up a mirror to you and lets me see myself.
In fact, the entire history of mankind has been continuously advanced in the process of confrontation between books and paintings. This is also the most fascinating thing when visiting the museum, sometimes the text written on a serious book on an artifact is completely different from the image. The harder it is to preserve differences today, the more we have to do this in our own research. At least in this reserved land, wouldn't it be fascinating not to mention the theory that "marginal narratives serve the central narrative", allowing the existence of multiple voices, and allowing plants in a garden to open their mouths at the same time?
2.2
When these words appear densely,
This style is like setting off fireworks in front of you
Beijing News: In addition to Old English, Middle English, Latin, and Gaelic, have you always maintained enthusiasm and curiosity about different languages?
Bao Huiyi: Language is still very fascinating, because language is not just a set of symbol systems, behind the language is always the way to understand the world. One more language unlocked, one more pair of eyes to see the world.
For example, the "kenning" in Old English and Old Icelandic is very beautiful, not straight, completely in riddles: the sea is called "Whale Road", and the warrior is called "The Fighting Apple Tree", which is a special image. And the sword is a "shiny onion", which will be a bit defamiliarized: why? Do they have a crush onion? How do onions kill people? But I could feel a strange beauty.
They also have dozens of different accounts of snowflakes. Why not use snowlake ("snowflake" in English)? In fact, snowflake itself is also a compound word, but it is more straightforward, and Icelandic will use some unrelated words to form a compound word to refer to snowflakes. When these words appear densely, the genre is like setting off fireworks in front of you. Not just rhetorical pleasure, you imagine what kind of mind and way of life is behind this language, so that they use such an expression to tell their people and things when they are around the campfire. With this thought, these people are all alive. You immediately detach yourself from the reality in which you live and enter the "more real" world of language.
"The Writing Room", by Bao Huiyi, East China Normal University Press, August 2018.
Behind every language is such a wonderful world. Although I learned Persian very shallowly, I was also fascinated: they have very few core verbs, just a hundred, so they need to use many verbs to form an action, such as "stand up" such a simple action, in their expression it becomes pull yourself from chair, pulling you up from the chair. In fact, Persian is difficult in its alphabet writing system, because it uses the Arabic alphabet, Arabic I have studied for more than a semester, but my graphic memory ability is not particularly good. Now a lot of them have forgotten.
But it is not to say that forgetting is equivalent to learning in vain, even if it is not mastered in the end, the opening it opens for my imagination is very precious. I was fascinated by the way of thinking hidden in the language. At first, it was only a curiosity for exotic cultures, and then it depicted the artistic tradition and architectural form that I wanted to grasp as a whole, and thus entered a process of continuous curiosity. Although I have never been able to become a master of Arabic language and literature in my lifetime, in the process I have been taken to many beautiful places, and the history, culture, and soul of foreign countries have attracted me, and it is their language that strings all this together. The trip was worth it anyway.
What else in the world can get you into so patiently and solidly, give you a particularly calm feeling, and make you reconnect with life? Although it is in a more abstract way, you will feel that the fog that covers the surface is wiped away piece by piece, and the world will light up little by little. The process of learning a language is very happy in itself.
Beijing News: When using different languages, do you show different personalities? Japanese journalist Shiori Ito wrote a book about her multiple prosecutions after being sexually assaulted. She was ashamed of being sexually assaulted and couldn't speak in Japanese, but in English she could express her views more courageously.
Huiyi Bao: Yes. In fact, we are immunating( playing, imitating), and you can imagine what kind of person you are in the group that uses this language. Ta is a kind of external manifestation of you, ta is you and not you at the same time. That's why I think bilingual writing is very important. Although I write novels and poems bilingually, English creations are almost never published. It's a category for me, and there are some expressions that are too difficult to handle with Chinese. When the sense of shame in Chinese culture and my sense of proportion are intertwined, I can gain great freedom to write in English.
What matters is not the work itself, but that I was liberated in the process, loosening the unnecessary shackles that I had previously imposed on myself. Why does vitality shrink after adulthood? Because you keep shackling yourself in the process of self-discipline. The children were particularly happy, watching the children in Teacher Jiang's house, not afraid of the sky, dancing ballet there, turning 20 times until they turned themselves to the floor. Adults may turn to lap 15 or lap 5 when the brain stop mechanism appears. In fact, let yourself fall, you will not fall to death. This posture should be maintained for life so that we can live up to it.
The most frightening thing is that we are always seeking freedom in writing. I thought that as a social person, I would inevitably have some shackles to live, but I would seek freedom in the shackles — as a writer, we are fortunate to have another layer of real life, all of which can be turned into metaphorical language in the work. Originally, writing is the freedom that we cannot give up once we retreat. It is terrible if, growing up, one sets limits on oneself in writing: there are some things you cannot write before you become aware; you do not realize that part of your freedom has been taken away.
There's a voice there before you write it, and once that voice starts to appear, the writing is killed.
On the positive side, this is to force the writer step by step to the essence, to force a mature writer. If your story is important enough to you, you can find a way to tell it anyway without going against the truth. As the obstacles to be bypassed increase, the demands on writing skills become more and more demanding.
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
2.3
No discipline can be independent of trends
Beijing News: The current trend of discipline classification is to continuously refine and continuously divide the original disciplines. What are your thoughts on this?
Bao Huiyi: This refinement and segmentation, constantly concretizing your discipline, determining your research object, and then fixing it down to become the content that can be quantitatively assessed, academic production may be the case in the end.
Unfortunately, the culture of the twentieth century was supposed to inherit the medieval tradition of three arts and four arts. In the Renaissance, there was also the saying of "all-rounder" and "generalist", Leonardo da Vinci was a generalist, but in the Middle Ages, there was no need to emphasize "generalist", but whenever you say that you are a "scholar", how can you say that you do not understand music, how can you say that you do not understand painting, how can you say that you do not understand astrology? This must all be part of lifelong self-education. You can't be complacent and say, "I do research in this area of expertise, I don't do that research." But today, if you don't make this division, you seem unprofessional. If you say at an academic conference, "I am doing russian literature research," then you are at the bottom of the chain of contempt, and such a rough direction cannot be over the subject, of course, specific to the study of a certain problem in a certain manuscript of a certain book in a certain year by Dostoevsky, so that everyone here will listen, "We are the same kind of people."
Originally I thought that medieval studies had been eroded less by this academic current and could hold on to our own fortress, but then I found that no one could exist alone, no discipline could be independent of the current. This is the brand of the times, and it leaves more evil or more blessings, which can only be left to the future judgment.
Beijing News: When you returned to China in 2015, you hoped to make some changes and some advancements in the study of Middle English, but looking back now, do you think that your original goal has been achieved?
Bao Huiyi: Definitely not as much as I hoped... I don't know what I'm hoping for, I don't actually have unrealistic illusions about myself that I can make much of a difference on my own. For example, the Foreign Languages Library has been ordering medieval books for several years, and although the Department Library has been ordering books related to the Middle Ages for several years, it takes a year, but at least the current students can find the reference books I used during my Ph.D.
There are also living people. Every year at least 3 to 5 students start to like the Middle Ages, change the prejudices of the "Dark Middle Ages", embrace and enter this exotic land, and make more efforts for it, whether through language learning or tourism, they have all kinds of different ways of intervening, but at least I can see the light in their eyes and see them open new doors. This gave me another glimpse of myself in Ireland.
As for me personally, I'm also constantly writing, although it's far less than I'd liked to be. But I think I've been a little too fast, and I need to be a little slower. Because writing, reading, and disseminating knowledge is not about overnight, you need to maintain a continuous state and do it for a lifetime. In the context of Chinese, it is not only my personal strength, many scholars who have studied the Middle Ages after returning from studying abroad or writing overseas with Chinese — such as Qiu Fangzhe, whom I mentioned in the Emerald Isle Chronicles , are pushing in their own way, even if they are writing some medieval-related columns in a popular science way, even if the average reader initially wants to hear the hunting story (frankly this is the most misunderstood and narrow way), it doesn't matter, there is no only right way to get in. As long as they enter, they are not satisfied with listening to the story of dog blood, and they will take the initiative to learn more. This is not a "enlightenment", I just want to spread the inspiration I have gained before through this chain. I can't say how much was done, but at least I did.
Emerald Isle Chronicle, by Bao Huiyi, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, January 2015.
Beijing News: Sometimes a seed is sown, although it is particularly small, but at some point in the future it may sprout and evolve a great impact. For example, when we interview a scholar or read a book, we may also recall a lecture or a class we listened to during our studies, and then get new nourishment.
Bao Huiyi: Yes, the moment of unexpected discovery and harvest is really worth it. We now value KPIs too much and want to get an immediate return on everything we do, how is this possible? This is contrary to the laws of human cognition. Although I don't understand the principles of cranial nerves at all, I probably know that the information stored in each neuron is not activated immediately. The trigger point may not be manipulated in your hands, maybe one day the sun is shining, one day the temperature is very suitable, it is suddenly stimulated, this is the happiest and most exciting thing for people.
Beijing News: This is very similar to the movie "Spiritual Journey". In the film, the human soul needs to find its own personality and interest in a place called "the place of birth" in order to obtain a body to travel to Earth. There is a soul that can never find its own "vocation", and countless scientists, musicians, and writers want to cultivate him, but he just can't raise his interest and can't pass. In the end, he was lit up by the hard singing voice of the subway singer, the lollipop given by the barbershop, and a piece of ginkgo biloba leaf that fell in the autumn high and became a real soul.
Bao Huiyi: These are not chicken soups, although they sound very similar, but my personal experience tells me that they are. The dignity of human nature is not that you can get what you plan immediately, it is the self-mechanization of man, and only machines are absolutely predictable. Even the gacha doesn't know what will be twisted, is the generation of the individual mind not as complicated as the gacha? Why presuppose yourself?
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PART 3.
Literature and publicity
3.1
Good writers are hermaphrodites
Beijing News: You have translated a large number of works by female writers and female poets such as Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, etc. Do you think that the identity of women will make you have a natural affinity or deeper understanding of female authors?
Bao Huiyi: Because I have never been a man, I have lived in this skin bag since I was a child (so I have no way to judge). I've been wondering, what do you call "women"? When I was a child, I would be a little anxious, I felt that my femininity was lacking, my personality was relatively wild, I followed the boys to the trees and wild, I fought in groups, if it was not for good grades, the teacher should always ask the parents, but my grades covered up these things, so that I could continue to be lawless.
How exactly does femininity be defined? When I grew up, I found that what is linked to masculinity is all positive words, bravery, determination, and so on, and the positive words linked to femininity are not completely absent, such as gentleness. But in my opinion, a person, first of all, should be a "person", why can't he be both gentle and decisive, both understanding and decisive? It's about writing, especially. Of the male writers I've translated, such as the F.S. Fitzgerald I like, the parts that appeal to me the most are all a bit hermaphrodite. If we call "sensitivity to the outside world" a "female perspective," all writers must have a female perspective, otherwise they won't be able to do their job. But this seems to discriminate against men, why can't men observe the outside world keenly? So how to go is a dead end. One gender should not be allowed to monopolize certain strengths or weaknesses. It's better to let the work or we speak for ourselves.
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
Beijing News: Among the writers you are more familiar with, Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood are often labeled feminist, but you don't seem to approve of this practice very much, including Atwood himself, who seems reluctant to admit that he is a feminist writer. On the one hand, I think that their works have a sense of female subjectivity, and on the other hand, I also feel that the label of feminism narrows their works.
Bao Huiyi: Actually, I am defending them. I didn't feel unable to label them, but both of them vehemently opposed this, especially Angela Carter, who emphasized this in particular in interviews, and Atwood responded in a mocking tone. Including Louise Glick, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020, they as writers don't want to be labeled. Because once you enter the "ism", it means that you can be used as a knife and gun, used outside of literature, and then you can't write. I understand that writers care about this and cherish feathers, and I think it is sometimes necessary. If you only discuss it in the field of pure literature, in fact, you don't have to care about what labels others put on, anyway, I don't care, but because you can't look at yourself with the hindsight of literary history. Given the particular era in which the two of them lived, [labeling] might mean that a god like Plath's suicide was created, with a lot more whitewashing, used in places I hadn't expected or meant. Writers may be a little wary of this and don't like to be categorized, but that doesn't mean they're not feminists. Of course, it also depends on how you define feminism.
3.2
You can't take the process of eliminating prejudice out of their hands
Beijing News: Can it be said that for them, the connotation of the label "feminism" is political, not literary?
Bao Huiyi: I think Atwood is still quite involved in politics, except for her, most writers, especially poets and novelists, including myself, are not very good at politics. Of course, I also realized that whether I intervened or not, I was already living in its results. But as a writer, I can only intervene in political issues, including feminism, in ways that I can aesthetically accept.
What I personally dislike most is probably the way of "public knowledge", of course, the word "public knowledge" itself is neutral, but I don't like to directly wave the flag and shout this way, I don't like to use language in this way. In terms of ability, I have a blind spot in my knowledge, and there are too many things to make up for; in aesthetics, I may be a little clean about language. If others don't have my cleanliness and can work well in this way, that's fine, and I sometimes forward it.
I think that if you express a categorical judgment and opinion, then the subtext is to hope that others will think like me, so as to attract the same kind, or to win the same kind of people. But this is contrary to what I believe. In my opinion, everyone has to draw their own conclusions, and the word "opinion leader" is a paradox in my opinion, why do opinions need leaders?
Bao Huiyi in the documentary "But there are books" (season 2).
There is a saying that for some people who are not able to form judgments on their own, they need to be guided by correct concepts. But I always think that everyone can form their own opinions, although in reality I have seen many blind, extreme views, as if they were said without thinking. But even so, they can't be deprived of the opportunity to trial and error, they may pay the price for their own prejudices, learn from it, you can't take the process of eliminating prejudice from them, tell him that he must think like I am right. One should not accomplish self-actualization in this way, or complete one's self-actualization on behalf of others.
Ultimately, to what extent can man grasp the truth of the world? For me, this truth exists, but it is fluid, and the truth will take on a different face for everyone.
I also reflect on whether this straightforward way is really more powerful if you want to change the world? But I am also full of confidence in the power of invisibility, and literature may not be weaker than waving the flag, but it acts in a more subtle aspect, not so easy to quantify with attention, and needs to give it longer time, more patience.
Suppose I write a work in which there are female characters who are unique, or describe a world that belongs to female self-sufficiency, although the message I convey is not clear enough, but I believe that the reader understands the work and understands the author's position.
Beijing News: Women picking up a pen to write is a power in itself, but in a different way. Juan Vazquez once said in an interview with the Beijing News: Writing novels and writing reviews belong to completely different writing, writing novels because of confusion about life, and writing reviews because of being sure about life. Of course, the comments he said referred specifically to social and political comments.
Bao Huiyi: After reflecting on his point of view, I feel that I will never write a review. I may have only a momentary certainty that the world is too uncertain for me, that I am unsure of the "confidence of being" itself, and that poets such as Elizabeth Bishop are of my kind in this respect.
Not to mention five or ten years, even within a year, some of my ideas are constantly self-correcting. My ideal is to be a student for a lifetime, and I enjoy the process of being constantly opened, stimulated, and constantly breaking through self-knowledge under the podium. On the podium, I have more or less "acting" elements, because if I stumble and keep correcting myself, the student's experience will be very bad, and I have to be very sure, but I am putting a question mark on myself in my heart, are you so sure? Do you really believe what you just said? In this sense, I am still more comfortable with the role of the student, I am not afraid of the boundaries being broken, try again, but I will be afraid to maintain an impeccable posture.
The specific experience of each generation is changing, and the only thing that can be transmitted is what will grow on its own, just like sowing a seed, and it is not right to give people a pot of flowers directly. Education is a difficult thing to do, and the real ideal is to have a life like Socrates, always in dialogue. But today, that kind of conversation is impossible, and you can't get fifty people to participate in your life at the same time. The setting of the pulpit itself is contrary to the idea of education, because it represents a one-dimensional direction of transmission from top to bottom, and what can be transmitted from top to bottom is either factual or too arbitrary. Factual things that students can grasp through self-study, what teachers have to do is to stimulate, and stimulation can only occur if both parties are equal. Therefore, I have always had some doubts about the identity of the teacher, in my ideal, teaching is not the transmission of knowledge points, but a gesture of lighting and inviting.
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