Edgar Snow from different periods profile picture
The cover of the book "Living China: Selected Short Stories in Modern China" compiled by Edgar Snow and the title page of Lu Xun's photo File picture
Edgar Snow is well known as an old friend of the Chinese people, and he has a deep affection for the Chinese people and the Chinese revolution. From June to October 1936, he visited the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, becoming the first Western journalist to cover the Red Zone, and wrote the famous documentary work "The Red Star Shines on China" (also translated as "Journey to the West"). In 1937, the book caused a sensation around the world as soon as it was published, selling more than 100,000 copies and subsequently reprinting several times. The sinologist Latie Moore once commented, "The book describes situations that people have never heard of or only vaguely feel." There was no publicity in that book, only reports on the actual situation. It turns out that there is another China! However, what is less well known to the public is that before "The Red Star Shines on China", Snow had also spent a lot of effort to compile and publish the book "Living China - Selected Short Stories in Modern China" in English, introducing Western readers to a real China he felt.
"There's that healthy commotion boiling everywhere, giving birth to powerful, meaningful sprouts"
In 1928, Edgar Snow first came to China as a journalist, opening his relationship with China. Like most foreigners who came to China at the time, when Snow first arrived in China, he also thought that Chinese "inferior." But soon, an interview made him change his attitude. In 1929, there was an extremely severe drought in western China, and the red land was thousands of miles, the people had no grain harvest, no food, and plague was rampant in many places. Snow came to Saraqi, Inner Mongolia, the most severely affected, for an interview, and the tragic situation he saw there made him feel great sympathy for the Chinese people. In his report, "Saving 250,000 Lives," Snow wrote, "I have witnessed thousands of children die in a famine that ultimately claimed the lives of more than five million people. Along the way, it was desolate and lifeless, as if a volcanic eruption had just occurred. Even the trees were stripped of their skin, and the vast majority of the mud-brick houses in the village collapsed. Some of the only wood in the house was also removed and sold for a few copper plates. Greatly touched and shocked, Snow began to reflect on and criticize the attitude of foreigners towards Chinese, in the same article, he condemned foreigners living in Shanghai for being indifferent to the drought in the northwest; since then, in articles such as "Chinese Please Go Through the Back door" and "Americans Living in Shanghai", he has repeatedly criticized and satirized Western discrimination against Chinese and China's plunder.
At this time, Snow had shaken off the discriminatory psychology of the Western colonizers and began to understand a real and realistic China and a living, flesh-and-blood Chinese people. And he also realized that if he wanted Chinese people to get more support and help from the West, he needed to break the stereotype of China symbolized by the West and let the real China be understood by more Westerners. So he thought of literature. The literary writing about modern China that could be read in the West at that time was often deliberately written in exotic ways to suit foreign readers, and even exaggerated backwardness and bad habits. These works have deepened the biased understanding of Chinese mystery, ignorance, and numbness among Western readers. Therefore, Snow felt that translation might be a better form. He believes that only Chinese writing written by Chinese to Chinese can reflect the true state of the world and the true feelings of the Chinese people in China. Through translating these works, he wants to introduce the thoughts and deeds of contemporary Chinese to the world, so that Western readers can understand "how the Chinese of the contemporary upper and lower classes really work, act, fall in love, and play with each other." He believed that in China's "ongoing" literary creation, there must be "a spiritual, material, and cultural force sufficient to help us understand the ideas that are transforming Chinese."
At that time, the language and style of Chinese literature were undergoing a great revolution. The vernacular literary movement, beginning with Hu Shi's "Discussion on Literary Reform" and Chen Duxiu's "Treatise on Literary Revolution", has been in full swing for ten years, and new literature has made great progress, and the most important new literary writers such as Lu Xun and Mao Dun have appeared one after another, creating a number of outstanding new vernacular literary works. But the Western world knows very little about this change. The reason for this is that the West's understanding of Chinese literature and culture mainly relies on Western sinologists, Chinese has neither the advantage of language nor the right to speak in the world. However, most sinologists' interest in Chinese literature and culture is limited to the rich and splendid and mysterious ancient Chinese civilization, while they have little interest in modern Chinese literature and culture that grew up on the land of poor, weak and backward modern China. Harold Acton, an Italian scholar who also lived in China, once criticized the Western sinology community at the time for being "more interested in dead literature than in living literature."
Unlike ordinary Western sinologists, Snow came to China as a journalist and cared about the current China. He saw the very important changes taking place in China's intellectual and cultural circles, and believed that this change was and would have a profound impact: "The world's oldest and uninterrupted culture has disintegrated, and the country's internal and external struggles have forced it to create a new culture to replace it." Concepts, things and institutions that have been regarded as orthodox, normal and natural for thousands of years have been fatally dealt a blow, so that a series of old beliefs have been abandoned and new realms have been opened up in time and space. Everywhere there was that healthy commotion, a powerful, meaningful sprout. It will greatly change the economic, political and cultural landscape of Eastern Asia. In China's vast arena, there are contrasts, conflicts and revaluations. Today, the waves of life are raging. The atmosphere created by the changes here has made the earth more fertile than ever, and in the womb of great art, new life is creeping. ”
Therefore, Snow decided to translate the excellent works of new vernacular literature that reflected The reality of China to the West. At first, he thought it was just a simple collection and collation work, just a collection of modern literary works that had been translated into English, and simple processing. But when he set out to find English translations of new vernacular literature, he was surprised to find that the field was almost blank—"none of the important modern Chinese novels have been translated, and only a few short stories have been translated, inconspicuously in denominational publications that have a short lifespan or few readers." "Why is there no translation of new vernacular literature?" He asked this question to many foreign friends, and the answer was that contemporary China has not produced any great literature, and there is nothing worth translating.
Snow disagrees with this answer, arguing that the significance of translating contemporary Chinese literature lies not only in its literary nature, but also in its sociological significance: "to help us understand the spiritual, material, and cultural forces that are transforming the ideas of Chinese." ”
"There are a few foreigners who love China far more than some compatriots themselves"
Snow began compiling Living China around 1930-1931. As Snow himself said, the meeting with Lu Xun and Lin Yutang strengthened his confidence in this work. Lu Xun's "broad-minded humanitarian spirit" and Lin Yutang's "wild and uninhibited humor" made him feel more and more that there must be important writers in the chinese literary circles in the recent past, who have written works worthy of being understood by the whole world.
Interestingly, Snow didn't know much about Chinese at the time. However, he soon received help from several Chinese writers. One of the most important is Yao Ke.
Yao Ke, also known as Yao Xinnong, was a famous screenwriter and writer in Shanghai at that time, graduated from the church university Soochow University, with excellent Chinese and English, and was a close friend of Lu Xun. Starting with Lu Xun's works, the two first translated several works in "Scream", first published in magazines such as Asia Minor in the United States, and later included in "Living China". This work was enthusiastically supported and helped by Lu Xun himself. In the process of compilation, Snow has visited Lu Xun many times to discuss some questions about new Chinese literature, Lu Xun gave enthusiastic answers, in the process of compilation, Lu Xun felt Snow's sincere love for China, he commented: "S Jun (that is, Snow - the author's note) is clear. There are a few foreigners who love China far more than some of their compatriots themselves. ”
In the process of Snow and Yao Ke cooperating to compile Lu Xun's works, an important by-product was also born. In May 1933, Snow wanted a single photograph of Lu Xun to use when Living China was published. Yao Ke visited Lu Xun for this purpose, and Lu Xun took out some old photos. Because the new book was to be shown to foreigners after it was published, Lu Xun also attached great importance to it, and the two of them picked for half a day, but they failed to pick out a picture reflecting Lu Xun's spiritual temperament from the old photos. So Yao Ke and Lu Xun went to the Xuehuai Photo Studio on Nanjing Road in Shanghai to take several portraits, including a single photo of Lu Xun. The photograph was first published in the January 1935 issue of asia magazine in The United States, along with Snow's Commentary on Lu Xun, and later on the title page of the book "Living China" published in London, England at the end of 1936. After Lu Xun's death, the huge portrait of the Funeral Home of All Nations for people to mourn was enlarged from this single photo.
In addition to Yao Ke, the young people involved in the specific compilation work were Xiao Qian and Yang Gang, who were studying at Yenching University at the time.
When editing "Living China", Snow was working as a part-time lecturer in the Department of Journalism at Yenching University, and he had "no teaching spirit and no sense of white superiority", and his equal and easy-going attitude made the students feel more cordial. Snow and his wife, Helen Foster Snow, were living in a Chinese-style bungalow at No. 8 of the Haidian Military Aircraft Department (near the southwest gate of peking university), which soon became a "real classroom" and "a window for a little fresh air" for a group of young students who were eager for progress. Mr. and Mrs. Snow often invited young students to their homes, reading new books abroad with them and exchanging views and opinions enthusiastically. Xiao Qian and Yang Gang were both regulars of the Eighth Military Aircraft Department. During the exchange, Snow learned that the two often wrote for newspapers and periodicals, so he invited them to join the compilation of "Living China".
Xiao Qian wrote an article titled "Snow and the Chinese New Literary and Art Movement- Remembering 'Living China'", which detailed his interactions with Snow during the compilation of "Living China".
According to Xiao Qian, at that time, there were quite a few foreigners living in China, taking advantage of the geographical advantages to sell Chinese literature and culture to the West, and even pretending to be sinologists. They selected one or two Chinese works, at a low price, asked a "Mr. China" to dictate and translate, recorded them themselves, and published them overseas with a little collation, even if they personally "translated" a Chinese work, never mentioning the "Mr. China", and the income should be more irrelevant to Chinese. Snow is not like this at all, he respects every Chinese involved in the work, recognizes their contributions, and he is not greedy. When Living China was published, he signed as an editor rather than a translator, and in the preface, he confessed that he did not know much about Chinese, thanked Yao Ke, Xiao Qian, Yang Gang and other collaborators many times, and hoped to pay them a generous reward. In 1935, on the day of Xiao Qian's graduation, Mr. and Mrs. Snow invited him to the Eighth Military Aircraft Department to celebrate him, and gave him a classic foreign literary work in a brown suitcase pocket book.
Xiao Qian also recounted the snow and his wife's participation in the 12.9 Movement. During their teaching at Yenching University, Mr. and Mrs. Snow were always sympathetic to the anti-Japanese activities of Chinese students, and during the 12.9 Movement, they walked at the forefront of the parade, protecting students as foreigners, fighting soldiers, and their homes became temporary refuges for wounded students. In fact, the Snows' contribution to the 12.9 movement went far beyond that, and they used their professional strengths as journalists to win the support of international public opinion for the student movement. On December 9, 1935, the day the movement broke out, Snow sent a report to the foreign media; on December 10, he published in the Daily Herald "Three Thousand Beijing Demonstrators Push for Resistance, The Gates Are Closed, "Are We Japanese Colonies?" On December 12, at the suggestion of Snow, Gong Pusheng, Gong Peng, and other students held a foreign press conference at Linhuxuan, Yenching University, to introduce the movement; on the second day of the 12.16 parade, Snow also published a report in the Daily Herald. In addition to directly writing and publishing articles, the Snows also contacted the British and American media at multiple levels and through multiple channels, and Snow himself was a correspondent in China for the New York "Sun" and "Daily Herald" and other media; they also continuously strengthened contacts with the Miller's Review, the Chicago Daily Tribune, Asia Magazine, the North China Branch of the United Press Agency, and the Peking Reuters Agency, guiding international public opinion to sympathize with and support the student movement, exerting pressure on the authorities, and promoting the continuous fermentation of the movement.
"He doesn't want beautiful words... He wanted works that were exposing, condemning, depicting the reality of Chinese society."
In such a selection of modern Chinese literary works facing the West, which writers should be selected to represent China? Lu Xun, of course, was indisputable. The whole book is divided into two parts, the first part is "Lu Xun's novel" and the second part is "the novel of other Chinese writers". "Lu Xun's Novel" selects seven works of "Medicine", "A Small Thing", "Kong Yiji", "Blessing", "Kite", "On "Fucking"" and "Divorce", and has a biography of Lu Xun.
After the first part includes Lu Xun's works, which writers' works should be included in the second part has become a difficult and controversial issue. To this end, Snow consulted extensively with many literary figures at the time. In addition to Lu Xun and Lin Yutang, there are also Mao Dun, Zheng Zhenduo, Gu Jiegang, Ba Jin, Shen Congwen and so on. Nevertheless, Snow is also very committed to his own principles and judgment standards. Xiao Qian once wrote: "He did not want beautiful writing—at that time, Modern magazine had quite a few 'streamlined' works depicting life in the Metropolis, and he was not interested at all; it did not matter if the text was rough, he wanted works that were exposive, condemnatory, and described the reality of Chinese society." ”
According to Snow's standards, the selection of the second part of the text has been adjusted many times, and finally selected Rou Shi's "Mother as a Slave", Mao Dun's "Suicide", "Mud", Ding Ling's "Water", "Message", Ba Jin's "Dog", Shen Congwen's "Baizi", Sun Xizhen's "A'e", Tian Jun's "On the "Dalian" Steamship", "The Third Gun", Lin Yutang's "Dog Meat General", Xiao Qian's "Conversion", Yu Dafu's "Wisteria and Ciluo", Zhang Tianyi's "Migration", Guo Moruo's "Cross", and the nameless "". A Fragment of a Lost Diary" and Satin's "Routes Outside the Law" are 17 works by 14 writers. Because of Snow's standards of disclosure and criticism, left-wing literature occupies the majority of this lineup. In addition, Snow also asked Yang Gang and Xiao Qian to provide a "propositional essay" each. Born into a wealthy family, Yang Gang resolutely broke with her past identity and class and embarked on the revolutionary road, Snow considered her a very representative new Chinese woman, and invited her to write an autobiographical novel. Yang Gang wrote two articles directly in English, and Snow selected one of them, "A Missing Fragment of a Diary", and at Yang Gang's request, included it in "Living China" under the pseudonym of "Lost Name". Xiao Qian, on the other hand, translated his "Conversion" article on the so-called "Salvation Army" buying souls in Beijing's slums. Xiao Qian originally felt that he was not qualified enough to be selected, and there was much prevarication, but Snow said that what he wanted was not a famous artist, but the social content of the work, and he believed that this work criticized the spiritual poison of the so-called "Western civilization" in China at that time.
In the final appendix to Living China, there is an article signed "Nime Welsh" entitled "Modern Chinese Literary Movement", and the actual author is Snow's wife, Helen Snow. In order to write this article, she interviewed many writers, including Lu Xun, and used informative and rich materials to outline the brief context of the development of new Chinese literature, and to look at the works collected in the anthologies. Although many of the views in it are debatable and controversial because of the lack of in-depth understanding of new Chinese literature, it is still quite helpful to help Western readers better and more deeply understand the works in "Living China" and understand the general appearance of the new Chinese literary movement.
"If I had fully estimated in advance how much painstaking effort and effort would have been required to compile this collection, I would never have dared to carry it out so 'hastily'."
For the editing and publication of "Living China", Snow spent a lot of effort in the past five years. He said: "If I had fully estimated in advance how much painstaking effort and energy would have been required to compile this collection, I would never have dared to carry it out so 'hastily'." Believe my readers that I would rather write three books myself than bother with such a collection. ”
Not only do you change your manuscript three times when selecting a title, but Snow also has strict requirements for translation work. Snow did not understand Chinese, so the method adopted at that time was "Chinese and Western translation", that is, Yao Ke, Xiao Qian and other Chinese translators first roughly translated from the original text into English, and then Snow revised it on the basis of English. Unlike the popular "literal translation" of the original text that was popular at that time, which was aimed at accurately translating the original text word by word, Snow's concept of translation started from the reader. He set the hypothetical reader of Living China as someone who knows nothing about China. For them to understand, the translator is required to have a clear understanding of the things described in the original work, and then convey it to the reader in English that is as accurate and vivid and easy to understand as possible. In particular, some content involving Chinese customs and customs requires a certain amount of cultural background knowledge, which is particularly difficult for foreign readers who do not understand China. Snow is especially careful about this part of the content, and if he encounters something he does not understand, he must "ask the Chinese translator to the bottom of the matter" and find out clearly. To solve this problem, he also adopted a method that is less commonly used in translation, and he added the translator's notes to the original text to help the reader understand.
In addition, Snow was very demanding of the compactness of the text. He mentioned a common problem with Chinese short stories — the slow pace. In his preface, he wrote: "Chinese writers are paid a pitifully small amount of money, averaging only three or four yuan (Chinese dollars) per thousand words, and rarely more than five yuan. Therefore, in addition to the best writers, they generally tend to drag their works as long as possible. They tend to sandwich in dialogue or narratives that are beautifully rhetorical but irrelevant to the plot. In this way, in order to cope with the grain store owner, the interest, coherence, unity of style and compactness of the form are sacrificed. Snow believes that for Chinese readers accustomed to the tradition of storytelling, this kind of irrelevant rendering is not too much of a problem, but for Western readers who are accustomed to reading short stories, it is easy to arouse their disgust, so he has made many drastic deletions. Snow's "word economics" also had a great influence on Xiao Qian's later translation style.
"I saw the scars and blood of a people who were flogged, but I also saw the stubborn and noble soul of this nation"
As one of the earliest anthologies to introduce modern Chinese literature to the English-speaking world, Living China received attention from Chinese and foreign media as soon as it was published. Chinese and foreign media such as Times, Miller's Review, Pacific Affairs, and China Review Weekly have published book reviews. Time magazine said that "Living China has introduced Western readers to many unfamiliar Chinese writers, such as Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Ding Ling and Rou Shi." Pacific Affairs considers the anthology to be "a living archive of Chinese society." Since then, "Living China" has undergone many reprints and translations, not only among ordinary readers, but also as a textbook for learning Chinese chinese literature. In the 1940s, the Committee on International Relations of the U.S. National Assembly recommended Living China as a high school classroom teaching.
The translator Wang Jizhen once described how Americans knew China in the 1930s and 1940s: "For most Americans, they knew China primarily through movies and detective novels, which meant Charlie Chan and Fu Manchu and other vaguely but rather familiar characters, as well as the meaningless hieroglyphs printed on the storefronts of Chinese stir-fried vegetables and Chinatown stores." What Snow wants to show to the West through "Living China" is precisely a completely different China, he wants to "let Europeans and Americans see the real, rapidly changing China in literary and artistic works, and stop thinking that Chinese are still dragging pigtails, Chinese women are still wrapped in small feet, and China's rulers are still the emperors of the Manchu Qing Dynasty."
In "Living China", Snow creates a three-dimensional and layered image of modern China through conscious selection of articles. It is suffering deeply: there are both the "internal worries" of the feudal warlords and the landlord class (Lu Xun's "Blessings", etc.), the "external troubles" of Japanese aggression and Western imperialist oppression and exploitation (Satin's "Routes Outside the Law", etc.), as well as the paralysis and poisoning of feudal thought (Lu Xun's "Medicine", etc.); it is also awakening, and the Chinese people are coming out of a state of numbness and obscurity and are ready to resist (Ding Ling's "Water", etc.); it is still under the influence of the Red Revolution, and the Communist Party of China has a broad mass base. With firm ideals and beliefs, it is becoming the hope of Chinese people to get out of the darkness and go to the light (Ding Ling's "News", etc.).
It must be admitted that "Living China" is not perfect. Snow is not a Fang family, his selections and translations have a strong personal color, many of which may not meet the professional standards of literary research, such as Lu Xun's "Kite", "On "Fucking"" and Lin Yutang's "General Dog Meat" are not even novels. But this does not detract from its remarkable value in giving the West an understanding of China and shaping its image. By reading Living China, Western readers "can understand how the people of this vast and wonderful country inhabited by one-fifth of human beings have, and how the people who have reached a new cultural period after thousands of years of long historical process have. Here, as if overlooking its plains and rivers with giant eyes, the mountains and valleys, you can see the heart and mind of living China, and occasionally even glimpse its soul."
For Snow himself, compiling "Living China" is a process of deeper understanding of China and gradual change of thinking. Through reading new Chinese literature, he understood the living conditions of the Chinese people in the wider region; his understanding of China, from observing superficial phenomena, developed to a deep understanding of the thoughts of the Chinese people, the feelings of the Chinese people, and "saw the scars and blood of a nation that was flogged, but also saw the stubborn and noble soul of this nation." This also inspired Snow to think about how such a suffering nation can move towards a bright future? Who can enlighten the minds of the people? Who can lead the people to overthrow the oppression of feudalism and imperialism? What kind of existence did the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Red Army really exist? Can they become the force leading the Chinese people to achieve national independence and national liberation?
With these thoughts in mind, Snow embarked on a trip to northern Shaanxi. In northern Shaanxi and in the Soviet union, he finally found the flogging case and wrote the answer in the "Journey to the West", clarifying and answering a series of questions about the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Red Army to the world, such as "What are the Chinese Communists?" "Who is their leader?" "What exactly are the Soviets in China? Is there any support from farmers? "What are the military and political prospects for the Chinese communist movement?" And so on, let the world know a real Chinese Communist Party. Therefore, Xiao Qian said, "Living China is a prelude to The Journey to the West."
(Author: Liu Yueyue Unit: College of Liberal Arts, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)