What are you reading?

[Woodford]

Just finished Jiang Rong's "Wolf Totem." After experimenting with more short form content for a few weeks (i.e., just social media and news articles), I started to get bored with it. Ironically, one of the articles on Zhihu I read was on the importance of reading more long form content (especially books) to engage one's mind. So I decided to go back and finish Wolf Totem.

 

I would describe the book as "good, but not without flaws." It's extremely long, and it could probably afford to be at least 1/3 shorter than it actually is. My complaint is similar to the one that some have had about the first book in Liu Cixin's "Three Body Problem" trilogy. Sometimes the plot slows down way too much and gets replaced by long academic lectures. Somebody else on here (I can't remember who) said that this book falls apart in the middle, because the author spends way too much time talking about how awesome wolves are, and how they're the cause of everything good in China and the world. And...yes. That description is 100% accurate. The author's opinion is that wolves have trained the Mongolians to have a strong, freedom-loving spirit and the nomadic lifestyle that upholds it. The Han, on the other hand, settled down into a sedentary farming lifestyle and lack the resilience of the Mongolians. They don't understand the delicate balance between wolves and the rest of wildlife, so their presence destroys the Inner Mongolian wilderness and leaves it as a dead waste. And, really, every successful society in the history of the world likely learned its primitive skills from wolves. Even the Americans and other Westerners have a more nomadic, wolf-like lifestyle that has helped them to rise to power. Way, way too much time is spent on that topic, and I really don't buy the thesis. I think it's odd. There's a really long epilogue after the end of the story that more thoroughly explains the author's political ideas, but I just couldn't endure further. I stopped there.

 

The story itself is actually quite good. It's about a "sent-down youth," named Chen Zhen, who is working in the Inner Mongolian plains to help the shepherds. He wants to understand the local wolves, so he gets a crazy idea take a wolf pup and raise it in captivity. Along the way, he learns about the ways of the culture, especially from "Old Man Bilgee," his mentor. The book doesn't really have any true villains, but there is a constant feeling of conflict with the migrant Han workers who want to irresponsibly use the land for its resources and kill off all the wolves (because the wolves kill livestock, mainly). The Mongolians respect the wolves and wish to maintain the delicate balance of nature. Especially in the first half of the book, the action is relentless, adventurous, and violent. Even when the book started to slow down, I was still curious as to what would happen to the wolf pup being raised in captivity (which really forms the core of the story), so I kept reading.

The difficulty of the book (the Chinese edition, I mean) is probably a little elevated, but not terrible. A lot of words relating to animal husbandry and nomadic life. I would cautiously recommend it to anyone who is a diehard fan of adventure/wilderness novels in the vein of Jack London (who, actually, inspired the author).

[Woodford]

The reading has continued at a pretty consistent pace.

First, I've read 中国哲学简史 by 冯友兰. Really fascinating material written at a layperson's level. The book covers ancient schools of thought, like the Confucianists, the Daoists, the Legalists, the Mohists, etc. It reminds me of the days I read Western philosophy, like Plato's Republic. The parallels are strong, and Eastern philosophers were asking many of the same questions that Western ones were, from slightly different angles. The one lamentable thing is that the author quotes a lot of classical source material, which was extremely difficult for me to understand. It didn't totally destroy the experience for me, but it probably would have been better to get a bilingual edition of the book, like this: https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/7513561281. The book motivated me to learn some Classical Chinese, which I might do later in the year. I'll never be comfortable reading it, but it would be great to grasp the basic vocabulary/grammar conventions. The classical/semi-classical style shows up in so many modern works of fiction. So much 之, so much 也, so many single-character words instead of compound words.

Next, I broke one of my own rules (don't read English works translated into Chinese), and I read the illustrated edition of 时间简史, by Stephen Hawking. In terms of grammar and vocabulary, a very easy read. In terms of the scientific concepts....not so simple. Really challenging.

Currently, I'm about to finish a small, recently-published novel called 秋园, by 杨本芬. It's touted as the female version of Yu Hua's "To Live," and it has rave reviews on the internet. I think it's definitely more literary/difficult to read than "To Live," and I found that Yu Hua's book was more emotionally impactful. Perhaps "To Live" has better character development--I'm not sure. The author is an amateur writer who got started when she was about 60 years old, if I remember correctly. It fits pretty well within the genre--it talks about the struggles of rural Chinese life through political upheaval, poverty, and starvation. It's interesting enough. I'd say I like it, and the author's use of words can be really striking and memorable. It can get extremely gruesome and graphic in some places (more so than any other books I've read). The author doesn't hide the ugliness and brutality of life in that time and place. 

Meanwhile, I am slowly working my way through Taiwanese magazine/news articles online, so I can learn traditional characters. Not too hard. Just hard enough to be awkward. I think I'll have a decent (not perfect) grasp on reading traditional characters in a month or so.

[PerpetualChange]

Despite much threatening to quit this language, I've managed to not totally do it. 

I'm about 50% of the way through 草房子 by 曹文轩. I'm enjoying the story about growing up in rural China from the different perspectives of the people who live in the town. It's also right at my level, in terms of reading. I finger over words on my Kindle about once per page, but find I can get pretty much the entire plot even without lookups. At this rate, I'll probably just keep plugging away at 曹文轩 novels until I get bored of them - not like I'll be done with this one any time soon. 

[Lu]

On 1/13/2023 at 9:55 PM, Woodford said:

It can get extremely gruesome and graphic in some places (more so than any other books I've read). The author doesn't hide the ugliness and brutality of life in that time and place. 

Interesting that a female author does that too. The violence and grue are a pretty constant feature in the works of Mo Yan Yu Hua Su Tong and that generation, much less in the work of later authors. I guess I don't know much work by female authors of that generation.

[PerpetualChange]

On 1/13/2023 at 3:55 PM, Woodford said:

It didn't totally destroy the experience for me, but it probably would have been better to get a bilingual edition of the book, like this: https://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Chinese-Philosophy/dp/7513561281.

 

I went ahead and purchased this edition of the book. 

 

Looks really interesting, and something that I am also deeply interesting. Should be "review" for me because I've read extensively about some of this in my native English, which hopefully will translate to me feeling a bit less lost. 

[phills]

I just started reading 乡土中国, having heard about it from a recent Ezra Klein NYT podcast.  It's supposed to be a well known book written by a Chinese sociologist explaining the rural (?) origins of Chinese culture.

 

I'm about a third of the way through it.  It's not that long, only about 60k words, and I'm happy that I've mostly kept an acceptable level of language fluency despite laxness in my reading routine.  Although now I'm hitting a section talking about Chinese philosophy (孔子, 杨朱, 杨朱, christianity) vs. selfishness that requires some slowing down, and googling.

[Glyn]

On 1/21/2023 at 12:48 PM, PerpetualChange said:

Despite much threatening to quit this language, I've managed to not totally do it. 

Just keep at it. In Welsh, we would say "Dyfal donc a dyrr y garreg." ("It's steady tapping that breaks the stone.")

Don't give up.

[sanchuan]

On 2/1/2023 at 9:25 PM, Glyn said:

"Dyfal donc a dyrr y garreg."

So that's 水滴石穿 in Cymric! Nice