Dung Kai-cheung

Trees Keep Time: Ecocriticism and Chinese Literature

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I’m tickled pink to be part of this new literary anthology brimming with interesting studies of urban ecologies, environmental SF and landscapes of emotion!

Møller-Olsen, Astrid (2022). “Trees Keep Time: An Ecocritical Approach to Literary Temporality.” Ecocriticism and Chinese Literature: Imagined Landscapes and Real Lived Spaces. Edited By Riccardo Moratto, Nicoletta Pesaro, Di-kai Chao. Routledge.

Plants have always been powerful symbols of place, rooted as they are in the local soil, yet in most almanacs such as the Chinese lunar calendar, flowers and plants are also core images for defining and representing time. Through a conceptualisation of qingjing (情境) that relates literary temporality to emotional interaction with the environment through the figure of the tree, this chapter executes a thematic comparison of arboreal figures in three works of contemporary Sinophone fiction, demonstrating how trees, as keepers of time, form an ecocritical approach to the study of narrative temporality.

In this chapter, I analyse the emotional topography (qingjing 情境) of human-tree relationships and their effect on narrative temporality. I begin by examining the various genera of trees that grow in Chu T’ien-hsin’s 朱天心 Taipei neighbourhoods and serve as organic intergenerational links to personal, familial, and historical pasts. Then, I move on to the urban parks of Dung Kai-cheung’s 董啟章 Hong Kong and the individual characters’ counterfactual, yet emotionally real, relationships with specific trees explored through the finite temporality of death. Finally, I travel with Alai 阿來 to the ethnically Tibetan areas of Sichuan and explore the temporal clash between scientific progress and the mytho-historical longue durée perspective provided by the ancient arboreal inhabitants.

Invisible Realms of Science Fiction with Mingwei Song

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What is the New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction and how do the invisible aspects of reality that it brings to light impact the genre, the scholarship, and our understanding of literature in general? In this first instalment of the Sinophone Unrealities podcast, I talk with Mingwei Song about his love of science fiction, his latest book The Fear of Seeing, and his critically acclaimed experiments with SF poetry.

We take a peek at invisibility on all levels of literary research: From the unseen realms of society that take centre stage in works by writers such as Han Song, to the overlooked sides of SF that emerge through poetry, and beyond into the hidden sides of academia where poets dwell.

Listen here.

Art: Joanne Taylor/Nettop/UiS

I’ve started this podcast to explore the latest research into speculative Sinophone fiction through informal conversations with other researchers/writers/translators about their work and their passions. I’m as thrilled as the next person by the increasing popularity of Chinese SF, but I feel that by widening the generic scope to include all works with speculative elements such as fantasy, time-travel fiction, weird stories, and the genre-defying experiments by authors like Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹, Hon Lai-chu 韓麗珠 and Ho Sok Fong 賀淑芳 –as well as Dung Kai-cheung 董啟章 and Luo Yijun 駱以軍 who Mingwei refers to as “new baroque” writers in this episode– we can really appreciate the glittering variety and spectacular inventiveness of contemporary fiction in Chinese.

Just as some texts refuse to be confined to a single genre, so do many scholars have a finger in more than one literary pie. Some write poetry to express themselves differently than the peer reviewed paper allows, many translate to make their research material available to people in their homeland and share the wonderful tales they discover on their forays into other languages. Some begin as writers or translators and turn to academia later as a breath of fresh air, bringing whole new curriculums and practical perspectives with them. This fruitful collaboration between literary spheres and the multiple roles we play in academia and beyond is something I will return to throughout this series.

If blockbusters like Liu Cixin’s Three Body Problem have paved the way, there is no reason to stop here and miss the treasure troves of mythical robotics, humanoid tree-people, premodern string-based internets, and mushroom-houses that lie ahead. Join me for new adventures into the world of Sinophone Unrealities.

Some of the writers Mingwei talks about (and that you will definitely want to read) are: Liu Cixin 刘慈欣, Han Song 韩松, Xia Jia 夏笳, Dung Kai-cheung, and Luo Yijun. Check out The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast with Angus Stewart for episodes with/about several of these authors -and many more. Bon appétit!

Invisible Guest: Mingwei Song is Associate Professor of Chinese & Director of Chinese program at Wellesley College, Massachusetts USA. He has published several monographs on both modern and contemporary Chinese literature including Young China: National Rejuvenation and the Bildungsroman 1900-1959, 《五四@100》 (May Fourth@100) with David Der-wei Wang and 《中國科幻新浪潮》 (New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction). His pioneering work on new wave Chinese SF has made him one of the leading scholars in this field and his latest –much anticipated– book The Fear of Seeing: The Poetics and Politics of Chinese Science Fiction is forthcoming with Columbia University Press. His poetry has appeared in eminent journals including the legendary 今天 (Today) and a collaborative collection with Luo Yijun (駱以軍) is underway. 

 

Is the Author back from the Dead?

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Last week, I had the pleasure of attending Heidi Yu Huang’s lecture ‘Worlding Hong Kong Literature: Dung Kai-cheung’s Atlas’ at the University of Gothenburg’s Bernhard Karlgren seminar series.

One of the interesting side issues that cropped up during question time was the relevance of biographical information in academic literary analysis. Dr. Huang confessed herself fascinated by Dung Kai-cheung’s private life as well as his creative work, and was able to point to many direct influences (Dung wrote his dissertation on Italo Calvino, a fact that will surprise no one familiar with his work) and amusing anecdotes (Dung’s fictional universe is highly geographical and apparently certain sites in his works correspond to places where important events in his own life took place).

File:Roland Barthes Liburutegiko plaka Ahurtin.jpgIf, like me, you have received an education heavily influenced by the structuralist dictum “the author is dead,” you will find yourself shrinking from engaging with any kind of biographical reading. However, in the case of Dung Kai-cheung (and perhaps many postmodern writers), his writing self-consciously portrays literature of any kind as an invented reality that mirrors not the ultimate reality but a conglomerate of personal realities.

Even academic readings always take place from a personal perspective (albeit, hopefully a rigorous and well-informed one), so does writing for that matter, as well as any kind of communication, which is, I think, partly what Dung’s stories make so clear; reality is always already mediated.

So in the spirit of Dung’s pseudo-academic literary style, where do we draw the line between fiction and life? I’m still to brainwashed to do biographical readings, but I’ve stopped discouraging my students from doing so (with the added factor that biographical criticism is much stronger in the Chinese academic tradition).

File:Reading-jester-q75-760x753.jpgAs long as what we are seeking from the author’s life is not a fact sheet (any search for intentionality still seems both impractical and pointless to me), but rather just another perspective, which, along with socio-historical context, literary theory and previous scholarship might help make our independent analysis more interesting, it might not be such a bad thing to include.

As Paris-Sorbonne professor of English literature, Frédéric Regard puts it in a humorous but rather apt essay on this conflict between inclination and indoctrination: “I therefore find myself in an awkward position: I am in desperate need of a theory capable of reconciling my degenerate tendencies [reading literary biographies] with my enviable filiation [as part of the academic establishment]. At the same time, I find myself unable to support nostalgic attempts at reintroducing the ideal of a fixed, ‘authorised’ meaning: the recovery of the author’s ‘intention’ as the unique source of the text is not on my agenda.”

 

Barthes, Roland (1977): ‘The Death of the Author’ in Image—Music—Text. New York: Hill and Wang.

Dung, Kai-cheung 董啟章 (2014/1997): Dituji 地圖集. Taipei: Linking Press.

Dung, Kai-cheung (2011): Atlas: The archaeology of an Imaginary City. (Translated by Dung Kai-Cheung, Anders Hansson, and Bonnie S. McDougall). New York: Columbia University Press.

Regard, Frédéric (2000): ‘The Ethics of Biographical Reading: A Pragmatic Approach.’ The Cambridge Quarterly, Volume XXIX, Issue 4, 1.