15 Incredible Chinese Novels in Translation
China is also flourishing in the realm of literature in translation. Chinese novels in translation are some of the most ground-breaking and exciting books around right now.
Outstanding Chinese Novels in Translation
The politics of literature in China is fascinating. For example, Chinese science fiction novels are pushing boundaries and standing head-and-shoulders above all other sci-fi right now, and yet there’s a law in China that forbids time travel in any Chinese fiction.
Time travel movies don’t even make it to Chinese cinemas. Beyond that, several of the authors on this list of Chinese novels are actually in exile, living in the UK or US.
Politics aside, Chinese novels in translation are having something of a golden age right now, with some incredible wuxia novels (martial arts fantasy books), Chinese sci-fi, and earth-shattering Chinese literary fiction for readers to lose themselves in and be forever changed by.
Here are some of the very best Chinese novels in translation right now.
The Wedding Party by Liu Xinwu
Translated by Jeremy Tiang
Originally published in China in 1985, Liu Xinwu’s The Wedding Party is a delightful novel set at a moment in time that hung in the air for post-revolution China. Not yet a global powerhouse, but now open for trade and travel, 1980s China was an interesting place not often captured in film or fiction.
It is 1982 and Auntie Xue’s son is getting married. Set on across that single wedding day, from dawn to dusk, The Wedding Party paints a vivid and moving picture of ordinary life amongst the working class of Beijing in the early ’80s.
This is an ensemble story that gives multiple perspectives, with Jiyue and his bride’s wedding acting as the fulcrum for these disparate narratives.
As the day passes, we learn more and more about the colourful characters who inhabit Auntie Xue’s neighbourhood. We learn the story of the caterer, the guests, and the two families. We have wedding crashers and plans gone awry.
The Wedding Party is an incredibly human and relatable story, full of detail and backstory that fleshes out every character, giving them all equal weight and attention.
While the titular wedding party is central to the plot, this Chinese novel is really about ordinary people’s ordinary lives: their families, their pasts, their dreams, their loves and losses. It is human and grounded by never sombre. One of the most sweet, charming, and warming Chinese novels in translation you’ll ever read.
Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge
Translated by Jeremy Tiang
Strange Beasts of China is a wonderfully imaginative and surreal work of fiction by a writer who, at the time it was originally published in China, was only twenty-one years old. This is one of the most exciting Chinese novels in translation you can read right now.
While Yan Ge now has several other books available in English (White Horse and The Chili Bean Paste Clan), this is a book that showcases the strengths of her imagination, as well as her roots as an author.
Strange Beasts of China is set in the city of Yong’an. Here, many races of humanoid ‘beasts’ live amongst the humans, in a similar fashion to Tolkien’s elves and dwarves.
These beasts all have aesthetic and behavioural characteristics which identify them as part of the Sacrificial Beasts, Flourishing Beasts, Sorrowful Beasts etc.
And, in each chapter, our protagonist — a novelist and former student of zoology — spends time building a relationship with, and learning the truth about, a member of a group of beasts.
The book was originally a series of short stories, but there is a slowly-moving arc that pushes the greater narrative further. It’s our narrator’s relationship to herself, her own past, and her former professor that keeps us invested in her journey.
Though, perhaps not as much as Yan’s imagination itself does. The titular strange beasts of China are such wildly and creatively devised characters, with their origin stories, powers, and behaviour patterns being so wonderfully alluring.
For example, there is one group of all-female beasts who reside in a temple complex and remind us a little of the wood nymphs of Greek mythology. There is another group who latch onto humans who are low and depressed, before drawing out and feeding off their life energy.
This is a book that celebrates the power of imagination and characterisation. It is also an experiment, in a way, that puts humans in the centre and investigates how we think and act when given an imaginary situation/relationship to handle.
Strange Beasts of China is a fun, sometimes bleak, endlessly fascinating work of fiction, and one of the best Chinese novels in translation that you can pick up and read right now.
Fu Ping by Wang Anyi
Translated by Howard Goldblatt
Fu Ping is set in Shanghai, at a moment in time that is neither modern nor ancient, as the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party has forever changed the landscape of China. Beyond World War II, this long moment is the most exciting, chilling, and fascinating era of global history in the 20th century.
The titular Fu Ping has been brought to Shanghai from the countryside to be wed to the adopted grandson of Nainai, a long-time nanny who also once hailed from the countryside but now works for a wealthy family in the heart of Shanghai’s Puxi District.
The nameless Grandson is very much a plot device, and the real focus of the plot is in the characters of Fu Ping and Nainai, as well as the street on which they live and work – which is, in many ways, a character in and of itself.
Many of the book’s chapters each focuses on a character in the district, telling a story which sums up their lot in life and also works to slot them into the larger narrative of Fu Ping.
It’s fun to see every home and every life illuminated, and there’s a lot to be learned about work life, school life, and family life in 20th century Shanghai through the lens of Fu Ping – both the book and the character.
The set-up of the novel, Fu Ping being brought to Shanghai to marry, is not the story’s true concern. Instead, we spend far more time getting to know Nainai, adoptive grandmother of Fu Ping’s betrothed.
Nainai herself is an intriguing woman, born in rural China but having lived for so long in Shanghai as to have developed political biases about what the ‘true Shanghai’ is.
Fu Ping is a novel of ideas. It has a wonderful setting, intriguing characters, a world that captivates and inspires. It has cinched, snipped, pacey dialogue that keeps the story barrelling along. Read More…
