As the 2022 Frankfurter Buchmesse rang down its curtain in German, the works of over 30 books the award-winning Chinese writer Xuemo, portraying life in Western China, has continued to attract the global readers to follow up. Presented at the booth of China International Book Trading Corporation (CIBTC), the exhibition of the this acclaimed Contemporary Chinese author has caught the attention of global publishing houses and copyright agencies, with the booth populated with visitors and publishers looking to get their hands on his works. A scroll of vivid Western Chinese life unfolded in front of the overseas readers.
Xuemo, a man born in western China, a writer who measures the earth with his feet and writes his life with ink. He is the son of Qilian Mountain, where gives him life and aspiration. For his dream, he traveled thousands of miles to pursuit it; for his hometown, he infused his life in the pen and ink to describe it. The wisdom flowing from his pen has lit up a lamp for countless readers who love him.
Xuemo, shortlisted for nomination for the Mao Dun Literature Prize, is best known for his The Desert Trilogy, the representative works of China’s Nativist literary tradition. The publication of more works, including The Curse of Xixia, White Fox Ridge, The Monk and the Spirit Woman, Suosalang, etc, have established him as an important figure in contemporary Chinese literature as well as an essential presence in the literary representation of China’s West.
Alongside Selected Stories by Xuemo, a collection of wonderful stories themed on the culture, life and spirit of Western China, that has been translated into over 20 languages，including English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Italian, Swedish, Nepali, Hindi, and Arabic, by which the works reached out to the world, crossing the language barriers as well as the cultural boundaries.
The short story “Into the Desert”, one of the four stories in the “Selected Fiction of Snow and Desert”, was presented in Frankfurt. The story depicts a thrilling “desert journey” in which two dependent western women, Lanlan and Ying’er, go to a salt pond deep in the desert to make a living, and are chased by jackals on their way. The “desert” they enter and the “jackals” they encounter represent the inevitable dilemmas of life, and the characters of the two heroines represent the ambivalence that everyone has when facing life’s dilemmas. The characters of the two heroines represent the contradictory state of mind that everyone has when facing life’s difficulties. In the end, Lan Lan and Ying Er get out of their predicament with the power of yearning, focus, persistence, calmness and no fear, and it is these qualities that help Xuemo and all the people related to the story to cross their own “desert”.
“In fact, not only the west, the whole of China, and even the whole of humanity, are looking for their own hope. Their hopes may be different, and the way they look for them may be different, but in the end, they all cannot be separated from two words: eternity. The eternity of health, the eternity of happiness, the eternity of relationships, the eternity of beauty, the eternity of love …… The whole human race is searching for eternity, so everyone will walk into their own desert.” Snow Desert added.
American translator Howard Goldblatt, the translator of Into the Desert, who has translated nine of Snowdrop’s full-length novels and epic poems into English, shared his feeling, “Xuemo’s work was a brand-new reading and translating experience for me in which I really wish my translation will express the flavor of west part of China to the best of my ability, so that more English-speaking readers can appreciate the beauty of this land.”
The Women, The Camels and The Dholes, was translated by Nicky Harman, a famous British sinologist, who shared, I’m more than pleased to introduce Mr. Xuemo’s novels to English readers and to open a window to Chinese literature for them.
Mexican translator Liana Lisa Carducci shared her comments on Xuemo and his works: “Through his works, our teacher Xuemo has introduced us, the world, to the contemporary existence of the northwest countryside, containing material existence, spiritual existence, natural existence, and cultural existence. The never-ending yellow of the desert even tinges the yellow of the sky, far from everything, sometimes even from God. The days test one’s ability to resist, to survive, to laugh.”
At the Frankfurt Book Fair, CIBTC and RUXUE MEDIA co-hosted the book launch of “Everyone Enters Their Own Desert: Xuemo and His Light”, alone with the launch of the book Into the Desert and Selected Novels of Xuemo in Hebrew. The international media covered this event in English, French, German and Spanish. Guests from the Confucius Institute in Frankfurt and Ebook, a publisher in Israel, discussed and exchanged ideas about the translation, publication and reading of Mr. Xuemo’s works. At the same time, Xuemo and translators, publishers and famous anchors from England, Italy and Switzerland participated online.
According to Dani Silas, Ebook Pro literary agent,”Xuemo’s work depicts real life, a real group of people, and is not about popular elements like songs, movies, politics, etc. Although Hebrew readers don’t understand Chinese culture, they are eager to learn about a real China.”
Christina Werum Wang the cross-cultural significance of his works, “Every writer has his or her own experience, his or her own story, and I would love to get to know them. Of course, I also want to understand the life, customs, beliefs and what the Chinese people think. Overseas people are very unfamiliar with Chinese culture, and it is a great pity that writers like Xuemo are not known to the world! The translation of Chinese writers’ works into different languages is important and is an important bridge for Chinese literature to the world. Chinese literature is also an important window for overseas readers to understand Chinese culture.”
The author Xuemo himself shares the inspiration for The Women The Camels and The Dholes: “This story has a strong symbolic meaning, it is not only a saga of a woman in the West, but also a saga of China, a saga of mankind. Although I included a lot of western life that I am very familiar with in the story, such as Shahan, camels, women and so on, and even included an actual animal one by one, the jackal dog, it is actually a story that belongs to all of humanity.”
At the opening of the book fair, Karin Schmidt-Friedrichs, President of the German Book Association, said: “In today’s world, where attitudes towards politics, culture and ideology are increasingly deeply divided, the book fair creates a space for peaceful, democratic exchange.” It’s is this kind of stories which from China but belongs to all of humanity that attract the global readers.
As Xuemo’s works go overseas, through the words, more and more international readers will get to know the west region of China and the Silk Road. Meanwhile, as more Chinese writers and works appear at international book fairs, the image of China in the eyes of the world will also become more diverse and fuller. Let us look forward to more moving Chinese stories of world significances . News source- China Daily
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