Sinophone Unrealities – UiS podkast

In this episode, Zhange Ni introduces us to some of the myriad fantasy genres proliferating on Chinese internet platforms and beyond. She describes and contextualises recent subgenres such as qihuan 奇幻 and xuanhuan 玄幻 (and their relationship with wuxia 武俠 wandering warrior/martial arts fiction) before zooming in on xiuzhen 修真 (immortality cultivation) tales that effortlessly mingle contrasting realms of (the idea of) ancient Daoism and contemporary computer games. Finally, we discuss the danmei 耽美 (tanbi) boy’s love romances predominantly produced and consumed by women readers as well as these transmedial genres’ implications for our understanding of what literature is.    Magical Guest: Zhange Ni（倪湛舸）is an associate professor of religion and literature at Virginia Tech currently posted as a research fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Study (France). She received her Ph.D. in religion and literature from the University of Chicago Divinity School, did postdoctoral work at the “Women’s Studies in Religion Program” at Harvard Divinity School. She is currently working on a book project tentatively entitled The Cult of Fiction in the Age of the Internet: Chinese Religions, Digital Capitalism, and the Fantasy Boom in Contemporary China.   Host under Cultivation: Astrid Møller-Olsen is the author of Sensing the Sinophone: Urban Memoryscapes in Contemporary Fiction (Cambria Press, 2022). She is currently international research fellow with the Universities of Lund, Stavanger, and Oxford, funded by the Swedish Research Council working on a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism. She hosts the xiaoshuo.blog and has published on arboreal temporalities, fictional dictionaries, oneiric soundscapes, digital chronotopes, and sensory urban spacetime. 

In This episode, Hua Li relates how modern Chinese SF was popularized as a transmedial practice in the 1980s. She explains the key role played by a kind of graphic novel format known as lianhuanhua连环画 and gives examples from the illustrated works of Ye Yonglie 叶永烈. We then move on to fan culture before the internet age and end by discussing how early environmental SF from the 1950s presents a different perspective from today’s writings on the Anthropocene.  Graphic Guest: Hua Li is Professor of Chinese and the coordinator of Chinese program at Montana State University. Her primary research field is modern and contemporary Chinese literature. She has published two monographs, Contemporary Chinese Fiction by Su Tong and Yu Hua: Coming of Age in Troubled Times (Brill, 2011), and Chinese Science Fiction During the Post-Mao Cultural Thaw (University of Toronto Press, 2021). She has also authored numerous journal articles and book chapters on various topics in contemporary Chinese literature, cinema, and science fiction.     Host Fan: Astrid Møller-Olsen is international research fellow with the Universities of Lund, Stavanger, and Oxford, funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has just published her first monograph Sensing the Sinophone: Urban Memoryscapes in Contemporary Fiction (Cambria Press, 2022). Other publications include analyses of fictional dictionaries, oneiric soundscapes, digital chronotopes in SF, ecocritical temporalities, and sensory urban spacetime. Her current research is a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism: https://xiaoshuo.blog/ 

In this episode, we discuss three types of resistance found in post-80s Chinese SF: resistance to social inequalities, to political repression/censorship, and to gender stereotypes. Frederike gives examples from her research into works by Hao Jingfang, Ma Boyong, Zhang Ran, Chi Hui, Gu Shi, and Chen Qiufan and comments on the innovations and limitations of science fictional narratives when it comes to engaging with the sociopolitical issues of contemporary society.    Rebellious guest:  Frederike Schneider-Vielsäcker (she/her) is an assistant professor at the Institute of Chinese Studies at Heidelberg University. She received her PhD in Chinese Studies from the Free University of Berlin in June 2021 with a thesis on socio-political discourses in contemporary Chinese science fiction literature. She has participated in numerous international conferences and co-hosted events and talks with Chinese SF writers in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Heidelberg. Apart from Chinese science fiction, she is also interested in Chinese queer culture. When not sitting in front of her computer or behind her books, she explores nature by hiking or horse riding.    Agitated host agitator:   Astrid Møller-Olsen is international research fellow with the Universities of Lund, Stavanger, and Oxford, funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has published on fictional dictionaries, oneiric soundscapes, digital chronotopes in SF, ecocritical temporalities, and sensory urban spacetime. Her first monograph Sensing the Sinophone will be out in early 2022 by Cambria Press. Her current research is a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism: https://xiaoshuo.blog/ 

In this fourth episode, Natascha Bruce talks about wormbooks, birdcats and owlfish, about haunting Hong Kong protests, and about keeping alive uncanny textual elements across languages. She reveals how it was to translate 謝曉虹 Dorothy Tse’s 鷹頭貓與音樂箱女孩 Eaglehead Cat and the Music Box Girl (which I make a hash of explaining in the episode) into Owlish (which Natasha has brilliantly come up with as the English title). We talk about literature that speaks to you in its own voice and begs to be translated, about taming or not taming long, meandering sentences and about the strangeness that spills over from one language to the next.  Migratory Catbird  Natascha Bruce translates fiction, creative non-fiction and, occasionally, poetry from Chinese into English. Her work includes many short stories, especially by the Hong Kong writer Dorothy Tse, as well as the novel Lonely Face by Yeng Pway Ngon and the short story collection Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong. Her current projects include the novels Mystery Train by Can Xue and Owlish by Dorothy Tse. She has recently moved to Amsterdam.  Resident Birdcat  Astrid Møller-Olsen is international research fellow with the Universities of Lund, Stavanger, and Oxford, funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has a degree in comparative literature and Chinese studies and has published on fictional dictionaries, oneiric soundscapes, digital chronotopes in science fiction, ecocritical temporalities, and sensory urban spacetime. Her first monograph Sensing the Sinophone will be published in January 2022 by Cambria Press. Her current research is a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism: https://xiaoshuo.blog/

In this episode, Xueting Christine Ni introduces the new anthology Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction (out 9 November 2021) that she has compiled and edited, and shares thoughts on the diversification of the genre. She interprets literary internet fora as modern-day versions of the interactive storytelling tradition of the teahouse. We also discuss how popular global and classical Chinese influences that converge in stories like A Que’s “Flower of the Other Shore”, which feature walking dead reminiscent of both Chinese Jiangshi (僵尸 literally “stiff corpse” but often referred to as “hopping vampire”) and Hollywood zombies.    Visiting Storyteller: Xueting Christine Ni has a degree in English Literature from the University of London. After graduating, she began a career in the publishing industry, whilst also translating original works of Chinese fiction. She returned to China in 2008 to continue her research at Central University of Nationalities, Beijing. Since 2010, she has written extensively on Chinese culture and China’s place in Western pop media. Her first book, From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao, is published by Weiser Books. Her new anthology Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction, is out on the 9th of November. Xueting currently lives just outside London with her partner and their cats, all of whom are learning Chinese.    Teahouse Host: Astrid Møller-Olsen is international research fellow with the Universities of Lund, Stavanger, and Oxford, funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has degrees in comparative literature and Chinese studies and has published on fictional dictionaries, urban forms of memory, and sensory approaches to the study of literature. Her first monograph Sensing the Sinophone is forthcoming with Cambria Press. Her current research is a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism: https://xiaoshuo.blog/   

How does writing in a foreign language help authors think beyond their own perspective and imagine other beings, other identities, other species? In this episode, Regina Kanyu Wang talks about her research into environmental SF, her own use of English to experiment with a non-human narrative voice, and about The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, a new anthology of Chinese science fiction and fantasy, written, edited, and translated by women and nonbinary creators. Enjoying a sunny day from each our separate Norwegian coast, we also discuss the delightful gender ambiguity of literary pseudonyms, the manyfold human machine of literary publishing, and the limits of genre. Visiting Symbiont: Regina Kanyu Wang is a PhD fellow of the CoFUTURES project at the University of Oslo. Her research interest lies in Chinese science fiction, especially from the gender and environmental perspective. She is also an awarded writer who writes both science fiction and non-fiction who has won multiple Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF (Chinese Nebular), SF Comet International SF Writing Competition, Annual Best Works of Shanghai Writers’ Association and others. She has co-edited the Chinese SF special issue of Vector, the critical issue of BSFA and The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, an all-women-and-non-binary anthology of Chinese speculative fiction, forthcoming in 2022. Host Organism: Astrid Møller-Olsen is postdoctoral fellow in an international position between Lund University (Sweden), University of Stavanger (Norway), and University of Oxford (UK) funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has a background in comparative literature and Chinese studies and has published on fictional dictionaries, urban forms of narrative memory, and sensory approaches to the study of literature. Her current research is a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism: https://xiaoshuo.blog/

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.    Invisible Guest: Mingwei Song (https://www.wellesley.edu/ealc/faculty/songm ) 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.    Hidden Host: Astrid Møller-Olsen (https://www.sol.lu.se/en/person/AstridMollerOlsen ) is postdoctoral fellow with Lund University (Sweden), University of Stavanger (Norway), and University of Oxford (UK) in a position funded by the Swedish Research Council. She has published on fictional dictionaries, urban forms of narrative memory, and sensory approaches to the study of literature and her current research is a cross-generic study of plant-human relationships in contemporary Sinophone literature from science fiction to surrealism. She writes the literary blog www.xiaoshuo.blog .