Chinese stories captivate the world

First came the blockbuster trilogy that has been an international sensation - and now get ready for the TV series that is likely to make the Chinese writer Liu Cixin a very wealthy man.

The trilogy in question is, of course, the science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, and if the UK's Financial Times newspaper is to be believed, Amazon is about to invest $1 billion (810 million euros; ￡710 million) to adapt two parts of it into TV shows.

Even though Amazon has not confirmed this, and the recent Financial Times report provided no details on when the project would start, the mere whisper of such a deal has sent a frisson through the Chinese publishing industry.

Chen Feng of China Educational Publications Import & Export Co Ltd, one of the two agencies that owns the books' copyright, says they have been translated into more than 12 languages, including English, French, German, Italian and Russian.

In China, at least 8 million copies have been sold.

And since the English version of the first book was published in 2015 and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel that year, about 760,000 copies have been sold, Chen says. About 100,000 copies of the German version of the first book, published this year, have been sold.

In recent years, as the government has worked hard to promote Chinese contemporary literature to the world, Chinese fantasies, espionage fiction, children's books and mystery novels have received growing acclaim among overseas readers, thanks to the authors' wild imaginations, great storytelling skills and the allure of Chinese culture, experts say.

In February, the English-language version of the Chinese martial arts classic by Jin Yong, A Hero Born: Legends of the Condor Heroes, volume one, translated by Anna Holmwood, came out in Britain.

Its editor, Paul Engles, has been working with MacLehose Press in London for seven years, mainly editing translations of, for example, crime fiction and literary fiction, as well as works by English-language authors and nonfiction.

Within a month of its publication, the book had gone through seven print runs.

"The Jin Yong project is perhaps the most exciting I have been part of, because his books mean so much to so many people," Engles says.

"I'm happy to say that the critical response has been very favorable in the UK. The series has not yet started to come out in the United States, and rights have seen sold to Germany, Italy, Finland, Portugal and Hungary."

Since the story was serialized in newspapers in the 1950s, A Hero Born has been a must-read martial arts novel among many Chinese worldwide.

But whether a translation can succeed depends on many factors, including the quality of the translation and readers' interest in another culture.

For example, without Ken Liu's fine translation of The Three-Body Problem, it might not have won the Hugo Award, let alone won over so many English-language readers, including former US president Barack Obama and Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, both of whom gave it a marketing fillip by recommending it on social media.

Holmwood said in a previous interview that she translated the first volume of A Hero Born: Legends of Condor Heroes in a humble spirit because she was aware of the important place Jin Yong occupied in the hearts of many readers.

Before translating A Hero Born, she had translated other Chinese fiction, including Under a Hawthorn Tree and A Perfect Crime, but Jin Yong's work had been the most difficult one, she said, because of the abundant historical background, customs, characters, food and traditional Chinese medicine, as well as the various matchless magical kung fu and martial arts movements.

How to translate them accurately was a "headache" for her, she said in the interview, adding that she tried to present the vividness between the lines of the original work in smooth English.

She seems to have done a good job. After reading a sample of her translation the publisher decided to give it a go. The Economist called it a "spirited translation".

"Jin Yong is one of the world's bestselling authors," Engles says. "He had not been published successfully in English, but nonetheless it seemed to be a huge opportunity," he says, explaining why MacLehose Press wanted to publish the English version.

He says he did not worry so much that cultural differences would be a barrier because, having read the sample and then the translation, "I told myself that Legends of the Condor Heroes has much in common with books by authors such as Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas, which have been enjoyed for centuries by English readers.

"I think British people are very interested in Chinese culture. When there is an exhibition about the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) or the Terracotta Warriors at the British Museum, it is all anyone talks about."

After reading the first two volumes, Engles' favorite character is Lotus Hoang, a smart and cheeky girl who later marries the hero, Guo Jing.

Another Chinese novel that has drawn much attention in recent years is Decoded by Mai Jia, which has been published by Penguin Classics and translated into about 33 languages, including English, French, German, Spanish and Hebrew.

In 2014, the Chinese version sold more than 3 million copies.

In the same year as the English version came out, The Economist listed it as one of the top 10 fiction works of the year, and last year, The Daily Telegraph named it as one of "the 20 best spy novels of all time", together with Rudyard Kipling's Kim, John le Carre's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana.

"Decoded is riddling, dreamlike and digressive, in the manner of classical Chinese fiction, but you end up wanting to decipher its mysteries as fervently as its protagonist tackles his code," The Daily Telegraph says.

Apart from the wild imagination, intricate plots and interesting characterization, what seem to attract foreign readers most in such literary works are the Chinese elements.

For Engles, apart from battle and fight scenes, the most fascinating thing about A Hero Born is the history behind the story: the Jin Empire and the Song, and how they interacted with the Mongols, he says.

"Jin Yong evokes the period so well. I can really imagine being there, whether it's on the Grand Canal or in Jiaxing or in the fortress city of Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou, Hebei province)."

In East Asia and Southeast Asia, cultural similarity and familiarity attract many readers to Chinese fiction.

The first book of the Tang Mystery series was published on the Chinese mainland in 2016, and now the copyright of the series has been sold in Taiwan, as well as Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam.

On the mainland, more than 350,000 sets of the series have been sold, and in Taiwan more than 500,000 sets have been sold.

"Publishers from Japan and the United States also showed interest," says Liang Yuefeng, copyright editor of the book.

"Overseas publishers are interested in the fiction because of the prosperous Tang Dynasty (618-907), especially in the neighborhood of Asia.

"The Thai version has come out. When we introduced ourselves, the publisher decided to publish it immediately."

European and US readers are becoming increasingly interested in Chinese culture, and literary works can offer them a channel to look at the flourishing age in ancient China, she says.

The Tang Mystery books are mystery fiction built on four different cultural symbols during that time, such as Preface to the Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion, by the calligraphy master Wang Xizhi, and The Everlasting Regret, a poem that recounts the love between Emperor Li Longji and his concubine Yang Yuhuan, by the great poet Bai Juyi.

"Some US publishers contacted us after learning about the books' performance on Amazon," Liang says.

Tang Yin, the author, says the mystery novel genre makes it easier for overseas readers to follow the storytelling, in contrast to very serious highbrow literary works that may discuss profound social problems or human nature.

Combining Chinese culture with intriguing narration has also become a trend in children's books in China, and this has attracted overseas publishers.

One example is Monsters in the Forbidden City by Chang Yi.

Twelve volumes are planned, half of which have come out. Since the first book was published in 2015, more than 1 million copies have been sold.

As one of the best-selling children's books, Monsters in the Forbidden City also attracts publishers from overseas because "it's about both China and the world", says Liu Jinshuang, editor with Encyclopedia of China Publishing House.

"It's rooted in Chinese mythology and legends, so readers can learn about these ancient Chinese stories and more about the Forbidden City. It also tells about universal values: goodness, integrity, faith, love and responsibility."

Its copyright has now been sold in Hong Kong, as well as Malaysia, Mongolia, Romania, South Korea, Thailand and Arabic-speaking countries.

"If my memory serves me correctly, the first contract is for the Arabic version," Chang says.

"The translator said she was excited to find an Arab character in a Chinese book about the Forbidden City."

At the 2017 Beijing International Book Fair, where Chang hosted a recommendation meeting, translators from Hungary and Japan also showed their interest. Some took the first three books back for their children. But they need to find a publisher first if they want to publish them, she says.

With the success of The Three-Body Problem, Mai Jia's Decoded and now the promising A Hero Born, will overseas publishers want to publish more excellent Chinese literary works that are usually not considered highbrow but are extremely popular in China?

"Yes, I think they will," Engles says. "Publishers will always try to replicate what has proved successful. One successful author from any given country can make all the difference to how publishers perceive books from that market. And publishers are more open than ever to publishing genre fiction in translation, whether that's crime, sci fi or fantasy."

yangyangs@chinadaily.com.cn

( China Daily Africa Weekly 04/06/2018 page16)