Norman Smith's Publishes Translation of Long-Lost Chinese Text

Congratulations to Dr. Norman Smith on publishing a translation of an important but long-lost text: Mei Niang's Long-Lost First Writings: Young Lady's Collection (Routledge 2023). Norman’s work represents the first-ever English-language translation of the writings of Mei Niang, a prominent and prolific new woman writer from Northeast China. The book sheds light on the perspectives of a young Chinese woman in Japanese-occupied Manchukuo. It also addresses a significant need for English-language translations of Chinese literature, focusing on Manchukuo's Chinese writers and those who departed the puppet state before 1935.

Visit the book at Routledge.

Congratulations from all of us!

from the jacket:

In 1944, the novel Xie (Crabs) by Mei Niang (1916-2013) was honored with the Japanese Empire’s highest literary award, Novel of the Year. Then, at the peak of her popularity, Mei Niang published in Japanese-owned, Chinese-language journals and newspapers in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo (1932-1945), Japan, and north China. Contemporaries lauded her writings, especially for introducing liberalism to Manchuria’s literary world. In Maoist China, however, Mei Niang was condemned as a traitor and a Rightist with her life and career torn to shreds until her formal vindication in the late 1970s. In 1997, Mei Niang was named one of "Modern China's 100 Writers." The collection that is translated in this volume, Xiaojie ji (Young lady’s collection), was published in 1936, when she was 19 years old. Long thought forever lost in the violence of China’s civil war and Maoist strife, the collection was only re-discovered in 2019.