China and the West

Daniel P. Chugg is Consellor der britischen Botschaft in Beijing.

Kenneth Dean ist Academic Advisory Committee Member der Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Ding, Wenlei. Youth's guardian angel : Chinese readers mourn the death of American writer J.D. Salinger who captured the angst of growing up nearly perfectly : [on the impact of The Catcher in the Rye to Chinese readers]. In : Beijing review ; vol. 53, no 4 (March 4 2010).
J.D. Salinger is regarded as a guardian angel by young readers worldwide (CFP)
The death of author Jerome David Salinger has heralded nostalgia not only for his works but also for the moments those works represent in their readers' lives.
The reclusive author, best known for his book, The Catcher in the Rye, will live on in the memories of his loyal fans worldwide as long as there are misunderstood adolescents like Holden Caulfield, the anti-hero teenage protagonist he created in the novel.
The Catcher in the Rye appeared in 1951, a time of Cold War social conformity and conservatism and the dawn of modern adolescence.
Contemporary critics rated the book as the best of contemporary youth novels, because teenagers all over the world identified with the novel's themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy; and identified themselves with its antagonistic protagonist, the twisted and rebellious Holden Caulfield, although Salinger was primarily writing for adults.
More than 60 million copies of this book have been sold worldwide, and its impact was incalculable. Decades after publication, the novel remains the defining expression of rebellious teenagers' dreams: to never grow up.
The book has numerous fans in China as well. The Nanjing-based Yilin Press, one of the few professional publishers of translations in China, officially published the Chinese version of the book in 1983—along with a new translated edition in 2007.
"We sell around 100,000 copies of the book every year. It's undoubtedly a bestseller and has a great influence on young readers," said Ge Lin, Director of the press' Marketing Department.
But Salinger shunned fame. He moved to Cornish in New Hampshire in 1952 and lived there for decades in self-imposed isolation in a small, remote house where he died at 91 on January 27.
Salinger's other books didn't have quite the same impact, influence or sales as The Catcher in the Rye. They were the collection Nine Stories published in 1953, the fiction work Franny and Zooey in 1961, the 1963 book of two novellas Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour-An Introduction and his last story Hapworth 16, 1928, published in 1965.
The Catcher in the Rye is viewed as a must-read book for teenagers to smoothen their spiritual growth (XINHUA)
The official publication of The Catcher in the Rye was regarded as one of the most unforgettable additions to Chinese readers' bookshelves in the 1980s by many critics.
Sun Zhongxu, translator of the most recent Chinese edition, said he would never forget how he was touched when he read the English version 16 years ago as a sophomore. "I was lucky that I could read the book at 19," he said. "I felt so closely connected to Holden: his rage was my rage, his perplexity my perplexity and his joy my joy."
In retrospect, Sun said the book's biggest contribution was to help rebellious teenagers to understand themselves—as well as the complexity of the adult world around them. "Holden made me feel lonely no longer. I came to realize it's no big deal to have all these doubts, queries and perplexities about the adult world during adolescence."
Salinger's fans shared their grief on Douban.com, a Chinese online community providing users' reviews and recommendations of movies, books, and music. They will forever respect Salinger because he created a companion for their lonely or troublesome adolescence.
"We have only one Salinger," Sun said. "He represented the world as an ever-so-unfair struggle between the relative innocence of young people and the corruption of elders, and at the same time created a mentor, Mr. Antolini, as a symbol of catching children as they fall over the cliff."
Lu Chuan, young Chinese director of the movie Nanking! Nanking! (2009), said Salinger was one of his favoriate writers. Only one English version was circulated among boys during his military school years. Lu and his roommates finished reading it with the help of electric torches when the electricity of their dormitory was shut off during night.
"The words Mr. Antolini quoted as his advice to Holden—'The mark of an immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one,'—still encourage me to pursue my goals today," Lu said.
"Salinger is an author the world will remember forever," said literary critic Lei Da. "The Catcher in the Rye cares about the spiritual growth of adolescents and will influence future generations, the young people aged between 16 and 20 in particular. "
The introduction of the book to China, Lei said, helped to nourish a group of satirical writers such as Wang Shuo,Wang Xiaobo and Han Han. The former, the most popular and famous writer in the 1990s in China, wrote about rebellious and the ganglike behavior of youth and was regarded as a Chinese counterpart of Salinger. His novel Wild Beast, about a group of teenagers running wild one summer, was adapted into the 1994 movie In the Heat of the Sun.
Chinese writer and painter A. Cheng, who had been in the United States for eight years, once said the Chinese translation of The Catcher in the Rye could have been closer to the original text if the translator imitated Wang Shuo's style of writing.
Zhang Yiwu, professor of Chinese at Peking University, explained Salinger's influence on Chinese readers and writers by pointing out similarities between Chinese society in the 1980s and the American society in the 1950s.
"The book didn't reach a wider audience or find a louder echo in China until the 1980s, though the first Chinese version was published two decades earlier," Zhang said.
This happened because Chinese society in the 1980s, after the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy, resembled post-war America in the 1950s, in terms of a developing economy and the contradictions between material abundance and spiritual deficiencies that sometimes led youth into depression and anxiety, he said.
"Holden found an echo among young readers and reading the book helped release them from their negative feelings," he said.
Zhang said the book probably enjoyed a smaller influence on today's teenagers, largely because the social situation changes.

Kwong-loi Shun ist Mitglied des Advisory Board von Comparative philosophy.

David T. Roy ist Mitglied der American Oriental Society und der Association for Asian Studies.

Alain Roux ist Professeur des universités des Centre d'études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine der Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales.

Jean Chesneaux ist Mitglied der Parti communiste français.

William A. Joseph ist Mitglied der American Political Science Association, Association for Asian Studies, New England Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, New England Modern China Seminar, ASIANetwork.

Verne, Jules. Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours [ID D22689].
Er schreibt über Hong Kong : "Hong-Kong n'est qu'un îlot, dont le traité de Nanking, après la guerre de 1842, assura la possession à l'Angleterre. En quelques années, le génie colonisateur de la Grande-Bretagne y avait fondé une ville importante et créé un port, le port Victoria. Cette île est située à l'embouchure de la rivière de Canton, et soixante milles seulement la séparent de la cité portugaise de Macao, bâtie sur l'autre rive. Hong-Kong devait nécessairement vaincre Macao dans une lutte commerciale, et maintenant la plus grande partie du transit chinois s'opère par la ville anglaise. Des docks, des hôpitaux, des wharfs, des entrepôts, une cathédrale gothique, un « government-house », des rues macadamisées, tout ferait croire qu'une des cités commerçantes des comtés de Kent ou de Surrey, traversant le sphéroïde terrestre, est venue ressortir en ce point de la Chine, presque à ses antipodes...
Une trentaine de consommateurs occupaient dans la grande salle de petites tables en jonc tressé. Quelques uns vidaient des pintes de bière anglaise, ale ou porter, d'autres, des brocs de liqueurs alcooliques, gin ou brandy. En outre, la plupart fumaient de longues pipes de terre rouge, bourrées de petites boulettes d'opium mélangé d'essence de rose. Puis, de temps en temps, quelque fumeur énervé glissait sous la table, et les garçons de l'établissement, le prenant par les pieds et par la tête, le portaient sur le lit de camp près d'un confrère. Une vingtaine de ces ivrognes étaient ainsi rangés côte à côte, dans le dernier degré d'abrutissement.
Fix et Passepartout comprirent qu'ils étaient entrés dans une tabagie hantée de ces misérables, hébétés, amaigris, idiots, auxquels la mercantile Angleterre vend annuellement pour deux cent soixante millions de francs de cette funeste drogue qui s'appelle l'opium ! Tristes millions que ceux-là, prélevés sur un des plus funestes vices de la nature humaine.
Le gouvernement chinois a bien essayé de remédier à un tel abus par des lois sévères, mais en vain. De la classe riche, à laquelle l'usage de l'opium était d'abord formellement réservé, cet usage descendit jusqu'aux classes inférieures, et les ravages ne purent plus être arrêtés. On fume l'opium partout et toujours dans l'empire du Milieu. Hommes et femmes s'adonnent à cette passion déplorable, et lorsqu'ils sont accoutumés à cette inhalation, ils ne peuvent plus s'en passer, à moins d'éprouver d'horribles contractions de l'estomac. Un grand fumeur peut fumer jusqu'à huit pipes par jour mais il meurt en cinq ans.
Or, c'était dans une des nombreuses tabagies de ce genre, qui pullulent, même à Hong-Kong, que Fix et Passepartout étaient entrés avec l'intention de se rafraîchir. Passepartout n'avait pas d'argent, mais il accepta volontiers la « politesse » de son compagnon, quitte à la lui rendre en temps et lieu."

Paolo Santangelo ist Mitglied des Direttivo der Associazione italiana di studi cinese.

Xu, Shulun. Qing chu Shashibiya jie shao zhong de zi chan jie ji si xiang [ID D23910].
Li Ruru : Xu Shulun set the criteria for Shakespeare interpretation in the new China. He stated that "Shakespeare studies has long been controlled by bourgeois thought", citing the example of Hamlet where despite voluminous essays on the play "none of the critics could successfully solve the puzzles of the character. The essential reasons for not being able to do so are first of all, [those critics] ignored the spirit of the time when the English bourgeois revolution was under way ; in addition, they abandoned the humanism in the English Renaissance. They thus could not see where the composition [of Shakespeare's works] was based". Having quoted Marx, Engels, Pushkin, Belinsky and Morozov, Xu asserted that the USSR, the "second motherland of Shakespeare", had already eliminated bourgeois thought from Shakespearean scholarship, and the Soviet Shakespeareans had thus established an ideal model for the Chinese scholars. He further insisted that "the most urgent task for us Shakespeareans in the Chinese cultural realm is to apply Marxism to the correct interpretation and introduction of Shakespeare ; to eliminate the influence of European and American schools and their theories on our Shakespeare studies".

British Council 'Dickens 2012' festival in China.
Aufführung der Filme "Great expectations", "A tale of two cities" und 'Nicholas Nickleby' von Charles Dickens.

Gründung des chinesischen Generalkonsulates in Montreal.

Gründung des chinesischen Generalkonsulats in Montreal.

Brian Davidson ist Generalkonsul des britischen Generalkonsulats in Shanghai.

Kenneth Dean ist Selection committee member der Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange North American Grant Selection Committee.

Chen, Shouzhu. Yibusheng "Wan’ou zhi jia" yan jiu [ID D26206].
Chen schreibt : "Henrik ibsen was not only a great Norwegian dramatist, but also the founder of modern European drama. Treating the stage as his speech forum, he honestly and courageously pointed out to his fellow countrymen and the whole of Europe the verious problems in their society. From the aspects of politics, law, religion and morality, love and marriage, he sharply and passionately criticized the hypocritical and selfish bourgeoisie and the corruption of the social system. Although he only raised questions and nover gave scientific answers, his works were enough to show that the bourgeois society was a wretched world."

Marián Gálik ist Mitglied der Slovak Oriental Society, der European Sinological Association, der International Association of Southern Society (Hong Kong), der Chinese Association of Mao Dun Studies (Beijing), der Chinese Association of Bing Xin Studies (Fuzhou).

Shen Fuzong reist nach Lissabon und tritt dem Jesuiten-Orden bei.

Kenneth Dean ist Visiting Chaired Professor der School of Humanities der Xiamen University und hält eine Vorlesung and der Summer Historical Anthropology Research School in Jinmen, Taiwan.