As befits a project grappling with a nation’s collective memory, this book would not exist without the collective efforts of many people who have helped me in various ways and whose names I cannot possibly all list here.
I owe an enormous debt to my editor at Norton, Alane Salierno Mason, who first approached me with the idea of doing this book and since then has expertly and patiently guided me through the long, at times tortuous, process of putting together an anthology with an ironic, yet deadly serious, title. I also want to thank Glenn Mott, who has always done more than his share as an agent and a friend in making my dreams possible. As a gifted poet and translator, Glenn has contributed invaluable work to this volume.
Since this book relies on translation, I want to express my profound admiration for the trailblazing work by Julia Lin, Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, Sidney Shapiro, Howard Goldblatt, Mabel Lee, Eva Hung, Jeffrey Kinkley, David Pollard, and others who have made modern Chinese literature what it is today in the English-language translation. These pioneers are followed by other equally talented and devoted translators, including Gregory Lee, Timothy Wong, Jeffrey Yang, Tani Barlow, Michael Duke, Bonnie McDougall, Mary Fung, Madeleine Zelin, Andrew Jones, Aaron Crippen, Dan Murphy, Lucas Klein, Andrea Lingenfeller, and Fiona Sze-Lorrain. It is my fortune to be able to include the works by many of these translators but my deep regret having to leave out some selections due to the complexity of copyright clearance.
It especially pains me to drop two of my favorite works, Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang and Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu. Despite my repeated attempts and desperate pleas, the literary executors who control the rights for these works declined to oblige. I also encountered insurmountable roadblocks erected by the arcane system of subsidiary rights in China, demands for unreasonable fees by some English-language publishers, and the incompatibility between American and Chinese practices of copyright protection.
Difficulties notwithstanding, I have enjoyed the support, assistance, and encouragement from the following friends, fellow travelers, and editors at various journals and publishing companies: Jianhua Chen, Yiye Huang, Bei Dao, Xi Chuan, Zishan Chen, Dongfeng Wang, Yu Xinqiao, Theodore Huters and Stephanie Wong at Renditions, Peter London at HarperCollins, Sam Moore at Penguin, Kelsey Ford at New Directions, Angelina Wong at Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, Elizabeth Clementson at W. W. Norton, Michael Duckworth at University of Hawaii Press, Ryan Mita at Beacon Press, Greta Lindquist at University of California Press, Liz Hamilton at Northwestern University Press, Norah Perkins at Curtis Brown Group Ltd., Peter Froehlich at Indiana University Press, Kit Yee Wong at Anvil Press Poetry, and Michael Purwin at Columbia University Press. I especially want to thank my college friend and now an editor at People’s Literature Publishing House in China, Helen Liu, who gave me a key to the mystery of the Chinese publishing world. I am also grateful to Tan Lin, who generously granted me the permissions to reprint some of his late mother’s pioneering work.
Last but not least, I want to thank my father, who allowed me to pursue a career in literature, an opportunity which was denied to him when he was a young man in Mao’s China. I initially agreed to take on this book project because I wanted to pay tribute to him and millions of other struggling Chinese souls who, despite the perils, have never stopped dreaming.