From the Old Country: Stories and Sketches of China and Taiwan

SOURCES, TRANSLATIONS, AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

All footnotes are the translator’s notes unless otherwise indicated.

Zhong Lihe has the distinction of being the first Taiwan writer to have a “complete works” published, in 1976, and he now also has the most such collections. I have used all three “complete works of Zhong Lihe,” listed below, as well as the transcriptions and manuscripts available in the Zhong Lihe Shuwei Bowuguan 鍾理和數位博物館 (Zhong Lihe Digital Museum, http://cls.hs.yzu.edu.tw/zhonglihe/home.asp—accessed Oct. 10, 2012). In the present volume I take the 2009 New Complete Works as my standard. In a very few places I have preferred details from the second Complete Works (II) or other versions, and I have noted significant discrepancies where they occur. The most significant deviations from New Complete Works concern “Oleander” and “My ‘Out-Law’ and the Hill Songs.” Separate notes on these deviations appear in each of the respective translations.

Complete Works (I)	Zhong Lihe quanji 鍾理和全集 (Complete works of Zhong Lihe). Ed. Zhang Liangze 張良澤. 8 vols. Taibei: Yuanxing 遠行, 1976.
Complete Works (II)	Zhong Lihe quanji 鍾理和全集 (Complete works of Zhong Lihe). Ed. Zhong Tiemin 鍾鐵民. 6 vols. Gaoxiong/Meinong: Chunhui 春輝 / Caituanfaren Zhong Lihe wenjiao jijinhui 財團法人鍾理和文教基金會, 1997; repr. 2003.
New Complete Works	Xin ban Zhong Lihe quanji 新版鍾理和全集 (Complete works of Zhong Lihe: New edition). Ed. Zhong Yiyan 鍾怡彥. 8 vols. (Gaoxiong) Gangshan [高雄縣崗山鎮]: Gaoxiong xian zhengfu, 2009.

Of the stories included in the present volume, two have previously been published in my English translation. I am most grateful to the editors of Edinburgh Review for granting permission to republish “From the Old Country” here. The version that appeared in Edinburgh Review 124 (2008):53–68, under the title “Old Country Folk,” was based on the Complete Works (II) “original” and has been substantially revised according to New Complete Works for inclusion in this volume. I am equally grateful for the same reason to the editors of Renditions: A Chinese–English Translation Magazine. The translation of “The Fourth Day” appearing here has required only trivial improvements on that printed in Renditions 72 (Autumn 2009): 71–93. My thanks also go to the editors and staff of both magazines for their work on the previously published versions.

Before I sent the manuscript of this volume to Columbia University Press I was honored to receive a promise from Zhong Tiemin, Zhong Lihe’s eldest son and a distinguished writer of fiction and essays in his own right, to contribute a preface. Sadly, Zhong Tiemin died on August 22, 2011, at the age of seventy. On many occasions since I first met him in Meinong in 2004, Mr. Zhong provided me with an enormous amount of detailed information and a great deal of encouragement in my research on his father’s life and work. He and his wife, his brother, and his sister-in-law (Mr. and Mrs. Zhong Tiejun), and his daughters have frequently been personally kind as well as practically helpful. (Here I must also express my gratitude to the staff of the Zhong Lihe Memorial Institute 鍾理和紀念館, particularly Ms. Huang Huiming, for similar kindness and assistance over the years.)

Meinong misses Zhong Tiemin. I like to think that my completion of these translations gave him some satisfaction; that the prospect of a first volume of Zhong Lihe’s fiction published in English was for him another piece in the jigsaw preserving and promoting his father’s literary legacy, which he took as a hugely important part of his own life’s work.

I am delighted that Zhong Lihe’s third and only surviving son, Zhong Tiejun, has stepped into the breach and provided a preface of as high a quality as I would have expected from his brother.

I am extremely glad to be able to include cover art and illustrations done by Zhong Tiemin’s third daughter, Zhong Shunwen, a professional painter, illustrator, and photographer and also an outstanding blogger (see “小百合之印象盒子,” http://blog.roodo.com/gjp4jp6). All of the illustrations were previously published in New Complete Works, except the cover art, which was done specially for this volume.

My thanks are due to Helen Parker of the University of Edinburgh and Yu-ling Chen for their help with the transliteration of Japanese terms. Yu-ling also read and commented on some of the draft translations. Bonnie S. McDougall provided me with meticulous and extremely helpful feedback on the entire second draft, of the type that she has most generously provided me many times over a number of years. I am also very grateful to the anonymous readers for their positive feedback and careful corrections and suggestions.

I list here all previously published English translations from Zhong Lihe of which I am aware. In selecting the stories and essays for this volume I have avoided these, except for “Bamboo-Root Village”/“Zugteuzong,” where I felt a new translation was justified in order to present a unified English version of Homeland.

“Bamboo-Root Village” (“Zugteuzong” in the present volume). Trans. John Balcom. Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 21 (July 2007): 21–34. [竹頭莊]

“Restored to Life.” Trans. Timothy Ross. The Chinese Pen (Spring 1977): 54–70. [復活]

“Returning to My Home Village.” Trans. John Balcom. Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 21 (July 2007): 35–40. [還鄉記]

“The Tobacco Shed.” Trans. Timothy Ross. The Chinese Pen (Spring 1978): 91–105. [煙樓]

“Together Through Thick and Thin.” Trans. Shiao-ling Yu. In Joseph S. M. Lau, ed., The Unbroken Chain: An Anthology of Taiwan Fiction Since 1926, 57–67. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. [貧賤夫妻]