This volume has been several years in the making, and I would like to thank the many individuals and institutions who have helped it reach completion. I began translating Written in the Margins of Life in Taipei in 2004 as a recreational adjunct to my doctoral dissertation research on comedic cultures of modern China. When publication became a possibility, I decided to make the essays more accessible by including notes to explain their numerous allusions and occasional instances of untranslatable wordplay. My thanks to Shang Wei and Liao Ping-hui, who early on illuminated several obscure terms and passages. I am also grateful to Philip F. Williams for his generous advice as this project was getting off the ground, and for contributing his masterful translation of “On Writers” to the volume.
I decided to combine Margins and Human, Beast, Ghost into a joint volume in order to offer readers a more comprehensive picture of Qian’s early works. Three of the four stories in Human (all except “God’s Dream”) have been published previously in English translation, and I offer my sincere thanks to Dennis T. Hu, Yiran Mao, and Nathan K. Mao for sharing their translations. These translations have been revised both to match the 1983 Fujian renmin chubanshe edition and for overall stylistic consistency. Qian made many changes to both Margins and Human over the years, and I have preserved his more substantial alterations in the endnotes. My thanks to Michelle Cheng and Shannie Hsu at the University of British Columbia for their assistance in comparing editions, and to Bruce Fulton for his feedback on a portion of the manuscript.
At various stages of this project, I have relied on financial assistance from the graduate schools of arts and sciences of Columbia University and Harvard University, the Fulbright Foundation in Taiwan, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, the Whiting Foundation, and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. To each my enduring thanks.
I am grateful to Jennifer Crewe, Mike Ashby, and two anonymous reviewers at Columbia University Press for their endorsement of this project and invaluable feedback on the manuscript. Any errors that remain are either mine or Qian Zhongshu’s (you decide).
David Der-wei Wang has been a transformative figure in my life and an unparalleled mentor through graduate school and beyond.
This book is dedicated to the memory of Professor Pei-yi Wu, a teacher and friend to generations of Columbia graduate students.
My love, as always, to Mom, Dad, Sandy, Julie, and Peregrin.
Christopher Rea
