Publisher Linda Leith on how one of the most influential recent books in China came to be translated into English as part of the CanLit canon.

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This story starts with Yan Liang, a Canadian friend who was born in China and lives in Montreal. She’s a journalist at Radio-Canada International and a distinguished literary translator into Chinese (she has translated Kim Thuy and Esi Edugyan, among others). A couple of years ago—in February 2014—she called me up to let me know about another Montrealer born in China, a writer named Xue Yiwei whose new short story collection, Taxi Driver (2013), had recently been chosen one of the most influential books of the year in China.

By the time the three of us got together at Café Pekarna on Ste-Catherine Street on a wintry afternoon, Yan had sent me more information about Yiwei. I’d learned that his novel Desertion was one of the top ten 2012 books in China. That another novel, Dr. Bethune’s Children (2012,) had been banned in China for political reasons. That he was considered “the most charismatic stylist in contemporary Chinese literature.” I looked forward to meeting him.

Even more intriguing was that Yiwei studied computer engineering at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics as a young man, and later went on to get an MA in English and American literature from the Université de Montréal and a doctorate in linguistics from the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. His doctorate is on the work of James Joyce, moreover, a writer whose work is a linguistic challenge even to native speakers of English.

There was that. And then there was the extraordinary fact that this evidently significant Chinese writer had been quietly living and working in Montreal for a dozen years, unbeknownst to all those of us who pretend to familiarity with the literary scene.

Translator Darryl Sterk and his daughter

Yan’s involvement didn’t end there, for she then introduced me to Darryl Sterk, a Canadian literary translator and professor of translation at the University of Taipei, when he stopped off in Montreal in April for events at the 2014 Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival.

There were stops and starts after that—issues about funding for the translation of a work written by a Canadian citizen in Chinese, issues about timing, questions over the number of stories to include. There were discussions over scenes that might not be readily understood by an English-language readership, all kinds of three-way conversations between Yiwei and Darryl and me in the early months of this year as we prepared the book for the press.

Taxi Driver is too readily associated with the Martin Scorcese movie for it to work as the translation of Yiwei’s book, so we looked for another title. Since the stories are inspired by the time Yiwei spent in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, and also in some part by Dubliners, we chose Shenzheners as the title the collection would have in English.

Yiwei’s book both is and is not reminiscent of Dubliners.It’s dedicated “to the Irishman who inspires me,” certainly. It provides a way into the hearts and minds of the people of a city we may or may not know. There are other connections some readers will wish to consider, even if others (Steven Beattie in Quill and Quire) see closer similarities to work by Samuel Beckett.

Shenzhen is a new and faraway city, foreign to most readers of English in a way that Joyce’s Dublin is not. Yiwei’s people are identified simply; they’re referred to not by their individual names but as the country girl, for example, the physics teacher, the big sister, and the little sister. This has the effect of distancing them from us, or maybe universalizing them, or both, even when the stories draw us into their personal trials, loves, sorrows.

The look of the collection is the first sign that this is a work that’s both foreign—foreign to us all, no matter what our nationality—and intimate. The warm illustrations by the Chinese artist Cai Gao on the front cover and inside, at the start of each story, contribute to the complex effect. The rich green and red colour combination in the designer Debbie Geltner’s cover is not only inviting but also unexpected.

Shenzheners is a long word, which means we would have to use small lettering to fit the whole word across the front cover. In considering how best to place the word, I sought inspiration in the covers of various editions of Dubliners. A few of these break the word up into three lines—DUB, LIN, and ERS—and that’s what our designer Debbie Geltner did with SHEN ZHEN ERS.

The effect is complex, like that of Yiwei’s moving stories. Splitting the word across three lines makes the word unfamiliar even to readers who are familiar with the city of Shenzhen. At the same time, it’s not a word most of us have seen before, and it includes the name of a city we may not know how to pronounce; splitting it up has the effect of helping us figure out how to say it. Both more distant, in other words, and more accessible—just like the taxi driver, the prodigy, and the peddler.

Linda Leith is a Montreal writer and publisher.