Talk abstract:
Wuhan Diary by Fang Fang began as a blog which ran for sixty days from January 25 through March 25, 2020, documenting the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China. The blog quickly became an online phenomenon, attracting tens of millions of Chinese readers. Wuhan Diary also provided an important portal for Chinese around the world to understand the outbreak, the local response, and how the novel coronavirus was impacting everyday people. The diary featured a curious mixture of quotidian details from Fang Fang’s daily routine under quarantine, medical insights from the author’s doctor friends, and brave observations about the official response. Eventually, Fang Fang’s account would become the target of a series of online attacks by “ultra-nationalists,” spawning debate about COVID-19, Sino-US Relations, and nature of civil society in China. As the English translator of Wuhan Diary, this lecture will alternate between first-hand insights from the translation process and broader observations on how the diary became a lightning rod for fierce political debate in China, ultimately hinting at the power of writing.
Biography:
Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Previously, he was Professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies and Director of the East Asia Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and his areas of research include modern and contemporary Chinese literature, Chinese cinema, popular culture in modern China, and translation studies.
Berry is the author of A History of Pain: Trauma in Modern Chinese Literature and Film (Columbia University Press, 2008; Rye Field, 2017), which explores literary and cinematic representations of atrocity in twentieth century China; Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers (Columbia University Press, 2005; Rye Field, 2006; Guangxi Normal, 2007), a collection of dialogues with contemporary Chinese filmmakers including Hou Hsiao-hsien, Zhang Yimou, Stanley Kwan, and Jia Zhangke; the monograph, Jia Zhang-ke’s Hometown Trilogy: Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures (British Film Institute, February 2009; Guangxi Normal, 2010), which offers extended analysis of the films Xiao Wu, Platform, and Unknown Pleasures, and Boiling the Sea: Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Memories of Shadows and Light (INK, 2014; Guangxi Normal, 2015). Forthcoming books included An Accented Cinema: Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke (Guangxi Normal, 2021; Duke University Press, 2021) and an edited collection on the 1930 Musha Incident in Taiwan. He is currently working on a monograph that explores the United States as it has been imagined through Chinese film, literature, and popular culture, 1949-present. He is also a contributor to numerous books and periodicals, including recent chapters in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas (Oxford, 2013), A Companion to Chinese Cinema (Blackwell, 2012), Electric Shadows: A Century of Chinese Cinema. (British Film Institute, 2014), Columbia Companion of Modern Chinese Literature. (Columbia University Press, 2016), Harvard New Literary History of Modern China, (Harvard University Press, 2016), and The Chinese Cinema Book (British Film Institute, 2018).
He is also the translator of several books, including Wuhan Diary (HarperVia, 2020), Remains of Life (Columbia, 2017), The Song of Everlasting Sorrow (with Susan Chan Egan) (Columbia, 2008), To Live (Anchor, 2004), Nanjing 1937: A Love Story (Columbia, 2002, Anchor, 2004, Faber & Faber, 2004), and Wild Kids: Two Novels about Growing Up (Columbia, 2000). His work has been recognized by an NEA Translation Grant (2008), an Honorable Mention for the MLA Louis Roth Translation Prize (2009), and he has been on the jury for the Dream of the Red Chamber Prize since 2012 and has served as a Jury Member for numerous film festivals, including the Golden Horse Film Festival (2010, 2018).