The Real Story of Ah-Q Read Free Page A

Hesitation
and
Old Stories Retold
. Within each collection, I have followed the author’s original sequencing. Throughout, I have translated from the versions included in the 1982 Renmin wenxue edition of Lu Xun’s
Complete Works
(
Lu Xun quanji
; Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe), as this version is widely accepted as having corrected the errors appearing in earlier editions, and is thoroughly and usefully footnoted by its editors.
    In an attempt to enhance the fluency of the text, I have kept use of footnotes and endnotes to a minimum, and where background information that Chinese audiences would take for granted can be unobtrusively and economically worked into the main body of text, I have taken that option. A translation that, without compromising overall linguistic accuracy, avoids extensive interruption by footnotes and endnotes can, I feel, offer a more faithful recreation of the original reading experience than a version whose literal rendering of every point dictates frequent, disrupting consultation of extra references. Where I have judged that a fuller background explanation would be of help, however, I have included this in endnotes; I have used occasional footnotes to gloss specific questions of language.
    In a very few places, where the density of cultural-linguistic reference is so great as to make prolonged explanations necessary in the English (such as the disquisition on traditional biography in ‘The Real Story of Ah-Q’, and the punning exchange in ‘Taming the Floods’ on Yu’s name and the composition of Chinese ideograms), I have slightly simplified a handful of lines in the original Chinese. I have also on occasion simplified the nomenclature used in the original: where more than one name is given for a single character (in accordance with the Chinese tradition of giving individuals extra, literary pseudonyms), I have tended to use only one name, to reduce readers’ confusion.
    Chinese is, of course, very different from English, and to find literary equivalences for Lu Xun’s style and usages has been a constant challenge. One habit of his that has given me regular pause throughout the translation is his frequent, deliberate use of repetition; at times, I have judged that – due to the gap between English and Chinese literary conventions – to recreate a repetition precisely may strike the English reader as uncomfortable and inelegant, and I have therefore occasionally decided to reword. Throughout, I have aspired to produce a version of Lu Xun that tries to explain – to readers beyond the specialist circle of Chinese studies – his canonical status within China, and make a case for regarding him as a creative stylist and thinker whose ideas about literature can transcend the socio-political circumstances in which he wrote.

A Note on Chinese Names
and Pronunciation
     
    In Chinese, the surname always precedes the given name: Lu Xun, therefore, has the surname Lu and Xun as his given name; his brother Zhou Zuoren has the surname Zhou and Zuoren as the given name.
    According to the Hanyu Pinyin system (used in this translation, except for the surname ‘He’, which I have written as ‘Ho’ to reduce confusion in English), transliterated Chinese is pronounced much as in English, except for the following:

VOWELS
     
    a (as the only letter following a consonant):
a
as in after
    ai:
I
(or
eye
)
    ao:
ow
as in how
    e:
uh
    ei:
ay
as in say
    en:
on
as in lemon
    eng:
ung
as in sung
    i (as the only letter following most consonants):
e
as in me
    i (when following c, ch, s, sh, z, zh):
er
as in driver
    ia:
yah
    ian:
yen
    ie:
yeah
    iu:
yo
as in yo-yo
    o:
o
as in fork
    ong:
oong
    ou:
o
as in no
    u (when following most consonants):
oo
as in food
    u (when following j, q, x, y):
ü
as the German ü
    ua:
wah
    uai:
why
    uan:
wu-an
    uang:
wu-ang
    ui:
way
    uo:
u-woah
    yan:
yen
    yi:
ee
as in feed

CONSONANTS
     
    c:
ts
as in its
    g:
g
as in good
    j:
j
as in
job
    q:
ch
as in chat
    x: