About

I am posting translations of Chinese newspaper articles, with selections from blogs when possible, on a variety of topics. I hope this will be a contribution to Chinese social history of the present and recent past. This blog will attempt to cover a chosen subject in some depth.There is an accumulation of details, and a new focus, when articles from different dates and different origins, but on the same topic, are brought together. A Google  search makes this possible. I will not try to cover current news on a timely basis, or political issues as they unfold, but rather how people live over time.

In Chinese newspapers there is a panoply of voices, which lose the capacity to define events when the principal narrator  of a piece is someone analyzing events from a position outside of Chinese society, which is the state of affairs for most of the articles we might read, as outsiders ourselves (English speakers).  Not that  western newspapers neglect the opportunity to present the voices of Chinese people, but the end result  is not the same as a voice speaking within its own history, within the world it has a stake in; indeed, within the world that defines its possibilities. That is what I am interested in presenting here.

Some voices are what we call propaganda,  voices that justify or explain the decisions of those in power. It is interesting to see what their reasoning is, and what they are willing to omit. Other voices are dissenters, reporters or individuals speaking out against something which has has an immediate impact on their lives. Many are editorialists who ask for greater understanding and compassion, or who plead for urgent attention to be paid to a certain social problem. Putting all these voices next to each other, with their different perspectives, is a way of seeing a particular event from different angles.

In my approach to the materials I translate I try to be neither ironic nor analytical. I briefly introduce posts,  and explain how they relate to others in a series. My comments are prefaced by my screen-name, “konjaku.”