Teithiodd Francesca Rhydderch, awdur The Rice Paper Diaries, a'r cyfieithydd Yan Ying, i Ffair Lyfrau Rhyngwladol ac Wythnos Lenyddol Shanghai fis Awst i lansio'r gyfrol mewn cyfieithiad Tseineg. Cyhoeddir y gyfrol gan Shanghai Translation Publishing House, y wasg sy'n cyhoeddi'r nifer mwyaf o gyfrolau llenyddiaeth byd yn Tseina.

Mewn cyfres o ysgrifau, a gyhoeddir ar ein gwefan yr wythnos hon, mae Francesca Rhydderch a Yan Ying yn rhannu eu hargraffiadau:

China day by day

"It was Yan too who made me smile, pointing out how Shanghai people, seemingly unfazed by anything – the humidity, the crazy traffic, the at times oppressive air pollution, the constant busyness – were brought to a complete standstill by one thing: the rain."

Francesca Rhydderch

As we walked back to our hotel one afternoon, listening to the cicadas’ rasping good-night, we passed a shop selling televisions, with the news playing on a loop on every screen. It was a clip of the preparations in Beijing to commemorate victory over Japan in 1945 in a few days’ time: tanks, missiles, two hundred aircraft and twelve thousand troops were due to be displayed in Tiananmen Square, including the anti-ship ‘carrier killer’ missile Dongfeng-21D. I tried to imagine what the security would be like. I’d visited Tienanmen Square the previous year on what had been a quiet spring day in comparison, and even then there had been police and soldiers everywhere. Everyone had to queue up and show the security people what they had in their pockets, and there was a little pile of confiscated lighters on a portable table on the way in. Enterprising hawkers had tried to sell us handfuls of small Chinese flags as we waited. Most people had bought at least one, and I’d wondered if it would look rude if I didn’t. Standing now on a Shanghai pavement in the hot evening air, the smell of food and bodies and dust all around me, I tried to remember that cold March day: car roofs shining in the sun like tortoise backs, the white motorcycle helmets of soldiers in their long, grey coats, a woman holding her young daughter by the shoulder to prevent her from scooting across the road too soon on her pink scooter. I thought of the students I’d met, their jeans, their hair dyed lilac like the students at home, their piercings, their questions, and I looked at the TVs in the shop window, and I thought: Those students are one China. This is another. What words can we find to wrap around the whole of it? It was Yan who used the word ‘flexibility’. We agreed that we weren’t sure if it was the right term for what we wanted to say, but that it had that elasticity we were both looking for, the ability to embrace contradictions, if not to celebrate them.

It was Yan too who made me smile, pointing out how Shanghai people, seemingly unfazed by anything – the humidity, the crazy traffic, the at times oppressive air pollution, the constant busyness – were brought to a complete standstill by one thing: the rain. Look, she said. The pavements cleared rapidly, and street sellers touting cheap umbrellas in bright pinks and yellows, their steel struts sharp as a parakeet’s claw, suddenly appeared on every corner, only to disappear just as quickly as the rain washed away down the gutters. We sloshed along the Bund in our sandals, warm water running between our toes, looking from the traditional colonial district of Shanghai across the Huangpu river to industrial new Pu Dong.

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Detholwyd The Rice Paper Diaries gan Francesca Rhydderch i Silff Lyfrau 2013 – 2014 Y Gyfnewidfa, detholiad blynyddol o lyfrau a argymhellir gan Gyfnewidfa Lên Cymru ar gyfer cyfieithu dramor.

Cyhoeddodd Shanghai Translation Publishing House eu bwriad i brynu’r hawliau cyfieithu The Rice Paper Diaries yn dilyn symposiwm ar gyfnewid llenyddol a chyhoeddi rhwng Cymru a Tseina gynhaliwyd ym mis Mai 2014. Trefnwyd y symposiwm gan Brifysgol Bangor mewn partneriaeth â Chyfnewidfa Lên Cymru, a hynny i nodi rhifyn arbennig ar Gymru o’r cylchgrawn Tseineaidd dylanwadol, Foreign Literature and Art.

Cefnogwyd taith Francesca Rhydderch a Yan Ying i Tseina gan Gelfyddydau Rhyngwladol Cymru a Phrifysgol Abertawe. Darparwyd croeso hael gan Shanghai Translation Publishing House.