Francesca Rhydderch, author of The Rice Paper Diaries, and Yan Ying, the book’s Chinese translator, launched the novel at Shanghai International Book Fair and Literature Week. The novel is published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, the largest comprehensive translation publishing house in China.

In a series of essays, published on our website this week, Francesca Rhydderch and Yan Ying, share their impressions:

China Day by Day

"Late at night, after we’d both taken a few hours to collect our children from school, feed them and put them to bed, a burst of emails would follow: Was there really a hotel called the Hong Kong Hotel in 1941, she wanted to know? Where exactly? We needed to consult as street map, she said. The following day we would move on to the next chapter."

Francesca Rhydderch

It was important to me to get this straight from the start, I thought, as I collected my suitcase from the rolling carousel, as language was the reason I was here at all. Yan Ying, a UK-based Chinese translator, had fallen for the Welsh language and culture while teaching at Bangor University, and last year she accepted a commission from Shanghai Translation Publishing House to translate my novel The Rice Paper Diaries, which was now to be launched at Shanghai’s International Book Fair and Literature Week. In 2014 I’d been on a whistle-stop tour of several cities across eastern China: Beijing, Ningbo, Suzhou and Shanghai, promoting the English version of The Rice Paper Diaries, meeting mainly European and American audiences. This visit, to promote the Chinese translation, was to be quite different.

Everything I learned about Chinese culture as we were driven around Shanghai by taxi drivers whose mental maps of their city were by shaped their satnavs was mediated through Yan’s quiet presence. She brought to the task of accompanying me the same commitment she’d brought to the job of translating my novel. Over a period of weeks, we’d had long conversations about very specific images and details in The Rice Paper Diaries: what was the colour of the ripened spider lily plants that grow around paddy fields in some areas of China? she asked one day. Late at night, after we’d both taken a few hours to collect our children from school, feed them and put them to bed, a burst of emails would follow: Was there really a hotel called the Hong Kong Hotel in 1941, she wanted to know? Where exactly? We needed to consult as street map, she said. The following day we would move on to the next chapter.

In Shanghai, I worked hard at promoting the Chinese translation of the book, but as my interpreter Yan worked even harder. While we sat in the shady lounge bar of our hotel fielding visits from journalists, Yan’s ability to translate simultaneously enabled us to have meaningful interviews rather than superficial chats, and we quickly became used to the rhythm of these conversations. Our editor, Jade Li, ordered soda water and coffee for us, before sitting unobtrusively in the corner of the room picking up emails on her phone, taking no notice of the man in a suit lying on a chaise longue blowing cigar smoke up at the ceiling. If Yan smiled especially politely at one of the interviewers, I soon realised they were asking the same question we’d been asked a few times that day already; quite often, if this was the case, Yan would be happy to answer for me. When the interviews were over, she helped prepare me for a public lecture at Shanghai Public Library: when over two hundred students turned up and engaged in one of the most stimulating Q&A sessions I’ve ever taken part in, Yan beamed. At the end of the event she said to me, Today, I am proud of China.

_______________________________

The Rice Paper Diaries by Francesca Rhydderch was selected to the Wales Literature Exchange 2013 – 2014 Bookcase, our annual selection of recent Welsh literary works which we recommend for translation.

Shanghai Translation Publishing House announced their intention to buy the translation rights for the novel following a symposium on literary and publishing exchange between Wales and China organised by Bangor University in partnership with Wales Literature Exchange in May 2014, to celebrate the publication of a special Wales edition of the influential Chinese magazine, Foreign Literature and Art.

Francesca Rhydderch and Dr Yan Ying’s journey to China was supported by Wales Arts International and Swansea University, with additional hosting generously provided by Shanghai Translation Publishing House.