New journal Pathlight is the first English version of new China’s oldest literary magazine, People's Literature (人民文学). At the helm is 25-year-old Beijing-born, British-educated editor Alice Xin Liu. She tells Time Out why China is still waiting for its cultural dawn, and why she’s sick of concubines on book covers.
Why did you create Pathlight?
It wasn't just us [Eric Abrahamsen is co-editor] but People's Literature, the magazine that has been around China for the last 60 years. I think the reason we got to start Pathlight is partly because the time is right for this kind of project.
Is it a new dawn for Chinese fiction?
Not quite. I think there's a lot of continuity with what we've had since the '80s. I don't think we've had the kind of breakthrough that happened in other countries. There's still a big gap between what's published and widely read here in China and what's being published in the West. A ‘new dawn’ would mean the West reading more of what the Chinese read.
So are Western attitudes to Chinese literature changing?
I would like to say that attitudes are changing. Western countries like the UK have their own solid literary traditions and canons, so it's not easy to adjust to the kind of literature that is pouring out of China.
But tastes need to be adapted in order for the literary scene to become global. A lot of people have been working hard at doing this for a long time and have not gotten the kind of progress that they want, and I don't think that just because there are bursts of energy (from us, and from others) that suddenly Chinese literature will break off into a Murakami moment.
It seems that only genre-busting or controversial writers break through. Is there a problem in how Chinese fiction is marketed abroad?
Yes, definitely. There have been numerous blog posts and reactions to the ‘girl in qipao’ shot on the cover of the books. If you are in London or New York and you're looking for something exotic, you go for one of these books. Not just because it's great writing (and this is very sad) but because it represents and endorses a certain image of the East, of the Orientalist.
Mass market readers probably don't really care about this, but the publishing industry's image-making doesn't help. Book titles also don't help – titles with words such as ‘concubines’ really don't do it for me.
You run some edgy stories – a recent article written by Li Er had a contentious line on racism. Are you worried about being shut down by the authorities?
Not at all. Li Er is lauded by as many establishment critics as non-establishment ones. I don't think it's black or white, ie if it's avant-garde then the establishment won't like it. The editor in chief of the Chinese edition, Li Jingze, has a taste for writers who have been seen as cutting edge, and he promotes them.
Pathlight costs 40RMB from www. amazon.cn. A new edition is released every month.
