The controversy over Fang Fang’s ‘Wuhan Diary’: A conversation with the translator, Michael Berry
Sinica Podcast
Kaiser Kuo
4.8 • 676 Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2020
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Michael Berry, the translator of the Wuhan-based writer Fang Fang’s controversial Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. Michael discusses Fang Fang’s body of work and how her daily online posts on WeChat (which were compiled to become her book) drew the ire of critics who have denounced the diary as an act of national betrayal and have even leveled threats against both the author and the translator. Michael Berry is a professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies and the director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA.
5:21: Reflections on Fang Fang’s Soft Burial
10:42: Fang Fang’s diary, and its backlash
21:08: An excerpt from Wuhan Diary
31:07: COVID-19: The common enemy of humankind
Recommendations:
Michael: The album Free Spirit, by the band Chandresh Kudwa. For a taste, you can listen to the title track here.
Kaiser: The mockumentary TV show called What We Do in the Shadows.
This podcast was edited and produced by Kaiser Kuo and Jason MacRonald.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Cynical Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China, produced in partnership with SubChina. |
| 0:14.6 | SubChina is simply the best way there is to keep on top of all the important news coming out of China with our indispensable daily newsletter, |
| 0:21.6 | our website, and our growing range of podcasts and videos. |
| 0:25.7 | It's a feast of business, political, and cultural news about a nation that is reshaping the world. |
| 0:31.7 | I'm Kaiser Guo coming to you from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in a place I've basically |
| 0:35.9 | not left for the last five months. |
| 0:39.6 | Between January 25th and March 24th, the Wuhan-based writer Fong-Fung-Fung |
| 0:44.2 | wrote daily diary entries and posted them online from the epicenter of the disease back then |
| 0:49.7 | that came to be called COVID-19. |
| 0:52.7 | With its often severe criticism of the handling of the outbreak, |
| 0:56.7 | the diary entries were quickly made the target of censorship, but people found a way to spread |
| 1:01.3 | them, and they became a source of real controversy, with Fong pilloried by people who accused |
| 1:06.7 | to everything from spreading rumors to doing the work of nefarious hostile foreign forces. |
| 1:12.9 | That controversy heated up again when it was revealed that the diaries were being collected |
| 1:17.4 | into a book to be published in English in several other languages. |
| 1:21.6 | The translator of the English version of the book was also made the target of insults of |
| 1:26.8 | condemnations and even threats of violence. |
| 1:30.0 | The translation has now been out for a couple of weeks. It's called Wuhan Diary, Dispatches |
| 1:35.3 | from a quarantined city. Today I am joined by the translator. Michael Berry is Professor of Contemporary |
| 1:41.3 | Chinese Cultural Studies and Director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA. |
| 1:46.2 | You may remember Michael from our recent California series when I spoke to him and to Janet Yang about the state of the film industry in China and of China Hollywood collaboration. |
| 1:56.5 | He is a killer bassist who could even play the crazy Andy West bass part to assembly line, |
... |
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