NER Focus on China

Volume 36.2 of New England Review includes a Focus on China, with first English translation of poems by Xiao Kaiyu, Ya Shi, and Yin Lichuan; Wei An’s ruminations on nature just north of Beijing; Wendy Willis on Ai Weiwei’s blockbuster show at Alcatraz; and fiction by Chinese-born American writer Michael X. Wang.

Editor Speer Morgan writes in his Editor’s Note: “At NER, the door has always been open to translations, from any language, but Chinese literature has been missing from our pages since 1987, when we published David Hinton’s rendition of classical Chinese poet Tu Fu. So for this issue we reached out in order to bring more of it in. We’ve assembled a handful of contemporary works translated from Chinese as well as works pertaining to China written in English. This is not an attempt to present some kind of overview—not at all—but rather we’re doing what NER does best, that is, offering a lively sample of what’s new and good. They’re presented not as a discrete section but are integrated into the issue as a whole, because it turns out that the China-related pieces in this issue speak just as often, and sometimes more clearly, to the other works assembled here as to each other.”