Category: General

We celebrate our birthday, and ten best posts of the last year

Three years ago – on Lu Xun's birthday, in the spirit of his iconoclasm – we launched the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel to fill in the white space of China coverage. Three years later, we are still going strong, publishing reviews, essays, dispatches and podcasts, with a focus on culture and history rather than the news cycle. We want to take this moment to thank you, our readers, for following and supporting us, and making this possible. In these uncertain economic times nothing lasts forever, but we're proud of what we've accomplished over the last three years. Below are ten of our favorite posts from 2020, and do consider donating on Patreon to fund our new translations. Cheers! – The Editors

A call for Patreon donations to fund original translations from Chinese

Last week, we featured a long translation (by our own translations editor Anne Henochowicz) of scholar Tang Danhong's search for an interred Uyghur intellectual and former colleague who had since been locked up in a Xinjiang re-education camp. We believe that funding and publishing such translations is an invaluable addition to the China conversation. Hearing Chinese voices adds much-needed perspective to the issues of the day, such as Tang's outrage at what her own nation is perpetrating in its far West.

Since our launch in fall 2017, we have published scores of original translations of the best contemporary non-fiction, fiction and poetry. We have done so in partnership with Read Paper Republic, One-Way Street Magazine, and The Initium, and have also commissioned many original translations from Chinese into English. This is made possible through your support. Please consider adding your name to the list and donating on Patreon to our translations drive, from as little as $1 or $5 a month, to help us publish more content such as Tang's essay in the future.

A year of anniversaries for China has passed, and the China Channel celebrates its third year as we break for Christmas. We’d like to take this opportunity to ask you to support our future by donating – however small an amount – on Patreon. Whereas we have been funded by grants in the past, we rely on your support to directly fund our translations of Chinese essays and stories into English. The money that you give is set aside and goes expressly for this purpose; all those small gifts tot up to pay translators, authors and publishing partners we work with, so as to bring writings into English that would not otherwise be possible to read.

We won’t keep asking after this, promise. But do consider donating the price of a pint this holiday season to bring Chinese voices to a wider readership (and if any generous souls want to support at a higher level to fund the future of the site as a whole, feel free to reach out directly.) Below is a selection of a dozen translations we have published over the last year, funded by your generosity, for which we thank you. – The Editors

We’re delighted to have reached two years since we launched the China Channel on September 25th – Lu Xun’s birthday, in celebration of his iconoclastic spirit – in 2017. Since then, we’ve published 435 stories, bringing you essays, translations, photography and fiction on Chinese society, culture, history, politics and more. To celebrate that and look forward to the future, we’ve collected a dozen of our best or most read posts from last year, listed below.

We’re still working on securing funding for the next calendar year, and give thanks to everyone who is supporting our translations on Patreon. (And if there are any generous souls who want to support at a higher level, do feel free to reach out directly). In the meantime, we’re committed to bringing you two to three quality posts each week, filling in the white spaces of China coverage. Do follow us on email or social media to keep up to date. Thanks for reading. – The Editors

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A quick note from us at the China Channel, about a new translation project we're looking to start. Right now, China is going through a nonfiction golden age. Every day, essays, articles, narrative nonfiction and personal memoir is published that puts the world's fastest rising country in a new perspective – told by the voices that are creating China's story, not by foreign observers or anyone else writing in English. Right now, those valuable voices are only read by Chinese speakers but are lost to readers abroad, who are only getting a partial view of one of the most important nations in the world.

We want to change that. If you support our new Patreon drive, from as little as $1 a month, we will be able to start commissioning new translations from Chinese, to widen your horizon. That means everything from migrant memoir to Chinese #metoo reflections, from literary criticism to political screed, selected in partnership with Tabitha Speelman's Changpian newsletter. Good translation takes time, effort and money, but we aim to publish a new translation every month if we hit just $300 in monthly funding. However little you give, from $1 to $10 or more, will help bring material that would otherwise remain inaccessible onto your reading list.