There was once a time when Chinese towns got rich producing a single cheap commodity such as the zip, the cigarette lighter or the humble button. In some parts of China, the model remains the same but the product is crime. Criminal villages – fanzui cun – are emerging, showing a darker side of Xi Jinping's Chinese Dream.
The next time you’re in a Chinese mosque, look up. If you’re lucky, the entrance will be adorned with Sini, a Chinese-ified version of Arabic script. (And if you won’t be near a Chinese mosque any time soon, check out Professor Dru Gladney’s photos of Sini and other Islamic art in China.) Sini appears in most mosques in eastern China, and a bit in the northwestern provinces of Shaanxi and Gansu. You’ll see it used on the tasmiya, or invocation of prayer, hanging above the entrance or in the prayer hall, and sometimes on the shahada, a profession of faith hanging in a niche that indicates the direction of prayer.
The Hong Kong playwright Candace Chong Mui-Ngam worked with David Henry Hwang to translate Hwang’s award-winning play Chinglish, which premiered in Chicago in 2011. Chinglish, a story of cross-cultural American-Chinese relations in a business and personal context, went on to take Broadway by storm. Chong herself is one of Hong Kong’s most renowned playwrights and recently collaborated again with Hwang – for another Chicago premier – but this time on a play Chong wrote. Wild Boar debuted in Cantonese in Hong Kong back in 2012 and has recently been performed in English by Chicago’s Silk Road Rising theater company, with Joanna C. Lee and Ken Smith translating the play into English and Hwang adapting it for an American audience.
Does it hurt? Have you got a headache? The kind that makes life not worth living. The kind that hits you when you wake up in the morning, even though there was nothing wrong when you went to sleep – no cold, no bad dreams, nothing. You just fell asleep, and when you woke up, there it was. Now your whole day is wrecked. All you can do is blunder through until it’s time to go to bed again.
Then again, a toothache’s much worse. Worse than anything. A toothache grabs hold of you and forces you to do something about it.
I’ve always had toothaches. I blame my mom. All our suffering is genetic, unless you get smashed up by a car.
Olivia Humphrey: How do you think through the tensions between the emotions and physiology that play out so beautifully in your work?
Jiang Yitan: The inspiration for 'Convince Me' came from a small article describing the dissection of a crocodile. Suddenly I knew the identities of the two main characters in the story. I have always believed that every animal has a spirit and that animals are the observers and witnesses of humanity. They are unable to change humanity but their presence is enough to show people their selfishness and ugliness.
