Brendan on March 7, 2012 | reply

I don't regularly read much in the way of print news (I let the blogosphere digest stuff for me in advance), so I'm probably not the best person to ask, but 《财经》has got consistently good reporting, and 《炎黄春秋》 always has a couple of really interesting pieces in every issue. 《三联生活周刊》 is decidedly lighter, and is often worth checking out.

So far as literary magazines go, I guess I'm duty-bound to plug 《人民文学》, the Chinese parent publication of Pathlight, and would more enthusiastically recommend 《收获》 and 《万象》. (Actually, I haven't read 万象 in years -- it stopped and then restarted a while ago, and I don't know if the quality has been maintained.) 《读库》 is harder to find, but worth checking out -- it features essays on whatever topics the editor finds interesting at the moment, and has an interesting-stuff-to-boring-stuff ratio of about 1:3, which is well above average. 《天南》 is a new publication from Ou Ning that i haven't yet checked out, despite having translated a Sheng Keyi short story for their latest issue's English companion, but the table of contents for the current issue looks pretty compelling.

Xiao Hu on March 7, 2012 | reply

@Trevelyan and Co.,

Having accidentally happened upon Brendan's reply, I feel compelled to bring up the fact that any and all replies submitted on the Popup Chinese Forum are in serious danger of being relegated to a digital vacuum, never discovered or read by the intended recipient, as there is no e-mail notification sent and these posts frequently don't appear on the home page.

Is there a way that this could be corrected?

Also, it's difficult to locate the link to my own list of posts within the site, or the responses of others.

Also, our personal Popup profiles have gone noticably missing since the new update. I now click on the link of a person's name and find no profile about that individual, nor can I follow their comments, nor send them a personal message that would be forwarded to their e-mail.

It would be great if this were set up as a personal Popup Blog and we could exchange comments, suggestions and language learning tidbits within the Popup blogosphere.

That having been said, I'm one of the most technologically impared individuals on the planet, so I may just be missing these features...

Brendan on March 7, 2012 | reply

Xiao Hu speaks truth.

Edited to add: Whoa, November 30, -0001? Commenting is either way more broken or way more awesome than I'd thought!

trevelyan on March 7, 2012 | reply

Not quite Brendan... it's that I'm mucking around with the backend implementing Xiao Hu's suggestions, something which means zjv5002 should now be getting emailed this discussion about the broken commenting system (hi Zach -- let us know what you think).

On the publication front... I'd actually like to do something like this. I think physical mailings make sense as part of a premium-tier subscription, and that we could combine current affairs and media coverage with language learning stuff in an interesting way. That said, it's a cost issue as always, not only in the time it would take to prepare, but in mailing and printing. Which means we'll need to be much larger before we can afford it.

As for the coffee table... I'm not sure where we gave off the impression of having coffee, let alone a coffee table. That said, while I'll grab stuff from the local 报亭 when it grabs my eye, most of the things I read in the Chinese media at this point are online and I think the same holds for Echo, especially now that she's co-opted our danwei ipad, which was mysteriously renamed "Echo's iPad" within about an hour of purchase.

Brendan on March 7, 2012 | reply

While we're requesting features, would it be possible to add links to comment threads/topics on our individual pages? Right now I can see every comment I've made on my user page, but have got no way of getting back to the original topic.

Echo on March 8, 2012 | reply

@Brendan,

How about RSS all the comments?

--Echo

echo@popupchinese.com

murrayjames on March 8, 2012 | reply

How do I get to my user page? I didn't know we had them. When I click on a username I get redirected to popupchinese.com/lessons/*username*, which is a blank lessons page for everyone except me.

Edit: I think I found it. Is my user page a simple page listing my last 5 posts? I'm still confused, though... Why can I access that page from threads inside the forum, but not from the home page or the lesson page?

trevelyan on March 8, 2012 | reply

@murrayjames,

We used to list people's comments on that page. It wasn't reimplemented with the site update in November, in large part because it wasn't a priority and we weren't sure how many people (if any) were using it.

Will look at reimplementing something, but you're not missing anything right now.

Best,

--david

zjv5002 on March 7, 2012 | reply

@ trevelyan Email received! In the past I've received emails about threads as well, though if there was an interruption during the site upgrade I might not have noticed.

A Popup Chinese quarterly would be GREAT! Understandably a big undertaking though. Part of the reason I asked about magazines is that, while the internet's bounty is vast, articles that require a larger commitment of time, resources, and general brainpower seem to inordinately trend towards print. Not thinking of this site or the huge ongoing contributions that digital publishing have made in China (check the newest Paper Republic newsletter!), but the kind of work that magazines like, say, The Atlantic support, such as putting James Fallows first in Japan and then China for extended periods.

@ Brendan Thanks for the roundup! And, in the process, making an argument for the kind of tools Xiao Hu is calling for.

Also, Brendan, I'm working my way through the first Pathlight and read Xiang Zuotie's stories. Detected a big Borges influence. Has the author made any comments about reading (or not reading) Borges, and, regardless of whether you think that comparison holds water, how do you manage translation in instances of stylistic proximity between the work at hand and other texts?

Brendan on March 7, 2012 | reply

Oh, cool! I'm actually much less familiar with Xiang Zuotie than I probably should be -- Joel Martinsen suggested Xiang for our first issue, and I volunteered to do the stories more or less at random, not having read anything of his before -- but I'd assume that he's probably read 'Labyrinths' or 'Ficciones' in translation. Borges is pretty well known to people who are conversant with international literature, and he's popular despite what I find to be kind of awkward Chinese translations.

Stylistic proximity: I could go on and on about this, but when I detect (or am specifically told about) a similarity, then I'll ideally try to evoke that in the translation. It's probably easier in the case of Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (who are beautifully translated in English) than in the case of authors who originally wrote in regionally or temporally specific English. Mo Yan, for instance, is heavily influenced by William Faulkner, but a translation of 'Red Sorghum' into southern American English would probably be offputting. Though then again, Brian Holton's translation of 水浒传 into Border Scots is miles better than any other translation of the novel I've seen...