Welcome to the blog that I launched more than a decade ago, and have hosted since. Granted, it has undergone a number of iterations — initially Ethnic ChinaLit: Writing by & about non-Han Peoples, then 非漂 [Fēi Piāo], Altaic Storytelling, AfroLit4China, and most recently Ethnic ChinaLit again — but 300+ posts dating from 2009 to present can still be found here.
I’ve just started a new project: Co-translating <凿空>（working title: Hollowed Out), a novel by Liu Liangcheng (刘亮程). A Han native to Xinjiang nicknamed the “bucolic philosopher,” he won the prestigious 2023 Mao Dun Literary Prize for his <本巴>, a tale inspired by Jangar, the famed Mongol oral epic. Hollowed Out is set during the early 2000s in a southern Xinjiang village populated by farmers with Turkic-flavored Muslim names, their donkies whose collective braying engenders a “mass incident,” and motorized vehicles that presage disruptive change.
As of 1Q 2024, two of my full-book, Chinese-to-English translations have just been published: Daughter of Dunhuang: Memoir of a Mogao Grottoes Researcher <我心归处是敦煌>, true saga 
of the tenacious female archaeologist, Fan Jinshi (樊锦诗), who devoted her career to the documentation, restoration and preservation of the Buddhist-themed Mogao Caves in Dunhuang; and Professor H.K. Chang’s Mapping Civilizations across Eurasia <文明地图>. Topics include Tracing the Footsteps and Influence of Xuanzang and Ibn Battuta; Persian Civilization & Iran’s Modernization; Musical Chairs in the Caucasus; Orientology; From Movable Type to the World Wide Web; Westward Migration of the Turkophone Peoples; Islam & the Invaders; The Ancient Silk Road: “Geography as Destiny”; and Frankincense, Oil and Geopolitics.
I will be gradually adding detail to this page, but in the meantime if you want to contact me, please click here.
Like to learn more about my published literary translations — including full-length books and magazine articles — as well as synopses and excerpts for marketing use? Click here.
My (serendipitous) Timeline
2024
- Published: My translation of archaeologist Fan Jinshi’s memoir, Daughter of Dunhuang
- For now, my on-again off-again Turkish studies are . . . on the back burner, and I am focusing on acquiring a decent reading knowledge of Japanese. My long-term goal: To research the arts of the Tokugawa Period (1603-1867), particularly ukiyo-e (colorful woodblock prints) and various forms of drama, such as kabuki and bunraku (puppet theatre).
2023
- Published: My translation of Professor H.K. Chang’s <丝路文明: 15 讲> (Civilizations on the Silk Road). Topics include Zhang Qian Pioneers Exploration of the ‘Western Regions’; Kumarajiva Supervises Translation of the Buddhist Canon; Sogdians on the Silk Road; Paper-making Know-how Migrates West; Islam’s Debut in the Middle Kingdom; Rise of the Turkophone Tujüe; and Maritime and Land-based Communications under the Mongols.
2022
- Re-launched: My rendition of Last Quarter of the Moon (额尔古纳河右岸), Chi Zijian’s account of the tragic 20th-century twilight of the reindeer-herding Evenki in the Greater Khingan Mountains of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang. This time as one of a collection of 8 “eco-fiction” novels from Penguin, Vintage Earth, that includes Ian McEwan’s Solar.
2020-21
- My tourist visa mercifully extended to the official limit of 180 days, I leave Corona Era Paradise — Taiwan, which has seen just 7 deaths — for Erdoğanistan, oops, Türkiye. At that time in 3Q 2020, to attract tourists neither Corona test results nor quarantine were required upon entry. After a month or so in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu, I move to a tranquil tiny seaside town on the Aegean, and get down to the work that pays the rent: Translating the autobiography of female archaeologist Fan Jinshi <我心归处是敦煌> (excerpt), who devoted 50+ years to the preservation and documentation of the Buddhist-themed Mogao Caves at Dunhuang, and . . . my on-again-off-again Turkish studies.
2018
- Instead of my customary visa run — Tainan-Penang (台南 – 槟郎屿) or Tainan-Kuching (台南 -古晋) — I opt instead to check out Dar es Salaam (坦桑尼亚的达累斯萨拉姆) in East Africa. Very hospitable, the Tanzanians, and I enjoy my brief study of Swahili, a Bantu language that is a national tongue in DRC, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. My choice of a tutor from Kenya, however, brings wry smiles to the face of many a Dar es Salaamite, doubtless due to this adage: Swahili was born in Zanzibar, grew up in Tanzania, fell sick in Kenya, died in Uganda and was buried in Congo.
2013-14
- Since the authorities have made learning Uyghur in its spiritual homeland (Xinjiang’s Kashgar, 喀什) impossible, I study elementary Turkish in Istanbul. Both Turkic tongues, Uyghur and Turkish share similar sentence structure and vocabulary. Useful in translating Uyghur author Alat Asem’s Confessions of a Jade Lord.
2013
- Published: My rendition of Last Quarter of the Moon (额尔古纳河右岸), Chi Zijian’s account of the 20th-century tragic twilight of the reindeer-herding Evenki in the Greater Khingan Mountains of Inner Mongolia and Heilongjiang.
2004-12
- Host one-day, intensive export management training sessions in as many as 8 cities monthly in China, and eventually train 8,000+ export professionals how to prioritize incoming queries, maximize earnings from existing clients, and exhibit overseas. At times, a blurry string of cookie-cutter airports and business hotels leave me wondering which city I might be in, but I quickly ascertain my approximate location in the People’s Paradise when the first handful of eager attendees pipe up in their dialect-mangled Mandarin.
2001
- Robbed by a knife-wielding thug in Shenzhen, I awake in a hospital hallway — now People’s Hospital Number 2 — where staff advise amputating my right hand. Immediately. I decline, protesting that I intend to keep it for future use. Check out One of the People (遭遇深圳) for the saga.
2000
- Browsing in 季风书店 bookstore at Shanghai’s Shaanxi Subway Station entrance, I buy a copy of 上海宝贝 (Shanghai Baby) featuring cover selfie of Wei Hui’s sultry lips. My rendition becomes a best-seller in Hong Kong and Singapore.
1992
- Supervise English-to-Chinese translation of 世界经人理文摘 (World Executive’s Digest) — now a popular online portal — China’s first monthly management magazine not targeting lobotomized party cadres.
1978
- Arrive in Taipei all hyped up about my China adventure, only to discover that Ilha Formosa ain’t exactly the People’s Republic. But it is under martial law, it is a one-party state, and several famous dissident writers are in prison.
1969
- Mum, who learned Russian and German to earn her PhD in French lit, teaches me elementary Deutsch that summer using 1st-year university textbook. My first reads not long after: Hesse’s Siddhartha and excerpts from Lutherbibel.
Ethnic ChinaLit 