Paper Mage

[marina_bonomi]

Thanks to this post by haikujaguar I learned that Paper Mage is now available as an ebook, I had read of it some time ago and was intrigued, I don't know of many Chinese-themed fantasy books and the idea of one where a mage folded paper to do magic, bringing back origami to its Chinese roots intrigued me even more.

I started Paper Mage yesterday, and finished it a short time ago.



First of all: I like the story, I wanted to know what would happen and which path would Xiao Yen choose, I liked Xiao Yen herself and also her aunt (if anything I didn't like her mother, but I could understand her). I cannot say, though, that I didn't have problems with the book, some are definitely due to personal preferences or are technicalities, others...not so much.

Here are a few thoughts, make of them what you will:

I don't like when a writer makes up her/his own system of transcription for a real-life language who already has multiple perfectly efficent ones: give me Wade-Giles or Luoma pinyin and I know how to read your romanized Chinese, your own system? I either infer the meaning of the word or I'm lost (as a note, I'm going to use Pinyin from now on).

Wrong translations and wrong transcriptions: Xiao Yan says her name means 'little sparrow', but sparrow in Chinese is maque, yan  (transcribed yen in the book) means 'swallow'. Moreover the Tang capital was Chang'an (two words 'long (lasting) peace') Xi'an (two words: 'Western peace') is the name of the city that grew near the site of the ancient capital. The apostrophe isn't there because it's cool in exotic names, it signals that the name is made of two words, if you write it Xian like the author does you get a single word that has no relationship to the city's name and a different pronunciation.

Confusing appellatives and family relationships: in the first chapter I couldn't understand what the relation was between Young Lu and Old Lu (and them and Meimei), given that Old Lu is Meimei's brother-in-law she should refer to him as 'brother in law' and young Lu as 'husband', not by name and not by a nickname, it is simply not done.
is young Lu 'Lu' because that is her husband's family name? Her sister would never call her that, she would be 'Younger sister' and Meimei would be 'Older sister' (by the way, the Chinese for 'younger sister' is 'meimei', chosing another name for Meimei would have made things simpler).

I cringed every time I read either Xiao Yan or her sister mention Wang tie tie or Fu be be. One doesn't use the name of a relative (particularly an older relative) but the relationship term: mrs Fu would be 'mother' to her daughters and mrs Wang would be 'elder aunt' or something like that (actually there are  specific names in Chinese for an aunt who is the wife of an uncle depending on wich side and if the uncle is older or younger than one's parent).
Also, Xiao Yan's sister says that the aunt 'isn't family' but is just an uncle's wife, well wives became part of their husband's family (hence the saying 'one raises sons for oneself, daughters for other people').

At the beginning of the book we learn that 'the great king Chalemagne is dead' (although I seriously doubt many people in China knew him by name), that would put the story some time after 814 CE, but later on we learn that the reigning emperor is Dezong, Emperor Dezong died in 805, 9 years before Charlemagne.

People wink a lot in the story, well, winking is a Western thing, it isn't part of Chinese body language at all. 

Jackets closed with frogs and round, high collars: we may think of them as 'classical Chinese attire' but they aren't, they were part of the Manchu influence imposed by the last dinasty, the Tang dressed like this

Merchants were the lowest of the four classes in ancient China, the commercial partner of Aunt Wang wears make-up to make it appear like he was studying through the night, if the deception had worked people would have thought he was putting on airs, merchants weren't allowed to take the imperial examinations under the Tang. Also it's very unlikely that the governor would have gone in person to the birthday celebration of aunt Wang, if he wanted to honor her in some way he would have sent a servant with a gift. Until very recently in China money on its own did not give status ('new rich' and 'self-made man' aren't compliments).

I find irking when I read or hear of martial arts 'poses', that's definitely an outsider word, we speak of 'stances' (when static) or techniques (when speaking, for instances of levers, locks or throws).

Mrs Cutter repeatedly mention 'going beyond the Yellow River', the Yellow River is a physical landmark, the Chinese expression for the netherworld is 'beyond the yellow springs', also the usual poetic euphemism for sexual intercourse is 'clouds and rain', not 'thunder and rain'.

It is true that often people gets called 'old this' and 'young that', but that depends on the age of the speaker, Xiao Yan would never call aunt Wang's sister 'Young Lu'.
The bells in buddhist temples aren't church clocks, they don't 'toll the hour'! Also there's no way Xiao Yan could go in public wearing yellow (borrowed or not), yellow was the imperial color, its use was reserved to the emperor and the imperial family.

Formality was and is a way to take refuge when one is uncertain or confused or at risk of an emotional display that would be embarassing, but formality here felt stilted and overdone, in the scene in the first chapter between the two sisters it was so thick it could only be read as insulting (treating one's sister like she was a stranger, what can be worse?).

In short, while I liked the story and I didn't find the character passive at all, to me the Chinese elements feel 'learned and pasted on' not breathed in, digested and assimilated.

My alternative would be the Moshui books by Daniel Fox, there you feel Taiwan, trod upon, lived, loved, and absorbed.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That does sound irritating. I am so glad, though, that it's not just me who gets wound-up by things like misuse of kinship terms.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Definitely not only you, I feel the use of kinship terms is important to a culture and a time and should be done right, it tells a lot about what is the 'standard' family structure for the people involved.

Irritating is the word, even more so because I could see a good book beneath it all. I had a strong urge to break out a pencil and edit the story within an inch of its life.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I am willing to bet that the reason for the errors was 'it would confuse the reader to have characters referred to by more than one name'.
Which suggests that a) readers are stupid, b) readers are all from an assumed dominant monoculture.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

One of the commenters on my review of this book is from Spain and has mentioned troubles relating to American readers and foreign cultures when accurately depicted. I asked her to elaborate and she reported some interesting incidents.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised, mis-reading of foreigners' body language is very easy and difficult to pinpoint for many people because generally very few analyze it consciously.

And we all tend to have a few specific images related to other countries, and just those.
I was very surprised when whatching a Spanish TV program featuring what I thought was Irish folk music (including instuments that looked like uillean pipes to me and landscapes with white straw-hatched cottages) to discover that they were actually showing Asturian landscapes and featuring Asturian folk-music, and I lost count of the people who tell me 'you're Italian, really? I thought you were ...' (insert Northern or Central European nationality) because of my light hair and eyes.

I wonder how people would react to a story featuring a Chinese-national Eluosi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eluosizu as main character...

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Honestly I don't think so this time, since she addresses the use of courtesy names as well as 'milk names', my impression is that there was a lack of information

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

That's something, anyway.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. That sounds like something that would drive me up the wall...

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

Yes, make that two of us, I felt like spiderman's sister.
And I forgot to mention the fire-breathing Chinese sea dragon...

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Whaaaaaatttt
Sea dragons do NOT breathe fire. *bangs head against wall* Seriously, what's up with giving fire-breathing skills to all the dragons around the world? (I know, it's European assumptions mapped onto Asia, but still...)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'm not sure I would have picked up on all of those (especially around the Tang dynasty customs). I guess it's one of those things like becoming an audiophile - once your ears have been trained, little things will irritate you from then on.

It's also a bit humbling that you caught so much - I'd like to move one day into a similar space and I suspect my efforts will be far less educated than this author's. OTOH, I do agree with you on the romanizations - as soon as I saw Xiao Yen, I couldn't help but think "I wonder if that's Xiao Yan".

On a side note, since I've started seriously learning Chinese, I've found myself getting frustrated seeing romanizations without the tone marks (especially in newspapers), because here's this new word I've learnt that I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce. Do you ever get the same thing? Although lately since my Chinese reading has improved I'm finding it's actually easier to look up the original characters to get both the tones and the meaning.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

I've found myself getting frustrated seeing romanizations without the tone marks (especially in newspapers), because here's this new word I've learnt that I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce. Do you ever get the same thing?
I get that feeling all the time when reading transcribed Vietnamese :D

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I get that with Vietnamese too (I'm not a native speaker, so it's a learned language for me too). Although at least with Vietnamese if you can read a word you can pronounce it - with Chinese there's also the problem of learning a new character and not knowing how to say it.

[aliettedb.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely--in Vietnamese, you have a limited number of possible words the transcription can model, and you can usually work it out. With Chinese you're pretty much out of luck...

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

> I guess it's one of those things like becoming an audiophile - once your ears have been trained, little things will irritate you from then on.<

Yes, it's exactly like that, even worse since I actively look for fantasy in Chinese-inspired setting, and then I wonder why I keep asking for it...

I have a soft spot for the Tang, and wrote my thesis about a modern painter that worked a lot in bringing to modern notice the Mogao caves'paintings and used to dress in Tang-style clothing, so I guess I have the advantage of you.
Back then I spent more than one year living in Taipei with a Chinese family, I was the only foreigner in the area and most of the neighbours 'adopted' me, they educated my ears:).

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm actually quite interested in the Tang too, but mainly via the Tang poets like Du Fu.

A year in Taipei? That must have been an experience!

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

It was. :D
I was 22 and I'd never travelled alone abroad before, landing in Taipei was like...landing on Mars, all of a sudden nothing of what was 'normal' to me applied anymore.
The people in the neighbourhood were wonderful, they studied me for a while and then really took me in.

The real trauma was coming back, it was so painful in some ways that I 'walled away' anything Chinese for a couple of years before being able to take down the wall and come to term with the fact that I will never really be at home in either place.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I can sympathize. I guess I've become used to the idea that my "normal" will never be the same as anyone else's (or maybe I'll just cast off the illusion that anyone's normal is ever really the same as anyone else's).

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

I hear you about the lack of tone marks, but I've stopped expecting them from Westeners (you should see the blank stares when I mention tonal languages to teachers) I usually go by context and transcription to look for the original.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I've just acquired a copy of Fuchsia Dunlop's Sichuan Cookery, which used to drive me batty because it had al these Chinese technical terms in pinyin but without tone marks (it does have the Chinese characters too, but most are beyond me). It's just dawned on me lately though, that now that I own a copy, I am free to deface it and go through and add in all the diacritics.

[marina-bonomi.livejournal.com]

I can really see you. :)
That's not defacing, that's completing. ;-)