We’re thrilled to reveal the full table of contents for The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories. Every one of these stories was translated for this collection and has never before appeared in English. Behind every story is an extraordinary creative collaboration, and we’re also pleased to share the bios of the authors, translators, essayists, and organizers who worked on this project. Now, as we dive into fall, with the chill of winter ahead, know that—soon enough—you’ll be able to see the way spring arrives.
Table of Contents
The Stars We Raised 逃跑星辰
Xiu Xinyu 修新羽
Translated by Judy Yi Zhou 周易
The Tale of Wude’s Heavenly Tribulation 五德渡劫记
Count E
E 伯爵
Translated by Mel “etvolare” Lee
What Does the Fox Say? 狐狸说什么？
Xia Jia 夏笳
This irreverent exploration of language and translation in flash fiction form was originally written in English by Xia Jia
Blackbird 黑鸟
Shen Dacheng 沈大成
Translated by Cara Healey 贺可嘉
The Restaurant at the End of Universe: Tai-Chi Mashed Taro 宇宙尽头的餐馆之太极芋泥
Anna Wu 吴霜
Translated by Carmen Yiling Yan 言一零
Essay: The Futures of Genders in Chinese Science Fiction
Jing Tsu 石静远
Baby, I Love You 宝贝宝贝我爱你
Zhao Haihong 赵海虹
Translated by Elizabeth Hanlon 韩恩立
A Saccharophilic Earthworm 嗜糖蚯蚓
BaiFanRuShuang白饭如霜
Translated by Ru-Ping Chen 陈汝平
The Alchemist of Lantian 蓝田半人
BaiFanRuShuang白饭如霜
Translated by Ru-Ping Chen 陈汝平
The Way Spring Arrives 春天来临的方式
Wang Nuonuo 王诺诺
Translated by Rebecca F. Kuang 匡灵秀
Essay: Translation as Retelling: An Approach to Translating Gu Shi’s “To Procure Jade” and Ling Chen’s “The Name of the Dragon”
Yilin Wang 王艺霖
The Name of the Dragon 应龙
Ling Chen 凌晨
Translated by Yilin Wang 王艺霖
To Procure Jade 得玉
Gu Shi 顾适
Translated by Yilin Wang 王艺霖
A Brief History of Beinakan Disasters as Told in a Sinitic Language 衡平公式
Nian Yu 念语
Translated by Ru-Ping Chen 陈汝平
Essay: Is There Such a Thing as Feminine Quietness? A Cognitive Linguistics Perspective
Emily Xueni Jin 金雪妮
Dragonslaying 屠龙
Shen Yingying 沈璎璎
Translated by Emily Xueni Jin 金雪妮
New Year Painting, Ink and Color on Rice Paper, Zhaoqiao Village 年画
Chen Qian 陈茜
Translated by Emily Xueni Jin 金雪妮
The Portrait 画妖
Chu Xidao 楚惜刀
Translated by Gigi Chang 张菁
The Woman Carrying a Corpse 背尸体的女人
Chi Hui 迟卉
Translated by Judith Huang 錫影
The Mountain and the Secret of Their Names 山和名字的秘密
Wang Nuonuo 王诺诺
Translated by Rebecca F. Kuang 匡灵秀
Essay: Net Novels and the “She Era”: How Internet Novels Opened the Door for Female Readers and Writers in China
Xueting Christine Ni 倪雪亭
Essay: Writing and Translation: A Hundred Technical Tricks
Rebecca F. Kuang 匡灵秀
Buy the Book
The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories
Contributors
Anna Wu
吴霜
Anna Wu (she/her) holds a master’s degree in Chinese literature and is a science fiction writer, screenwriter and translator. She has won the Golden Award for Best Science Fiction Film Originality and the Silver Award for Best Novella at the Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF, and her works have been shortlisted for the 2019 Baihua Literature Award and nominated for the 2020 Locus Award. She has published science fiction in Chinese and English, and translations in Clarkesworld, Galaxy’s Edge, Science Fiction World and other magazines with a total of over four million Chinese characters. She has also published personal science fiction collections Twins and Sleepless Night, and translated Ken Liu’s collection, The Shape of Thoughts, into Chinese. Her story has been included in Broken Stars and published in the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, Germany, and Spain. Her works have also been included in over twenty science fiction anthologies or collections in Japanese, English, and Chinese.
BaiFanRuShuang
白饭如霜
BaiFanRuShuang (she/her) is a writer, CEO and management consultant. She has published twenty-one books, including fiction, and nonfiction on team management and female growth. She founded Knowbridge, a knowledge sharing platform which provides high quality training and socializing services to tens of thousands of paid members.
Cara Healey
贺可嘉
Cara Healey (she/her) is the Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of Chinese and Asian Studies at Wabash College. Her research situates contemporary Chinese science fiction in relation to both Chinese literary traditions and global science fiction. Her articles have been published in journals such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, Science Fiction Studies, and Wenxue. She is also an active literary translator, with work appearing in Pathlight and The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First-Century Chinese Science Fiction (Columbia University Press, 2018).
Carmen Yiling Yan
言一零
Born in China and raised in the United States, Carmen Yiling Yan (she/they) was first driven to translation in high school by the pain of reading really good stories and being unable to share them. Since then, her translations of Chinese science fiction have been published in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Galaxy’s Edge, as well as numerous anthologies. She graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in computer science, but writes more fiction than code these days. She currently lives in the Midwest.
Chen Qian
陈茜
Chen Qian (she/her) started her science fiction and fantasy writing career in 2006. She is a member of the Chinese Science Writers Association, the Science Literary and Art Committee, and also the Shanghai Youth Literary and Arts Association. Her short stories can usually be found in Science Fiction King, Science Fiction World, Odyssey of China Fantasy, Zui Fiction etc. Her works have been selected as Chinese SF Year’s Best, and adapted into comics and broadcast dramas. She has published a short story collection, The Prisoner of Memory; a YA novel, Deep Sea Bus; and a YA short story collection, Sea Sausage Bus. She has won a Silver Award for Best Novella and a Golden Award for Best New Writer at the Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF (Chinese Nebula), an Horary Award for Chinese SF Coordinate Award, and a Golden Award for Best Short Story at YA Chinese Nebula.
Chi Hui
迟卉
Chi Hui (she/her) is a science fiction writer born in the northeast of China, now living in the southwest with her cat. She began to write in 1993, published her first story in 2003, and is still writing now. She loves food, games, painting, and nature observation. Her science fiction novels include Terminal Town and Artificials 2075. She also works as an editor at Science Fiction World.
Chu Xidao
楚惜刀
Chu Xidao (she/her) holds a master’s degree in literature and is a member of the Shanghai Writers Association. She once worked as the creative director of an advertising company, and is now a freelancer writer working on fiction and screenplays. Her novels include the fantasy Meisheng series, Novaland fantasy The Heaven Light and Cloud Shadow series, wuxia Tomorrow Songs series, romance Mr. Crunchy Candy, screenplay Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon, and others.
Count E
E伯爵
Count E (she/her) started as an online fiction writer. She likes fantastic and detective stories and has tried writing in different genres and styles. She has published novels like Dance of the Seven Veils, Poems of the Purple Star Flowers trilogy and Stranger, and the recent The Mysterious City of Chongqing and Void of Light: The Key of Chaos. Her book Stranger won the Galaxy Award for Best Book and has been shortlisted for the Firestone Literary Award, Jingdong Literature Award for Science Fiction, and Chinese Nebula Award. Her stories have been selected for the 2010 Annual Best of Chinese Fantasy, 2012 Annual Best of Chinese Fantasy, 2014 Annual Best of Chinese Mystery and 2015 Annual Best of Chinese Mystery.
Elizabeth Hanlon
韩恩立
Elizabeth Hanlon (she/her) is a Boston-based translator of Chinese fiction. She is a graduate of Tulane University and studied Chinese at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University. Her published translations include Of Ants and Dinosaurs, a novella by Hugo Award–winning sci-fi author Liu Cixin; Beijing Graffiti, a nonfiction work on Beijing’s graffiti culture, and several short stories.
Emily Xueni Jin
金雪妮
Emily Xueni Jin (she/her) is a science fiction and fantasy translator, translating both from Chinese to English and the other way around. She graduated from Wellesley College in 2017, and she is currently pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale University. As one of the core members of the Clarkesworld-Storycom collaborative project on publishing English translations of Chinese science fiction, she has worked with various prominent Chinese SFF writers. Her most recent Chinese to English translations can be found in AI2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, a collection of science fiction and essays co-written by Dr. Kaifu Lee and Chen Qiufan. Her essays can be found in publications such as Vector and Field Guide to Contemporary Chinese Literature.
Mel “etvolare” Lee
Mel “etvolare” Lee (she/her) is a wuxia translator and period drama scribbler based out of Taipei. She specializes in a variety of Chinese fantasy and has translated roughly nine million characters. Her works include post-apocalyptic xianxia Necropolis Immortal (Wuxiaworld) and period drama politics in Return of the Swallow (volare novels). Her first series, Sovereign of the Three Realms, can be found on Amazon, and more translation-related thoughts can be found at etvolare.com.
etvolare has a significant background in all things finance: an MBA, CPA, CFA level one, and all sorts of A-related irrelevance. Struck by lightning one day, her soul transmigrated to ancient China and beat up young masters . . . ahem. She swapped career paths seven years ago, and now lives and breathes Chinese web novels.
Gigi Chang
张菁
Gigi Chang (she/her) translates from Chinese into English. Her fiction translations include Jin Yong’s martial arts series Legends of the Condor Heroes—Volume II: A Bond Undone; Volume III: A Snake Lies Waiting, co-translated with Anna Holmwood; and Volume IV: A Heart Divided, co-translated with Shelly Bryant. Her theatre translations include classical Chinese dramas for the Royal Shakespeare Company and contemporary Chinese plays for the Royal Court Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Festival, and Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre. She also co-hosts a regular program on plays and playwrights for the Chinese-language podcast Culture Potato.
Gu Shi
顾适
Gu Shi (she/her) is a speculative fiction writer and a senior urban planner. She has been working as a researcher at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design since 2012. Her short fiction works have won two Galaxy Awards for Chinese Science Fiction and three Chinese Nebula (Xingyun) Awards. She published her first story collection Möbius Continuum in 2020. Her stories have been translated in English and published in Clarkesworld and XPRIZE’s Sci-Fi Ocean Anthology.
Jing Tsu
石静远
Jing Tsu (she/her) is Professor of East Asian Languages and Literatures & Comparative Literature at Yale University. She is an expert of modern Chinese literature, intellectual and cultural history, and science and technology. She has received awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and half a dozen Advanced Study institutes at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. Her newest book is Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution That Made China Modern.
Judith Huang
錫影
Judith Huang (she/her) is an Australia-based Singaporean multimedia creator, poet, author, journalist, translator, composer, musician, educator, serial arts collective founder, Web 1.0 entrepreneur, and aspiring VR creator @ www.judithhuang.com. Her first novel, Sofia and the Utopia Machine, shortlisted for the Epigram Books Fiction Prize 2017 and Singapore Book Awards 2019, is the story of a young girl who feels abandoned by her missing father and her controlling/neglectful mother. Sofia turns to VR to create her own universe, but when this leads to an actual Big Bang in the Utopia Machine in a secret government lab, opening portals to the multiverse, she loses everything—her family, her country, her world and her worldview, and must go on the run with only her wits and her mysterious online friend, “Isaac,” to help her. Can she save her worlds and herself? Judith counts bunny-minding, human-systems-hacking, Harvard-alumni-interviewing, hackerspace-running, truth-telling and propaganda-dissemination as her hobbies. Read more at www.judithhuang.com/about-judith.
Judy Yi Zhou
周易
Judy Yi Zhou (she/her) is a writer, translator, and CEO of Cantos Translations, which helps publishers, production studios and anyone else to connect with people who don’t speak their language. Literally or figuratively. Judy is also currently working on a blended memoir/reportage. Judy’s work has appeared in the Financial Times, Foreign Policy, National Public Radio, and WNYC. Her interpretation for sci-fi author Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem) was noted in the New Yorker, and her other interpretations/translations includes work for novelist Ge Fei (The Invisible Cloak), New York Times bestselling author Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers), and Constantin Film (Resident Evil and Monster Hunter). Judy graduated cum laude from New York University with a BA in English and American Literature and a French minor. She’s trying to learn Spanish.
Ling Chen
凌晨
Ling Chen (she/her), board member of the Chinese Science Writers Association, member of the Chinese Writers Association and Beijing Writers Association, writes popular science and science fiction. She has been writing science fiction for many years, covering topics such as aerospace, ocean, biology, artificial intelligence, etc. She has written more than two million characters so far, and her representative works include novel The Back of the Moon and short story “Sneaking into Guiyang.” Among them, the short stories “The Messenger,” “The Cat” and “Sneaking into Guiyang” won the Galaxy Award. The short story “Sun Fire” and novel Sleeping Dolphin Wakes Up won the Xingyun Award for Global Chinese SF. The novella “Sea Fighting” won the “Big White Whale” Original Fantastic Children’s Literature Award.
Nian Yu
念语
Nian Yu (she/her) is a science fiction writer born in 1996 in Shanghai, also interested in illustration and comics, and currently working as a paralegal. After publishing her debut story “Wild Fire,” she has been surprising readers with her talented writing in science fiction, fantasy and fairy tales. She has published multiple stories in Science Fiction World and Science Fiction World YA. She is the winner of the Silver Award for Best New Writer for the Xingyun Awards in Global Chinese SF and has published a short story collection, Lilian Is Everywhere.
Rebecca F. Kuang
匡灵秀
Rebecca F. Kuang (she/her) is a Marshall Scholar, Chinese-English translator, and the Astounding Award-winning and Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award nominated author of the Poppy War trilogy. Her work has won the Crawford Award and the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. She has an MPhil in Chinese Studies from Cambridge and an MSc in Contemporary Chinese Studies from Oxford; she is now pursuing a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures at Yale.
Ru-Ping Chen
陈汝平
Ru-Ping Chen (she/her) is a fiction writer and Chinese-to-English translator who resides in California (Northern or Southern at any given point in time) and spends most of her time at a nine-to-five day job, doing barre/yoga/pilates, and writing a soon-to-be-completed novel. Many of her creative writing pieces have been published in the Daily Californian’s online magazine (The Weekender). You can find her seeking book recommendations on anything and everything about the world and follow her on Twitter @eriasop.
Shen Dacheng
沈大成
Shen Dacheng (she/her) is a column writer and fiction writer. She lives in Shanghai, China, and works as an editor. She has published the short story collections The Ones in Remembrance (2017) and Asteroids in the Afternoon (2020).
Shen Yingying
沈璎璎
Shen Yingying (she/her) is a Doctor of Medicine (MD) and a major representative writer of mainland Chinese new wuxia in the early twenty-first century. She has published numerous wuxia short stories and novellas, and is famous for her female perspective and elegant writing style. She is also one of the major creators of the Chinese fantastic world-building “Cloud Desolate,” with major works like The Story of the White Deer of the Green Cliff, Cloud Scattering Gao Tang, The River and Mountain Never Sleeps, The Cloud Born Knotted Sea House and others.
Wang Nuonuo
王诺诺
Wang Nuonuo (she/her) is a science fiction writer. She has won the 2018 Best New Writer of Chinese SF Galaxy Award, the 2018 First Prize of Lenghu Award, the 2018 Third Prize of Lenghu Award, and the 2019 Special Morning Star Award. She has published her short story collection No Answers from Earth, and her stories have been included in Best SF Works of China Anthology, published by People’s Literature Publishing House three years in a row.
Xia Jia
夏笳
Xia Jia a.k.a.Wang Yao (she/her) is an Associate Professor of Chinese Literature at Xi’an Jiaotong University. So far, she has published a fantasy novel Odyssey of China Fantasy: On the Road (2010), three science fiction collections The Demon Enslaving Flask (2012), A Time Beyond Your Reach (2017) and Xi’an City Is Falling Down (2018), as well as an academic work on contemporary Chinese science fiction, Coordinates of the Future: Discussions on Chinese Science Fiction in the Age of Globalization (2019). Recently she has been working on a science fiction fix-up, entitled Chinese Encyclopedia. Her first English collection A Summer Beyond Your Reach: Stories was published in 2020. She is also engaged in other science fiction-related work, including academic research, translation, screenwriting, editing, and teaching creative writing.
Xiu Xinyu
修新羽
Xiu Xinyu (she/her) is a writer living in Beijing who enjoys collecting stones, swimming in the sea and gorging on chocolate. She mostly uses her master’s degree in philosophy to make up tragic novels. She has published more than fifteen SF stories, including the collection Death by the Night of Glory.
Yilin Wang
王艺霖
Yilin Wang (she/they) is a writer, editor, and Chinese-English translator. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, The Malahat Review, Grain, CV2, carte blanche, The Toronto Star, The Tyee, and elsewhere, and has been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize along with other awards. Her translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Asymptote, LA Review of Books’ “China Channel,” Samovar, Pathlight, and Living Hyphen, while her research on martial arts fiction has been featured on various podcasts. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and is a member of the Clarion West Writers Workshop 2020/2021. Website: www.yilinwang.com.
Xueting Christine Ni
倪雪亭
Xueting Christine Ni (she/her) was born in Guangzhou, during China’s “reopening to the West.” Having lived in cities across China, she emigrated with her family to Britain at the age of eleven, where she continued to immerse herself in Chinese culture alongside her British education, giving her a unique cultural perspective. Xueting has written for the BBC, the Guangdong Art Academy, as well as lecturing on Chinese film and literature. She alternates between fiction, and nonfiction works, with books on Chinese mythology and religion (From Kuan Yin to Chairman Mao) and science fiction (Sinopticon) currently available. She lives in the suburbs of London with her partner and their cats, all of whom are learning Chinese.
Zhao Haihong
赵海虹
Zhao Haihong (she/her) is an associate professor, science fiction writer and translator, working at the School of Foreign Languages, Zhejiang Gongshang University. She has a master’s degree in English and American literature from Zhejiang University and a PhD in art history from the China Academy of Art. Besides doing research and translation, she has been publishing SF stories since 1996 and is a six-time winner of the Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Award. She has published seven collections of short stories and a novel, Crystal Sky. Her self-translated stories, “Exuviation,” “Windhorse,” and “Starry Sky over the Southern Isle,” have been published in English magazines like Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine; her short story “1923, A Fantasy” has been translated and included in the 2018 anthology The Reincarnated Giant: An Anthology of Twenty-First Century Chinese Science Fiction.
Editors and Storycom
Storycom
微像文化
Storycom is dedicated to providing good content and production management solutions for the science fiction industry, as well as introducing Chinese science fiction to a broader audience internationally. Science fiction films produced by Storycom include The End of the Lonely Island (Silver Award for Professional Dramatic Feature at the Raw Science Film Festival, Winner of the Best Drama Award at the fifth Philip K. Dick Film Festival), The Mailbox (first place at the Waterdrop Award for Best Film and shortlisted for the Golden Goblet Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival), and Deep In (Best Design at the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival). The company has also organized the SF Film & TV Venture Capital Summit at China SF Con since 2019. In the past five years, Storycom has collaborated with overseas partners to translate and publish over seventy Chinese science fiction stories into English, Italian, Spanish, German, and Romanian.
Regina Kanyu Wang
王侃瑜
Regina Kanyu Wang (she/her) is a PhD fellow of the CoFUTURES project at the University of Oslo. Her research interest lies in Chinese science fiction, especially from a gender and environmental perspective. She is also an award-winning writer who writes both science fiction and nonfiction. She has won multiple Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF, the SF Comet International SF Writing Competition, Annual Best Works of the Shanghai Writers Association and others. She has published two science fiction story collections, been translated into ten languages, resided in Writing in Downtown Las Vegas Residency, been supported by the Shanghai Culture Development Foundation, and been a contracted writer of the Shanghai Writers Association. She has also been actively introducing Chinese science fiction to the world and vice versa. When she is not working on science fiction-related projects, you can find her practicing krav maga, kali and boxing, or cooking various dishes.
Yiwen Zhang
张译文
Yiwen Zhang (she/her) is the CEO of Storycom, film producer and presenter, external expert of the China Science Fiction Research Center, vice secretary-general of the China Science and Film Exchange Professional Committee of the Chinese Science Writers Association. Her representative film works include The End of the Lonely Island, Deep In, and the blockbuster My Best Summer. She established the Shimmer imprint of science fiction books, and has published various science fiction novels, collections and anthologies, as well as the bestselling Handbook of The Wandering Earth: Behind The Scenes and Film Production, of which the English version is coming out with Routledge. She has also established publishing projects of Chinese science fiction overseas, cooperating with publishers and magazines like Clarkesworld, Future Fiction, Kapsel, Galaxy 42, and others.
Yu Chen
于晨
Yu Chen (she/her), born in the 1980s, is a senior literature editor. She has participated in a number of major publishing projects and been working with science fiction for over ten years. The science fiction books she has independently edited and published have won the Best Original Book Award at the Chinese SF Galaxy Awards and been selected for the National Grant for the Chinese Academy Book Translation. She has also published a personal essay collection.
