Waves by Zhao Zhen-kai

[opengoal]

Waves was my favourite Chinese book at secondary school. I knew my literary translation teacher Prof. McDougall had translated it into English and I knew she liked Bei Dao's poems very much. But I didn't realise Zhao Zhen-kai was Bei Dao and the preface of Waves (Chinese edition) was written by Prof. McDougall until I was doing some spring cleaning today. And I was so stupid to think that Zhao Zhen-kai was quoting Bei Dao's poetry in Waves!

The Answer
written by Bei Dao
translated by Bonnie S. McDougall

Baseness is the password of the base,
Honour is the epitaph is the honourable.
Look how the gilded sky is covered
With the drifting, crooked shadows of the dead.

The Ice Age is over now,
Why is there still ice everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,
Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea?

I come into this world
Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,
To proclaim before the judgment
The voices of the judged:

Let me tell you, world,
I - do - not - believe!
If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,
Count me as number one thousand and one.

I don't believe the sky is blue;
I don't believe in the sound of thunder;
I don't believe that dreams are false;
I don't believe that death has no revenge.

If the sea is destined to breach the dikes,
Let the brackish water pour into my heart;
If the land is destined to rise,
Let the humanity choose anew a peak for our existence.

A new juncture and glimmering stars
Adorn the unobstructed sky,
They are five-thousand-year-old pictographs,
The staring eyes of future generations.

From The August Sleepwalker

Comments

[deewhydeeax.livejournal.com]

Oh wow! Your literary translation teacher is Bonnie McDougall? I really like Bei Dao as well, ever since I came across Notes from the City of the Sun.

Bonnie McDougall

[opengoal.livejournal.com]

Yes, and she’s a very good teacher as well. She’s very organized and fair. Whereas many professors/lecturers couldn’t care less about educating the students, she would begin every lesson with an outline of what she’s going to cover for that day and recap the main points of the previous lesson. And she’d return every assignment with a mark sheet which includes a clear breakdown of the marks AND comments too.

She’s also chosen some very good texts for her lectures and assignments. Before I took this course, I had phobia against serious literature like poems and classics. But the texts she chose were all very interesting. For example, we had an extract from the play “If I Were Real”, Leung Ping-kwan’s poems from Vegetable Politics, Dung Kai Cheung’s The Atlas and Xu Guangping’s love letters to Lu Xun, etc.