Reading Diary: Babel by R.F. Kuang

Here is a synopsis from Goodreads:

From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a historical fantasy epic that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British Empire.

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

Boy howdy, is this book a doozy! It pulls no punches as it lays out the violence inherent in colonialism and the way that capitalism both fuels it and consumes itself and those that are colonized. It also lays out the ways in which class solidarity can challenge the systems of power.

I've only read this book and Yellowface, and oof, Kuang's stories are NOT comfortable reading, but both have been well worth reading. Babel in particular wormed into my brain because I'm in China now, as an English teacher, a job which is a direct result of the violence perptrated in the 19th century by English colonizers and corporations. I'm in a school that is a Chinese-British school. Obviously we can't go back to the separation of cultures and countries. Reading books like Babel makes me think about how I should act in these situations.

But really, this book is incredible and worth reading.

Edit to add: I realize my post about this is very thin, but trust me -- this book is going to sit with me for a long, long time.

Reading Diary: The Forest of Stolen Girls by June Hur

Here is a synopsis from the publisher's website:

1426, Joseon, Korea. Hwani's family has never been the same since she and her younger sister went missing and were later found unconscious in the forest, near a gruesome crime scene. Years later, Detective Min - Hwani's father - learns that 13 girls have recently disappeared under similar circumstances, and so he returns to their hometown to investigate . . . only to vanish as well.

Determined to find her father, Hwani travels home to pick up the trail. As she digs into the secrets of the small village - and reconnects with her now-estranged sister - Hwani comes to realize that the answer lies within her own buried memories of what happened in the forest all those years ago.

Suspenseful and richly atmospheric, June Hur's The Forest of Stolen Girls is a haunting historical mystery sure to keep readers guessing.

I listened to the audiobook version of this, and I generally liked it. If I giving it a star rating, I'd give it 3 stars. The plot was really interesting. I was invested in the mystery and wated to know what happened to Hwani's father. As I listened, I found myself getting annoyed with Hwani. She is super impulsive and ... immature isn't quite the right word, especially given her relatively sheltered upbringing. Hwani says several times how her father or other men in her world said that she's smart and good at puzzles. However in the pursuit of her father's case, she ignores safety and established police protocol and plunges headlong into danger in ways that annoyed me.

I don't think this is a fault of the narrative, per se. I think if I'd read this as a teen (this is a YA novel), I wouldn't have been bothered. Regardless, I enjoyed the story overall. I enjoyed learning about the world through the narrative. In an afterword, Hur talks about the historical research that inspired this story. I have another of her novels, A Crane Among Wolves, on my Kindle, so I'll probably read it.

China Diary #1: Making Connections

Well hello. I have been in China for two weeks now, and things are settling down. Ish. It's fine. It's moving along. I want to Be Settled, but I also know that it will take time, and I'm grumpy about it. However, I finally got a mattress pad, so I'm hoping a solidly good night of sleep in my new apartment will help.

I joined a social group chat, and I have (tentatively, in my head) agreed to a meet up with the new cohort. However, they are planning dinner at a buffet, and I don't like buffets. Even before COVID, buffets made me anxious, and buffets in China are extra stressful, in my experience. Just lots more people and different social norms. So I think I'm going to skip the buffet. Thankfully I have an IKEA delivery I can use as an excuse. But I'll meet up for a few drinks after.

I did go on a little adventure with one new coworker yesterday. We went to get soup dumplings, aka xiaolongbao. Richard has been to Shanghai before, and I was happy to let him take the lead. He wanted to go to a Michelin-starred place, but first we went to a little restaurant that he remembered from his college days. We had xiaolongbao filled with yellow crab, which is apparently a Shanghai speciality. I didn't love them, which I assured Richard was fine. I'm happy to try new things. I really only won't eat spicy food and a few exotic meats (and probably insects, that's not come up yet). I don't seek new foods out myself. I'm a homebody with a love of routine and a basic palate. But if I have the chance to go out with someone and try new things, I'm happy to do it. The crab dumplings were fine! I wouldn't get them again for myself. But I enjoyed the experience, and I'm happy that Richard was happy to have them again. Then we tried the starred dumplings -- pork with mushrooms. I can't say that I could tell the difference in quality, but again, I enjoyed the experience. I don't think I like xiaolongbao over other types of dumplings. I'm not dextrous enough with chopsticks, so I tend to burn myself. Which, as I think about it now, is probably why my tongue feels weird. I thought I was just dehydrated (and I probably am, a bit, I've been sweating SO MUCH), but I think I also burned my tongue a bit.

We walked around the Nanjing Pedestrian Street to the Bund and snapped a few pics of the Shanghai skyline. Overall, I had a great time.

And... one of the things that filled my heart (and also made me a little sad) is that I'm pretty sure Richard is queer. If you're queer, you'll know what I mean, even though I don't have quite the words to express what I mean. We didn't talk about ourselves so overtly. We're still strangers to each other, and we're in a place where being openly queer (in a Western sense -- we're both Americans) isn't really safe. But when two queer people meet and haven't openly established that connection, your conversation still has all these markers, you know? Where you're carefully sussing the other person out. It fills my heart because yay! Someone I share a connection with! But also it makes me sad that we're doing that careful conversational dance. Anyway.

Today I had to go back into town (Songjiang is like 11 km from the center of Shanghai) for a visa appointment. It takes 1.5 hours on the metro, so I figured I'd make it worth the trip. The appointment took all of two minutes. The worker looked at me, looked at my passport, made me sign something, and sent me on my way. Awesome. (I mean, I'm glad there were no obvious issues.) After the appointment, I went to the Foreign Language Bookstore. It's nice! I only gave myself 30 minutes because I wanted to get the metro before rush hour, so I did a quick turn around the ground floor. There were shelves upon shelves of various editions of classic lit. So much Shakespeare! Shelves of Christie, Tolkien. Game of Thrones books and merch. A huge display of Harry Potter books and stuff (🤢🤮). One thing that always drives me crazy about English sections in non-English bookstores is that they are never really organized. They aren't in alphabetical order. Even if the clerks don't read English, surely they can match the letters? However, I read about how some Chinese authors' names were fucked up at the recent Worldcon, so instead, I'll just be grateful that there are even books available that I can just walk into the store and buy because white people are NOT making the same "basic" efforts for non-English authors. I have no room to complain when things aren't to my liking. I bought a copy of Brave New World by Aldous Huxley and The Book of Delights by Ross Gay (I'm not familiar with his work at all, but it looks like the sort of book I need in my life).

I'm looking forward to more explorations.