Slavoj Zižek looks awry at classical Chinese thought, "Is, then, Heaven not the Chinese name for the big Other? Is not, in this sense, the Communist Party rule legitimized by the Mandate of Heaven..." Our gaze shifts to see a surprisingly contemporary relevance in the ongoing battle between Confucius and Hanfei. In Eileen Chang's "The Blockade," as the trolley car comes to a standstill, time itself veers into an eternal moment of free imagination, revealing the fantasy underpinnings of humdrum life. In "A Xi's Blind Dates," Chinese writer Yan Xi Zao vividly depicts the everyday life in...

Editorial: The Subtle Science of Literary Translation Three Beggars Catalysts: A Response to Xiao Su's "Three Beggars" The Death and Life of Doctor Bethune It's Good to Lie Down Love An Interview with Yang Ting: A Story Needs to Be Original Three Poems Fifteen-Minute Company Commentary on "It's Good to Lie Down," a Short Story by Lin Peiyuan Poems by Four Ancient Child Prodigies Chinese Literature and Culture, an academic journal published three times a year, is devoted to translations of Chinese texts (works from the past or by contemporary authors), essays of cultural criticism, and...

Perhaps the best way to celebrate life is to fight for it. There is so much in life and there is so much to say, and here we are lucky to be involved with a writer who is filled with the zest for life and is never tired of telling its stories. A seventy-something? Yes, she is. Yet when it comes to telling life's stories, she tells them like a seven year old, with as much excitement, without guile, and yet one cannot help being affected. And you feel she is telling your stories and they happened yesterday. I am not unfamiliar with the surroundings in which Yawen grew up. The bigger story...