Yilin Zhong

London Single Diary (2009) This is the Chinese version I tweeted today; blow is the English version. 突发奇想，总结一下我过去每部长篇小说所用的创作时间： 14岁：《拥抱朝阳》：一个半月（16万字） 16岁：《阳光雨季》：一个月（13万字） 19岁：《言情故事》：两个月（20万字） 21岁：《非一般爱情》：两个月（18万字） 22岁：《后现代生活》：两个月（23万字） 23岁：《北京北京》：两个星期（20万字） 25岁：《伦敦单身日记》：三年（24万字，因为是写了三年的日记） 28岁：《伦敦爱情故事》：七天（20万字） 28岁：《唐人街》：七天（15万字） 28岁：《文本生活》：七天（18万字） 29岁：《伦敦单身女郎》系列：五年（五部共150万字） 2015年写的首部英文小说：六个月（英文30万字） 2017年刚写完的这部长篇：三个月（52万字） Summaries the writing time for each of my novels At the age of            Novel Title                           Writing Time          Word Count(in Chinese)            14            Embracing the Sun                    1.5 months               160K            16            Sunshine and the Monsoon     1 month                    130K            19            Say Love                                      2 months                  200K            21            A Romance                                 2 months                  180K

《被掩埋的巨人》这个小说，我在亚马逊上买了英文版，但是因为现在石黑一雄的书脱销得很厉害，亚马逊网站上写的是一个星期之内送货，到现在都已经六天了，书还没给我送到。这是题外话。我为什么这个小说特别好呢，因为石黑一雄他以前写的小说，他每一部小说都是在创新，都是在突破他自己，他每一本书写的都是不一样的。但是这部小说我为什么还没看，因为我很久都没有关注他了，在此之前他十年都没有出小说啦。这个小说是2015年在英国首版出版的，然后瑞典和中国都是2016、17年翻译出版的，所以特别地新，要不是这次他得诺奖我都没注意到。我个人认为啊，我认为他这次得诺奖就是因为这部小说。因为他前面六部小说其实都写得不错，但是都没得过奖，这部小说一出来就得了。 所以我认为他这部小说应该就是，前面他可能一直都是在积累积累积累，但这是最重要的一部，就是压倒骆驼的那最后一根稻草。这个小说应该是他所有小说中写得最好的一部，而且我看了一下这本书的内容简介，认为他这个构思也好，整个故事的设置也好，都是一个非常牛逼的作品。因为我现在没有看到书嘛，所以也不能多说。但是我搜了一下，这本书在英国的反响特别奇怪，石黑一雄他是个非常好的作家，他在英国也是非常有名的一个作家。他之前的六本书，可以说每一本，大概从《长日留痕》之后，《长日留痕》是他第三本小说，获得了布克奖，从那之后，他出版的每一部小说都会被布克奖提名。但是，唯独只有这一本《被掩埋的巨人》没有被布克奖提名，连long list那个长名单都没有。对于他这个级别的作家来说，这简直是非常不可思议的。 而且这次他获诺奖以后，其实英国的媒体报道，BBC啊泰晤士报啊什么的都有报道，但是我们可以看到，就是没有像以前那些作家，甚至都没有鲍勃迪伦得奖那么火。也没有品特以前那么火，还有莱辛等等，我说的是那种大篇幅的正面报道。所以英国人对这次对石黑一雄得奖的这个情绪啊，非常的微妙。就是他不是很满意的，但是他不会明面上说出来。英国人就是这样，我不高兴，但我也不会驳你诺贝尔奖的面子，所以我也不会说出来，那我就什么不说好了，我就简简单单例行公事地报道一下就好了。 当然也有很多电视台媒体啊什么的，都跑到石黑一雄家里去采访什么的，然后石黑一雄他自己呢，其实他是一个很纯粹的小说家。他根本不管你外界怎么评价他的作品，他也不管得不得奖什么的。所以他回答那些采访什么的，都回答特别好

#2017诺贝尔奖#写个帖子答瑶草兄，顺便随口胡说几句，以下纯属个人观点。 @瑶草:@钟宜霖 这句颁奖词怎么翻译呢？ ——那我就先翻译下这句授奖词：“Who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world.” FT中文网的翻译是：“他在具有巨大情感力量的小说中，揭示了在我们对于与世界的联系的错觉下存在的深渊”。我翻译为：“他，在那些极具感情张力的小说里，揭示了我们与这个世界虚幻的联系感之下的深渊。” 这个句子中核心的illusory这个词，我不同意翻译成错觉，因为它的词义是虚幻，虚无感的意思，而并非错误的感觉。换句话说，就好象我们看一本玄幻小说，总不可能说那些神仙妖怪全都是错觉吧？又比如当我们做一个梦，在梦境里的那些感觉，也不能说是错觉，只能说是幻觉，虚幻的世界，对吧？两个词义的区别就在这里。所以说，文学翻译完全是另一种翻译。 回答完瑶草出的问题，现在说说我个人对石黑一雄获奖的感觉。第一时间听说获奖的人是他，我就哈哈大笑，因为可以铁定村上明年连陪跑都不用再陪了。我个人非常不喜欢村上春树的小说，每年中国美国各方媒体翻天覆地地拿他炒作，年复一年地炒，看得我都快吐了。求你们饶了村上吧，人家都那么大岁数了，就是一个有点理想的文学男青年而已，经不起你们这么逗他的，好吗？我为什么不喜欢村上？因为他就是个写男版言情小说的主啊，我怎么可能会喜欢他？看他我还不如看琼瑶去，个人口味，ok？ 然后第二个感觉，就是既意外，又是意料之中的不那么意外。意外的是，前几年英国的戏剧家品特刚得过奖，后来又是英国的莱辛得了奖，按理说不会这么快再轮到英国人了，结果大英帝国的人才就是济济啊，又得了一个。英国的移民三雄奈保尔，石黑一雄，拉什迪三个人，现在前面俩都得了诺奖，不过呢，因为被教主追杀的关系，我估计第三个拉什迪也不太可能得奖了，虽然他的小说写得超好看。老实说，三雄里面，我最爱的就是奈保尔，其次拉什迪，最后才是石黑先生。为什么呢？可能是因为我来自中国吧，石黑一雄的文风真的很东方味，所以我这个东方人读起来太过熟悉，无惊艳之感，但对西方人来说则正好相反。村上说石黑一雄的小说“自然而亲切”，真没文化，要

《唐人街看不见的居民们》|Chinatown’s invisible residents A screenshot of a map showing Chinatown in central London’s Soho. Home to Chinese restaurants, bakeries and other Chinese-run businesses, it is a popular tourist destination. Zhong looks beneath this surface in “Chinatown”. 《上海日报》的英文报道：《唐人街看不见的居民们》（作者：须勤  中文翻译：钟宜霖） Chinatown’s invisible residents By Xu Qin | August 30, 2015, Sunday | ILLEGAL immigrants have rarely been welcome in any place, at any time in history. And by their legal status — or rather lack of it — they are often invisible to much of the general population; non-citizens. “Most people have only the faintest idea of how their life is ‘under the radar’ because, as part of the subaltern class, they tend to hide away from the public eye, and are thus invisible,” writer Zhong Yilin told Shanghai Daily at a recent interview. 非法移民历来很少会在任何地方收到欢迎。由于他们的法律身份--或者说缺乏合法的身份--在大多数情况下，他们都是一个看不见的群体：非居民。 “大多数人对这个神秘群体的生活一无所知，作为底层群体的一部分，他们大多都会试图躲避公众的视线，所以才会变得看不见。”作家钟宜霖在访谈中告

Yilin Zhong in Sydney. March 2017 https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU Novel Chinatown Interview (Part 8/8) Time: 16th February 2017 Venue: London Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown) Topic: Chinatown, the novel Part 8-9 video length: 12’56’’ Interviewer: (In Chinese)Why do you want to answer these questions in English? Yilin Zhong: The reason I want to talk in English is, even though Chinese is my mother tongue language, some kind of thing is quite weird, that when I was writing this novel, even I was writing it in Chinese, but you know, I was educated in the UK, and all those kind of illegal immigration things and the literary theories, such as subaltern studies, and post-colonial studies, and so on, all those literary terms I’d learned in England, from the English context. So even though I wrote this novel, the fiction in Chinese, actually the main spirit, or the main thought behind this s

Yilin Zhong in New York, June 2016 https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU Novel Chinatown Interview (Part 6/8-7/8) Time: 16th February 2017 Venue: London Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown) Topic: Chinatown, the novel Part 6-7 video length: 14’07’’ Yilin Zhong: (continued) But you know what, now I’m forty, I couldn’t write that book now. Even though all those memories and all those events are still there, and I still remember them all, if you destroy that book and ask me to write that again, I couldn’t do it now. That’s the difference. Because I had passion at that time, I had the passion to write down all those stories that happened around me in Beijing, at that time. I had all those experience, it’s not perfect experience, but I had passion to write them down in that way. Now I’m forty, those stories and those experiences I still have it, but I can never write it down again. Because I lost

Yilin Zhong in Chinatown. July 2017 https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU Novel Chinatown Interview (Part 4/8-5/8) Time: 16th February 2017 Venue: London Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown) Topic: Chinatown, the novel Part 4-5 video length: 9’41’’ Yilin Zhong: (continued) If you look at all those backgrounds, and if you dig inside all those characters’ possibilities, that’s quite another story already, I could have written a pure novel just about his mother. But that’s not my job, my job is trying to focus on A-bao: why she became a prostitute, one by one step. That’s the most important key point, and I couldn’t erase that, I couldn’t delete that part. I couldn’t lie to all my readers, just to make this story seems to be more reasonable, or seems to be more believable, or more like reality. I couldn’t do that. Because it is what happened, and I couldn’t change it on this poi

Yilin Zhong in Paris https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU Novel Chinatown Interview (Part 3/8) Time: 16th February 2017 Venue: London Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown) Topic: Chinatown, the novel Part 3 video length: 11’46’’ Yilin Zhong: (continued) I was the lucky one. But to meet those people is not the only lucky part I had, another lucky part I had is, I wrote them. I wrote them down. I didn’t imagine I would have written them down myself, even, but it just happened. I wrote it twelve years ago, it was a book I wrote twelve years ago, but as I said, it was so difficult to get published, that’s why it was just released recently. Because the main society just thought, those people are not important, those people are not existing, why would we bother, to even write about it? Interviewer: (In Chinese) Can you talk about how fiction presenting the theme of reality? My question i

(Novel Chinatown book cover) Novel Chinatown Documentary Interview (Part 2/8) Time: 16th February 2017 Venue: London Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown) Topic: Chinatown, the novel Part 2 video length: 11’48’’ https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU Yilin Zhong: (continued) So Chinatown is the best example of that (literary theory). Now that’s the first impression Chinatown gave to me when I was just a student, and I was a tourist as well, at the first week I came over to London, that’s the scene I have seen. So apart from I felt, oh, everything here is from China, that’s so good! So I can have Chinese food, and I could meet Chinese people even in London, that’s quite exciting. But apart from that, nothing more. Nothing much more. Because I only left China for about one week, there’s not much difference I would tell, at that point. However, one year later, when I was trying to finish m

Yilin Zhong in London on 9/9/2017 Novel Chinatown Documentary Interview (Part 1/8) Time: 16 th  February 2017 Venue: London Interviewer: UCL Documentary Film student Shi Yi Han Interviewee: Yilin Zhong (Author of book Chinatown) Topic: Chinatown, the novel Part 1 video length: 11’48’’ https://youtu.be/KvciZDc_cWU Interviewer: (In Chinese) Shall we talk about the name, you name this novel ‘Chinatown’, do you think this is the real scene of Chinatown in your heart? Yilin Zhong: The reason I named this book as Chinatown, I have said it in the postscript, that initially I couldn’t find what the main subject or theme of this book is, and that’s why although I had met those people two years ago before I started writing it, in the past two years, I couldn’t have written it, only because I couldn’t find a line, or the story line, or whatever you call the theme, to write about it. And the reason I wrote about it was (two years later) I met Amazon’s

【伦敦单身日记】之    露天花园的周末派对：论成为作家的必要条件 随便想起来写两句。 昨天和闺蜜去酒吧的时候，在门口被一个英国男人搭讪，假装问路，我们随便敷衍了他几句后离开，然后我对她说：“这人一看就是个想跟我们搭讪的。”女友笑道：“是啊，一个英国人还跟我们俩（中国人）问路，不过看着衣着倒也还行，过得去。”我说：“什么啊，一听他开口说话就知道他层次不高，虽然上过大学但是没什么教养，我不用看他脸（而且我也的确压根连看都没看他一眼）就知道他是 working class 出身的人。”女友大笑道：“不会吧？你就这么几句话（他总共跟我们说了不到三句话）都能看出这些来？”我笑道：“那可不是，别忘了我是干什么的。” 少顷，我们俩在酒吧里坐了下来，看里面的人来人往。这是一家伦敦高级夜店，需要 VIP 或者客人名单才能进来，而且还要付入场费。理论上来说在这里走来走去的人都是有点档次，或者说有点身份的人。然并卵，我和女友虽然都是单身，却是一个男人也没有看上。好容易我看到了有一个长相和穿戴都还不错的男人，可惜又不是我喜欢的类型，于是我便跟女友笑道：“你身后 60 度的那个男的还不错，可惜不是我的菜。” 她回头看了一眼说：“人家已经有女朋友了啊，不是在跟她聊天吗？” 我说：“我们进来的时候他们才刚开始说话的，聊天还不到两分钟。” 女友再次惊讶：“这你也知道？” 我笑道：“这算什么啊，我还知道一定是这个女的主动搭讪他的，但他并不对这个女的感兴趣，他跟她现在聊天，只是因为他还没有找到他看上了的女生而已。” 女友听我这么说，已经完全不能够相信了。因为直到这时候，我们俩进入这家酒吧还不到五分钟。 我叹气：“你也不想想，我就是写小说的，我观察一个人只需要三十秒，就能看个底儿掉。我还告诉你吧，这个帅哥虽然长得还不错，但是个大男子主义者，而且今天晚上 （这天是星期五） 他是一个人到这里来喝酒的，说明他平时人缘也不好，很 tough ，不好相处，所以没什么朋友。” 女友已经惊得一句话都说不出来了。 然而，直到此时， 我所说的这些仍然完全没有任何证据可以证明，对吧？ 所以呢，和你们一样，她很容易就会想，既然你是写小说的，那么这些，一定就是你自己虚构出来的吧？ 哈哈。。那你们就错了。