Department of Comparative Literature

The Translator as Traitor: Eileen Chang, Cheng Wai, and Splendor of Youth (1957)

 Speaker:

Kenny Ng, Associate Professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University

Moderator:

Nicole Huang, Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, School of Humanities, HKU

Date: Thursday, November 4, 2021

Time: 5:00 pm Hong Kong Time

Venue: On Zoom

All are welcome. Please register and the link will be sent to you before the event.

https://bit.ly/csgcNov4

Recent scholarship has explored Eileen Chang’s United States Information Agency connection as a translator of American literature and her ambiguous voice on both sides of the Cold War divide. My previous chapters trace the generic travels of Chang’s romances and comedies across Hollywood, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. This talk attempts to develop a new chapter on a Cantonese film ‘adaptation’ of Chang’s famous Shanghai novella, “Aloeswood Incense: The First Brazier” (沈香屑・第一爐香). Directed by Tso Kea (Zuo Ji 左几) and penned by Hong Kong female writer Cheng Wai (鄭慧), Splendor of Youth (黛綠年華) (1957) was filmed by a progressive Cantonese film cast from the Union Film Studio (Zhonglian 中聯), a left-leaning organization that was under constant surveillance by the colonial government. The talk seeks to delineate the complexity of the cultural sphere in Cold War Hong Kong where a left Cantonese picture could be produced by a rightwing Mandarin studio, whereas popular writers like Cheng Wai were writing profusely under the auspices of Greenback culture.

Kenny Ng is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Film, Hong Kong Baptist University. He has published widely on film culture and literary studies in the US, UK, Europe, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. His books include The Lost Geopoetic Horizon of Li Jieren: The Crisis of Writing Chengdu in Revolutionary China (Brill, 2015); Indiescape Hong Kong: Interviews and Essays, co-authored with Enoch Tam and Vivian Lee (Hong Kong: Typesetter Publishing, 2018); and Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Hong Kong Cinema with Sino-links in Politics, Art, and Tradition (Hong Kong: Chunghwa Book Co., 2021). His ongoing book projects concern censorship and visual cultural politics, Cold War Asian cinema, the politics of Cantophone and Sinophone cinema, and left-wing cosmopolitanism.

Enquiries: Georgina Challen – gchallen@hku.hk