Bilingual books connect China, Brazil with stories

Bridging Brazilian and Chinese literature can be a challenge for any publisher, but the Brazilian university Unicamp took the task upon itself by publishing books from Brazil and China in a bilingual format.

Under the umbrella "Classics from Chinese and Brazilian Literature", Unicamp, in partnership with the Confucius Institute, published two books — one from each country — between 2022 and 2024: Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk, written by Lu Xun in 1926-27, and The Alienist by Machado de Assis in 1882.

The director of the publishing firm, Edwiges Maria Morato, said project partners from China and Brazil want to make Chinese literature better known to Brazilians and vice versa.

"Also, we want to encourage people to be more interested in learning the two languages. We want to promote the reception of Brazilian literature among Chinese, and even the studies of translation," Morato added.

Bruno De Conti, Brazilian director of the Confucius Institute at Unicamp and the person in charge of the project, said they want to prepare Brazilians for a new order of culture — as Western arts will not be enough to comprehend global culture.

"We had, of course, the will to bring people closer by using literature as a tool to comprehend each other, and reading the classics of Chinese literature and vice versa," said De Conti. "They are works that share aspects in common that can be captured by readers of both countries, as they are constitutive of human complexity."

The memoirs of Lu Xun in Morning Blossoms Gathered at Dusk tell 10 short stories about the difficulties and beauties of the lives of poor peasants and city workers in China in the early 20th century. It shares similar characteristics with Machado de Assis' portrayal of Brazil in the same period, when both countries experienced changes when confronted by Western cultures.

Sharing similarities

Morato says that the pairing of Machado de Assis and Lu Xun was not fortuitous.

"They are both renowned writers and share certain similarities with each other. They both were interested in the theme of madness, were reflective in using language and critical of customs."

"The main purposes are to strengthen ties between two peoples through artistic and literary experience, and to teach the languages as the books are bilingual. They serve both random readers and professionals," said De Conti.

As a new project, the books primarily target students and researchers.

"Literature, without a doubt, allows us to pave the way for understanding and sharing perspectives, linguistic realities, cultural experiences and exchanges of all kinds in a very lively and meaningful way," said Morato.

Brazilian student Marcia Carini studies Chinese at the Confucius Institute in Sao Paulo.

"I identified myself with the subject of memories of childhood, rebuilding the line of personal story as an adult; so understanding that it is impossible to come back. It is always a visit in your mind," she said of Lu Xun's book. "It also reminds me of Machado de Assis with his views on the changes of history, of the country and of the society."

She enjoys the bilingual format as it allows her to move between learning history, storytelling, language structure, words of imagination and Chinese characters.

"It is good to have the works of both translated. I am trying to learn more from the Chinese original, so I have to search for the meaning of the ideograms. That improves my comprehension of not only the Chinese language, but also Chinese thinking."

Wang Jiaqi, a student majoring in Portuguese at the Communication University of China, enjoyed reading Machado de Assis.

"The Alienist uses a concise and allegorical structure to pose thought-provoking questions: how to delimit the boundary between reason and madness? When do authority and knowledge become fires of social oppression? This novel, set in a small Brazilian town in the 19th century, has a power capable of crossing time and space," Wang said.

Peggy Yu, who translated the Chinese into Portuguese, said her work is an unfinished negotiation between two vivid entities — the languages.

"You lose the full meaning at some point because it is impossible to take the ideogram in words. They are more than codes, they are visuals," Yu said of the translation process.

Yu believes that the works of Lu Xun can be very interesting for anybody who wants to understand the similarities of the origins of modern Brazil and China.

"This book provides a modern, observant and critical point of view of China, just as Machado did in Brazil."

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.