XPost: alt.zen, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.indian   
   XPost: talk.politics.tibet, tw.bbs.soc.politics   
   From: cuddly@mindless.com   
      
   Le 30/05/2012 18:01, Peter Terpstra a écrit :   
   > Finding Zen and Book Contracts in Beijing   
   > Ian Johnson   
   >   
   > It’s a Sunday afternoon and Beijing’s biggest bookstore is preparing for   
   a major event: the launch of a new book by a   
   > bestselling American author, who will be on hand for the occasion. Six-foot   
   banners on the sidewalk out front announce   
   > the talk, along with posters in the windows and a big display of books in   
   the foyer of the 170,000-square-foot store.   
   > Up on the sixth floor, a conference room filled with sixty people quietly   
   awaits….Bill Porter.   
   >   
   > Few people in the West have heard of Porter, a translator of Chinese poetry   
   and religious works whose books in print—   
   > many of them published by a small non-profit, Copper Canyon Press—rarely   
   sell more than a thousand copies each year.   
   > For most of the past decade, he says, his annual income has hovered around   
   $15,000. Several of his books humorously   
   > thank the US Department of Agriculture—for providing food stamps that have   
   kept him and his family going.   
   >   
   > But Porter, who translates under the pen name Red Pine (赤松), has also   
   published two minor classics of Chinese travel   
   > writing, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits and Zen Baggage: a   
   Pilgrimage to China—works that have   
   > recently gained him a huge Chinese following, thanks to a small but growing   
   new publishing culture for foreign authors.   
   >   
   > For Porter, it all started several years ago, when he was visiting the   
   Monastery of the Cypress Grove (Bailinsi) in Beijing   
   > to research Zen Baggage. He happened to meet Tang Xiaoming, the manager of   
   Beijing Reader Publishing, a private   
   > press dedicated mostly to business topics. Like many entrepreneurs, Tang was   
   developing an interest in religion and was   
   > fascinated to hear that Porter had found hermits in China’s Zhongnan   
   Mountains—a range south of Xi’an long famous as   
   > a home for recluses seeking enlightenment. In fact, Porter’s book had been   
   published in China in 2001—as Secluded   
   > Orchids in a Deserted Valley (空谷幽兰), a poetic reference to people of   
   noble character—but had only sold a few   
   > thousand copies. Tang thought that it had been poorly marketed.   
   >   
   > “I knew it would work if people realized what he had found,” Tang told   
   me. “It seemed like the time was ripe.”   
   >   
   > The book, which Tang re-released in 2009 under the same title, became a   
   sensation in China, selling 100,000 copies   
   > and spurring interest in hermits and other traditions that many Chinese   
   assumed had vanished. The book launched   
   > hermit tourism and turned Porter into a celebrity, with his own page on   
   Baidu Baike, China’s version of Wikipedia.   
   >   
   > That prompted Tang to publish Zen Baggage last year, which has sold 50,000   
   copies, and to commission from Porter an   
   > original work on his travels through China’s cultural heartland that has   
   not appeared in English, Yellow River Odyssey,   
   > which has an initial press run of 20,000. Another new work of Porter’s is   
   due out in Chinese later this year on the Silk   
   > Road. Best of all, the publisher is paying advances and royalties. Last   
   year, Porter says, he earned $30,000 from his   
   > China book sales, pushing him out of the world of food stamps and into the   
   realm of the tax-paying lower-middle class.   
   >   
   > Porter’s new status reflects the growth of China’s own middle class.   
   Many are willing to pay for real books, movies and   
   > music, and not just make do with cheaper, pirated editions. That’s allowed   
   a growing number of foreign authors to   
   > make real money in China, as long, of course, as they do not discuss   
   political themes overtly—explicitly political works   
   > would not pass China’s censors. Porter’s books do have a political   
   undertone, with his characters ignoring or seemingly   
   > ignorant of Communist Party efforts to control religion, but he is an   
   observer rather than a commentator. And while he   
   > makes humorous references to local officials (he calls them “trolls”)   
   and the indignities that sometimes accompany   
   > travel in China, his principal focus is on the country’s culture and   
   religious traditions.   
   >   
   > On the recent Sunday afternoon, walking into the Beijing bookstore   
   conference room for the launch of Yellow River   
   > Odyssey, Porter looked the role of eccentric foreign prophet. Short and   
   barrel-chested, he has a thick grey beard and   
   > twinkling eyes—a cross between a mountain-top sage and department-store   
   Santa Claus. Although he is 68, he looks   
   > about a decade younger. He quickly won over the crowd with humor and candor.   
   >   
   > “I became interested in China for money,” he said in answer to the   
   most-asked question he receives. He went on to   
   > explain how he had been a doctoral student in anthropology at Columbia   
   University and took Chinese because it was a   
   > way to get a scholarship. Around the same time he became interested in   
   Buddhism and eventually found it more   
   > spiritually rewarding. In 1972, he dropped out of the program to move to   
   Taiwan and live in a Buddhist monastery. He   
   > stayed in Taiwan twenty years, making the translation of Chinese poetry into   
   English his spiritual practice—for him,   
   > sitting down in front of the classics and figuring out what a writer from a   
   thousand years ago was trying to say is a   
   > meditative experience. In 1993 he moved back to the US with his Taiwanese   
   wife and two children. They settled on the   
   > outskirts of Port Townsend, about 40 miles northwest of Seattle, where   
   Porter lives today.   
   >   
   > Tang, his Chinese publisher, had arranged for 20 interviews during the week   
   of the book launch, and a television crew   
   > was documenting his visit. A subtext to many of the questions was why he   
   finds so much value in Chinese culture when   
   > so many Chinese themselves don’t. It was a question Tang brought up when   
   he introduced Porter.   
   >   
   > “Our culture is really broad but how does it affect our daily life? Today   
   we’re very westernized—our food, clothing and   
   > so on—but here is someone from the West who finds value in China,” Tang   
   said in his short introduction. “Why does he   
   > do this? What does it say to us Chinese?”   
   >   
   > In the travel writing that has made him so popular in China, Porter’s tone   
   is not reverential but explanatory, and filled   
   > with humorous asides (such as the traveler’s need for a good laxative, or   
   his twenty-year pursuit of a Guggenheim   
   > fellowship). His goal is to tell interested foreigners about revealing   
   byways of Chinese culture. Unexpectedly, this   
      
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   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)