Welcome back to Chinese Folk Tales.
I'm He Yang.
In the last episode, Professor Zheng revealed how these ancient stories survived across generations.
Today, we dive into the question that has long intrigued me.
Professor, I've always wondered we translate long as dragon in English, but are we even talking about the same creature in this second language of english?
What do you think?
Well, i think this is.
On the surface is a semantic issue translation, but at the deeper level it's a really a fight for equal discourse.
For example, scientists or historians have studied that such a similar imagined creature called dragon exists in nearly every culture.
And then in Europe, it turned out to be basically an evil creature.
Okay, symbolizes all the bad things.
And then when they encountered Chinese Long And they thought okay, since you also have an image that can fly, that can go down to the ocean, that's transformative, similar to ours.
So they just say, this is a dragon, Chinese dragon.
But there's a huge difference.
That is, Chinese dragon has also the benevolent, auspicious aspects.
So then they say, okay, Chinese dragon versus European dragon.
Okay.
I think those days Chinese had no voice in deciding how to translate the terms.
As earlier we mentioned the heaven Tian or long dragon.
Personally, I think the term was the 2008 Peking Olympic, when dragon was first proposed as the mascot, but then people thought no yeah, no.
To fit to the European taste, let's not use the evil image of dragon.
So they create other mascots.
But by the next time, 2022 Winter Olympic, I think they create a Something different.
And then again, Panda was also chosen.
So I think that was the beginning of Chinese trying to create their own voice in deciding.
This is what we called our thing.
So the L-O-O-N-G, Long, again, seemingly is a Chinese voice to say, okay, this is ours.
You should use this as we say it.
But to be objective, a term shouldn't have that much ideological meaning in it.
But it happens in this case, it is.
And then China, over the centuries in the history, put so much ethical meaning in it.
And then claimed to be the descendants of a dragon and so on and so forth.
Dragon long in Chinese is to get richer in meaning.
And I think this example of a fighting for different translation is really an awareness of this kind of equal opportunity, equal discourse.
I think it's a positive thing, but I don't think it should be taken purely as ideological.
This is a mixture of everything.
And when we compare tales across cultures, it always helps in making them fun.
So if Disney wanted to build a cinematic universe out of Chinese folk tales, who would you cast as the main characters?
For example, who's the Chinese folktale version of Elsa, Cinderella, or Iron Man?
It doesn't have to be exactly the same fit, but what comes to your mind?
Well, speaking of Disney or similar names or terms, they are beyond business.
They are beyond artistic adaptation.
They are really ideological tools as well.
From the very beginning, Disney, the person and the company was to create American thing.
They are trying to promote American-ness to the rest of the world.
For example, Cinderella and other things.
They are making this American dream as if something handy to every single poor girl.
Okay, back to the question itself.
I think again for Disney or for anyone.
In order to fit their own audience market, they must make adaptations.
Otherwise, they may lose their audience.
For example, Mulan or Kung Fu Panda are good examples.
When they were successful in the United States market, they were not that successful in China.
Because China thought, okay, you change too much this and too much that.
Well yes, they do that for different purposes for money and for ideas because they have the power of doing so.
I think Marvel is another example.
In the 1930s, they created all the evil images of Fu Manchu, Jackie Chan, and all those things.
And then, a few years ago, they created another, tried to To stay away from the old Marvel.
They create a new film called Shang-Chi, where you have the Asian cast, and so on.
However, whether this Shang-Chi or Kung Fu Panda, they are still promoting the same stereotype that Chinese Asians are good at nothing but martial arts.
So those stereotypes are there.
So they may make the characters similar or look alike, appealing to international or Chinese audience.
But the image, the symbolic message is not Chinese, it's American.
Like Mula, even the real action movie.
In it, it becomes this girl devoted herself to defend the country, to fight for the king.
But the true story is not.
It was against the war, okay?
She had to show her ethical filial piety by protecting her family.
And they hate the war.
But now in the new movie it shows okay, they are all fighting for the country and serving the king and so on.
So you can see they are trying to adapt, but there's a big theological issue in it.
Yeah.
And I've always believed that folktales aren't just stories.
They're reflections of how our ancestors made sense of the world.
And whether we realize it or not, they still shape how we live, speak, and think today.
In your view, why do Chinese folktales still matter in modern life, especially for people trying to understand China today?
Well, first of all, we know tales were told, were foretelling.
And although China has a unique long history of the dynamic interaction of written history versus oral history, but in most cultures similar in China that is, oral telling was a dominant aspect in everyday life.
Think about, as I mentioned, even my childhood in the 1960s.
Oral telling was so dominant.
After the evening, after dinner.
There was no TV or other things.
How do people spend the long night?
And then Northeast China, North China, cold winter.
So storytelling was the way to entertain themselves, to build a community, to release attention, to pass down the social norms, ethical norms.
So those were the common functions of storytelling.
And then nowadays, we began to emphasize the personal and the national identity.
I think storytelling began to play new roles in that regard.
So there's no exception that a culture can make stories purely for entertainment.
Because these tales contain, as we just talked about, contain the essence, the fundamental beliefs and the cultural values of the culture.
As we see, for example, Cinderella's story is, the plot is universal.
Yet we find in every culture it has its own unique cultural elements in it that is unique of that culture, either by a symbol, or by a name, or by a location, by a site and so on and so forth.
So that's why we can't blindly say, oh, they are the same, all the Cinderella tales.
No, each tale has its own cultural symbolic meaning and symbols used in it.
So, in that regard, Chinese tales over the long history contains well Chinese, not only large in number, but also rich in content.
And that's why, even in now, a digital world age, storytelling is still, because it contains the vitality of the culture.
Even you see, as you mentioned TikTok, if you distill all the jokes, they are really relate to the essence of those morals or story formula, and so on and so forth.
Yeah.
I really appreciate you getting straight to the heart, to the bottom of this.
Do you think storytelling is still the most powerful way to help the younger generation connect with culture?
Definitely.
Not only in the traditional entertainment literature, oral tradition part, but nowadays you see as a therapy, as telling a traumatic experience and those things through storytelling as a mechanism.
It is used not only to solve personal problems, but also group problems cultural, societal problems.
And then for young people, what they need, i think again, as we just mentioned the very beginning is face-to-face communication.
So many kids are hooked to screens and not to other faces.
Then, as a result, they lose the capability to communicate with real people And that's, I think, a main cause for many individual problems and social problems.
So again, I think, for young people particularly, storytelling is a way to know about history, know about themselves and to build communities, build friendship, to live a happy life.
And there are so many Chinese folktales, magical, tragic, hilarious stories.
And as a Chinese person, I somehow feel the weight of the tragedies so much more.
This might just come as a personal observation or feeling that our culture rarely allows us to very lightheartedly just breathe away with the story.
Often the ones that really linger in our hearts, The ones that I don't know.
Maybe it was just my dad telling me that, so he would scare me to behave better as a kid.
But these are the ones about sacrifice, about sort of the darker sides of humanity in a way.
But that's just my observation.
Which types of stories, in your opinion, have the strongest potential to cross cultural borders and speak truth to the world?
Well frankly, what you said is the type of tales we should promote.
You think that is tragic because well, aesthetically speaking, beauty is in tragedy, not in comedy.
And then, if you look at the content of those tragic tales, They are so realistically revealing the reality.
And it is through tragedy we seek, we long for hopes.
If everything is a happily ever after, what's next?
Nothing to change.
Just happily ever after, forever.
No.
So I think this is why the Chinese tales are rich in meaning.
So many we call the anti-fairy tales or tragic tales.
They really bring hope to the audience, to the people.
As we just earlier mentioned, Nezha and Black Myth Wukong.
Those are all rebellious images and they contain the spirit.
And, as we just mentioned, storytelling itself is the weapon of the powerless people, or weaponless people.
That's the way they fight against social injustice, oppression.
Tragic is real, and that teaches us more than comedy.
That's pretty powerful, a statement you just made.
And do you think the way a country shares its folktales with the world affects how others see that culture?
Definitely.
But I think the key word is share.
In what way?
Who is doing the job?
As we mentioned in the past, it was done by non-Chinese who had their religious agenda or political agenda.
They translated this tale.
And when Chinese translate these tales, sometimes they are blindly following the trap by using the theory, the model, the terms that were already used by other translators.
So they are following.
I think this is something we should be aware of, not only in China case, but in other cultures as well, because translators tend to fall into this trap, consciously or unconsciously following something.
So the key question here is if we share tales in such a fair way, equal way, or try to be objective and put more cultural notes to new terms and new concepts, so to help the audience understand this tale, the background, and that will be a better way.
Unfortunately, in the past centuries, we are imposed by the European model, the terms, the storylines, The interpretation, the morals.
As we mentioned just now, the five Chinese brothers ended happily ever after.
But that's not the case in any variation in Chinese tales.
Yes, that's an important aspect of that discussion.
But also I understand that sometimes, when translators or storytellers are trying to tell the story to a different culture, they go for existing handles to latch onto, just so that the perceived target audience can easier understand.
And let's face it, sometimes after a long day you really don't have the patience to study this work.
You want to make it digestible easily.
So how to balance these two objectives?
Well, what you said is true, but this is only from a translator's view.
There's another thing publisher, the funders who are funding this, who are publishing, who are selling these tales?
This is really awareness of the whole issue.
Well, we blame the translation.
We don't blame the translators themselves because they need to make a living.
However, they do need awareness of what they are doing.
Unfortunately, we are not in the good cycle where the society needs something good, something from other cultures positive, something different, even though different.
And the publishers are seeking whatever sells, whatever echoes the current sentiment.
For example, there are times against certain people, against certain things.
Then they sell those things, right?
And then that becomes a vicious cycle.
The more you sell those things, the more the young generation absorbs those.
And then they carry it to the next generation.
That's just unfortunate.
I think we began to see positive things.
In Latin America Africa Asia, we see this anti-racism and decolonizing efforts are trying to debunk those stereotypes by translating their own stories.
Write their own stories.
So that's a good thing.
Hopefully it will be better soon.
From the mischievous monkey to the misunderstood long, from folk heroes to modern parallels with superheroes, we've taken quite the journey.
Today,
And if there's one thing that stands out, it's this.
Stories aren't stuck in the past.
They travel.
They transform.
They help us see ourselves and each other a little more clearly.
So, whether you grew up with these tales or you're hearing them for the very first time, there's still so much wonder waiting to be discovered.
Professor Jung, thank you so much.
This has been such a joy.
Folk tales aren't just stories.
They're mirrors.
They're bridges.
Thank you for helping us see them that way.
Well, thank you for having me.
And I hope our story can be retold by someone else.
And if you enjoyed today's episode, hit that follow button, leave us a review or, better yet, share a folktale you love with someone new.
I'm He Yang.
We'll see you next time.
