Second paragraph of third story (“What Does the Fox Say?”, by Xia Jia; unlike most of the stories in the anthology, the original is in English not Chinese):

You type this sentence word by word, and wait.

This is a collection of seventeen stories by female and non-binary Chinese writers, and five essays about translation and writing, recommended to me by Regina Kanyu Wang, one of the editors; it was a good recommendation. My favourite of the fiction is the title story, by Wang Nuonuo, translated by Rebecca F. Kuang, which looks at divine intervention in the seasonal cycle. There’s also a great riff on Douglas Adams intersecting with Ming China, “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Tai-Chi Mashed Taro”, by Anna Wu, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan.

I learned something from each of the non-fiction pieces, and the most interesting was the second last, “Net Novels and the “She Era”: How Internet Novels opened the door for Female Readers and Writers in China”, by Xueting Christine Ni, looking at how the digital era has eroded traditional publishing barriers in one particular case; it’s not difficult to see how this can apply to other fields of information as well.

All good stuff, and you can get it here.

This was at the top of my pile of unread books by non-white authors. Next on that stack is The Light We Carry: Overcoming In Uncertain Times, by Michelle Obama.