China Portfolio | The Common

Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature I

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Poetry

This piece is part of a special portfolio featuring new and queer voices from China. Read more from the portfolio here.

By Li Zhuang, Cynthia Chen, Chen Du, Xisheng Chen, and Jolie Zhilei Zhou.

Table of Contents:

Li Zhuang, “Fan Fiction”
Cynthia Chen, “When the TOEFL robot asked us to ‘Describe the city you live in,’ the whole room started repeating that question as if casting an aimless spell”
Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen, “Photo of Free Life in the E-Era”
Jolie Zhilei Zhou, “Der Knall”

Paper Summer

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Fiction

By YUNHAN FANG

This piece is part of a special portfolio featuring new and queer voices from China. Read more from the portfolio here.

By the summer of 2009, I found I was thinking less and less about the Wenchuan earthquake the year prior, in which 87,000 people had died, my father among them. That year, on the day of Xiazhi, I met a girl called Thirteen. We spent the night together, having sex and talking until the sky turned the color of moonstone.

My Five-Thousand-Meter Years

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Fiction

BY K-YU LIU

This piece is part of a special portfolio featuring new and queer voices from China. Read more from the portfolio here.

The rumor was there was a backdoor into the best running camp in the capital. To get your kid in, there’d better be something wrong with their mind.

Mother drove me to the facility with a note from Dr. Chen in her purse. For four hours, roads splintered and strayed under our wheels. Eventually we arrived at the far Northeast corner: cornfields and silent cranes, tired grey apartments, willow trees bowing their listless branches.

The American Scholar

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Fiction

By JIANAN QIAN

This piece is part of a special portfolio about youth and contemporary culture in China. Read more from the portfolio here.

Alex dislikes the security check in Shanghai’s subway stations, from both an ideological and personal perspective. Being American, he hates any intrusion on privacy. And today he’s carrying a black dildo in his backpack, wrapped in a wine tote bag with a Spanish brand name on the outside. Still, he worries the X-ray man might stop him for inspection.

He touches the student ID in his jeans pocket. Back in college, George—his Chinese teacher whose toupee once came loose—had told him that the Chinese respect Ph.D. students.

The man lets him pass.

“Xie xie,” Alex thanks him.

It’s not rush hour. He finds a seat and places his backpack on his lap. With his uncombable hair sprawling out in all directions, he looks like the photo of Einstein that appears in Chinese high school textbooks. Not that Alex would know about that. His destination is the west side of the city, a five-star hotel. A sex class will take place in one of the suites and he’ll be one of the models. It’s his first time participating in the sex industry, and the thought brings a smile to his face. However, the young woman sitting beside him seems uncomfortable or offended by his presence, and moves to another seat.

Memories of the Rise and Fall of VICE China, 2015-2022

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Essays

By RUONAN ZHENG

This piece is part of a special portfolio featuring new and queer voices from China. Read more from the portfolio here.

1. May 2021

At an assignment in Xinjiang, I am covering a rising female photographer, club-hopping with her and her boyfriend. Amidst glittering disco balls, fast drum beats, and fake US dollars tossed around by a random rapper, I am introduced to a guy who used to work for Vice China, making short documentaries. His exact greeting was: “Send my best regards to the bosses; I too graduated from there.” We exchanged our WeChats, and he pulled off some crazy dance moves on the floor afterward. I didn’t hear from him again but have enjoyed the hikes and mountain scenery posted on his WeChat Moments ever since.

“Graduated” is a word many ex-employees of Vice China use to describe their experience after leaving the company. Our time there felt as if we were a bunch of undergrads taking wacky tequila shots in the office, then still coming in hungover the next morning because there was nowhere better to go. Near the end of Vice China’s existence, Simon, one of the OGs who had worked for them since the beginning, reminisced about an end-of-the-year company cruise party, recalling those times as a dream. Back then, he did a little bit of everything—editorial, commercial, social media. There was always stuff to do, partnerships to form, and, of course, money from advertisers to spend. All the alcohol we ingested and the battles we fought with clients were preparing us for life after, in the cruel outside world.

The allure of working at Vice was very real for a twenty-something, especially for a Chinese kid. The Western influence took root and prospered at Vice China, which opposed everything a normal job in China entailed. To be recruited meant becoming part of a cool-kid club, access to a social currency, a guaranteed adventurous time.

Against This Earth, We Knock

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Poetry, Studio

This piece is part of a special portfolio about youth and contemporary culture in China. Read more from the portfolio here.

By JINJIN XU

I try to feel this is home ¹

I don’t think

I am a foreigner ²
I was not supposed to be living ³

Burning Language: New And Queer Chinese Voices

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, News and Events

Editor’s Note

For the rest of the world, China’s 2008 Summer Olympics—with its $40 billion budget, dramatic “Bird’s Nest” stadium, and the lavish spectacle of its opening ceremony—marked the ascension of a new economic superpower onto the modern stage. Since then, new generations of Chinese youth have grown up into a society constantly rippling with changes, inundated with globalization, technology, and consumerism.

Bird's nest stadium from Beijing Olympics 2008

Beijing, China – The national stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics & Paralympics

Today, the West views China with curiosity, suspicion, and a sense of enigma and threat. Chinese literature translated into English is still predominantly written by older authors from the period of World War II, Maoism, and the Cultural Revolution. This leaves the up-and-coming generation of Chinese artists, now dealing with wholly different lifestyles and a wholly new set of concerns, all too often neglected.

Portfolio from China: Poetry Feature II

September 30, 2024 China Portfolio, Poetry

This piece is part of a special portfolio featuring new and queer voices from China. Read more from the portfolio here.

By WU WENYING, SU SHI, SHANGYANG FANG, YUN QIN WANG, and CAO COLLECTIVE.

Translated poems appear in both the original Chinese and in English.

Table of Contents:

Wu Wenying, translated by Shangyang Fang, “Departure” & “Visiting Lingyan Mountain”
Su Shi, translated by Shangyang Fang, “Return to Lin Gao at Night”
Yun Qin Wang, “The First Rain”
CAO Collective, “qiào bā”