Reading - Wu Xia

Wu Xia's work may feel a little unfamiliar at first. Its rhythms are loose, its images often unexpected, and its language earthy. Much of her imagery comes from the countryside where she grew up. In Thinking of My Father, her father's calloused hands hold up the sky, and his children become crops trying to take root in the city's frozen soil. The wrinkles on his face even record the "punctuation" of his children's rebellious years.

Nanjing brings out a gentler side. Xiangshan Lake becomes a mirror of the changing city, and the yellow leaves of its iconic plane trees become bookmarks that hold her memories of the city.

There is also a bold, spirited side to her writing. In I Write Poems, it is so late that even the streetlights seem to doze, but she is still at her keyboard, struggling to bring a poem into the world. In Life's Warmth, she accepts that life will eventually end in a full stop yet insists that as long as the flame of her ideals keeps burning, its warmth will break through the cold. When I met Wu Xia while filming a documentary, I found that same warmth and optimism in person.

Translating her work means keeping this earthiness and freedom without making the English too polished. In Thinking of My Father, "父亲的额头聚拢着叹息" becomes "sighs plough his brow." The word "plough" is not in the original, but it links the father's worries to his work in the fields. The aim is to keep her voice as it is, not to make it more refined.