Jonathan Han reviews Yau Ching’s debut bilingual collection of poems that reflect experiences of a life lived between New York, London, Michigan, Taiwan, and elsewhere.
Yau Ching, for now I am sitting here growing transparent, trans. Chenxin Jiang (Zephyr Press, 2025), 136pp.
Cutting across mediums, untethered by location or subject, Yau Ching’s work covers an extensive range that even her latest book, written in Cantonese-inflected Chinese, can only partly encapsulate. for now I am sitting here growing transparent is divided across three sections, with haunting photographs interspersed. The first part is considerably more political than the others, the second a set of prose poetry, and the last more personal (if politics can be considered impersonal) but no less powerful. Despite the division, there remains throughout the book a unified sense of uncertainty and loss, prevalent in the poet’s relationship with English and Chinese, and the space between the two.
The polarity between the two languages is most pronounced in “Island Country”:
There’s an island
that used to have many languages, now they’ve become
one called English another Chinese
you’re not allowed
your own language
if your name is not an English name
the island will give you one
This contention between English and Chinese is interwoven throughout the book, for which the translator employs a lively, might I say crafty, approach, providing a parallel effect if there is no equivalent. For example, the translation of compound words carries greater effect, ironically, when the translation is not bound by effects of the original Chinese. At the conclusion of “Invisible Man,” the poet splits the compound phrase, “無/意義中,” by suspending the negation, “無”, and evoking all the things that could not be:
相信我們會
再見即使在
生命本來的無
意義中
yes we’ll meet
again in
life’s first mean
inglessness
The cutting of “mean/inglessness” at the root does not imitate the effect of the Chinese. However, we gain the brilliant pun that “inglessness” is indeed “meaningless” – an ideogrammatic twist that gives the English what is traditionally a more Chinese characteristic. This careful blending of rules and diction builds a space for the Chinese within the English translation. As the translator points out in her introduction:
To translate Yau Ching’s poems into English is to bring them into a space that they already uneasily inhabit; it is an extension of the work that is already taking place inside the poem itself. (xx)
The translator has therefore done the reverse, with features of the Chinese language purposefully jutting out of the English translation. This unsettled state is one example of interlingualism (the translator’s term), whereby English words, or the shadow of the English language, is incorporated into Yau Ching’s Cantonese-inflected Chinese poetry.
Absence is also plainly marked in the poem “Trial Run,” with white spaces that work as indentations, as correction tape, or both. As indentations, the pauses invite us to make associations between each word. As correction tape, the white spaces demand an imaginative reader, not just to imagine what the missing word might be, but why the word has been omitted as well:
nothing is certain but and taxes
mask knell grip
blow metal rattle
food for worms sticky end brown bread
or alive valiant to the la la la
wish I were yeah right you wish
Death, which fits snugly into the famous quote, could also be evoked by the words, “mask,” “knell,” and “grip” – where images of a death mask, a death knell, and a wiry hand gripping to life, come to mind. Of course, Death is not a perfect fit for every line, and rather than forcefully assume the omitted theme, there is greater pleasure in considering different words, and considering different ramifications. Therefore, the charge of the poetry is sustained, but what exactly sustains the charge remains a mystery, one that the reader must unravel.
Beyond the cerebral, we cannot discount humor as a salient effect. With visual space comes a pause, and timing is everything in comedy, and in poetry at large. In “Ethical Reasoning Directed at a Steak,” the white spaces mimic the pauses one would take to chew when speaking:
If
I had to choose between
eating you and
loving you
I think
loving you would be the better bargain
because not eating you takes less work
than eating you
but love
works
the
other
way
round
It is a tough steak. Tough love, too.
Yau Ching’s poetry is sinewy. It requires a patient and careful reader to reach its full force. The loss of meaning, the loss of understanding – lamentable, yes – is a fact that the reader must contend with. For those willing readers, the book is rewarding, and necessary for those who appreciate how Yau Ching challenges the translator to rework her poetry’s inherent bilingual mechanisms.
Jonathan Han is the former editor for Clarion Magazine. His work has been published in Essays in Criticism and New England Review of Books. His chapbook Quinquennial was published by Pen and Anvil Press. He currently lives in Hong Kong. Follow his Substack @jhantheman
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