Interviewing Xueting C Ni
Hellooo!
One of the most entertaining and thought-provoking anthologies this year was Sinophagia - A Celebration of Chinese Horror edited by Xueting C Ni which explores the renaissance of Chinese Horror this past quarter century and shows the versatility of stories and authors in the Chinese Horror Scene. As we approach the end of the year I very strongly recommend you give this some attention! It was a pleasure to invite Xueting back to the blog to discuss this book and a lot more!
Hi! Lovely to be in conversation again.
How do you like to booktempt people into reading Sinophagia?
I feel like there might be many roads. Sometimes I say to people, it’s Get Out meets the Witches meets Black Mirror, and to others I’d say, if you like gothic stories, women’s writing, social and psychological horror, you’ll love this. If you’ve read a lot of Western horror, and want something that just hits different, or want to learn about other cultures through that lense of Horror, this is the one to read!
How did the name for the collection come about?
So, we wanted to maintain a connection with Sinopticon, my science fiction collection, so that first part of the title was set. As usual, my long-time collaborating editor comes up with the best suggestions for these things, they recommended “Phagia”, meaning “to devour” or “to ingest”. We thought it was nice and creepy, both in sound and implied meaning. It also matches the tone of the stories quite well. Most people got it and have taken to it quite quickly. After some rather bizarre interpretations of the title of Sinopticon, we were expecting a few people to make stereotypical assumptions about the book and Asian eating habits, and sure enough, there’s been couple of iffy comments, which really says more about them than the book itself. In other words, the choice of title also had an element of anticipatory irony in it. There is a story that centres on food, and curating from such food-loving cultures as the Chinese, I really did have to include such a story, it's more about the rituals surrounding a dish rather than the actual food and because food and relationships are such relatable things, it’s turning out to be a favourite among readers.
Your introduction in the collection gives a great understanding of how China’s relationship with horror has changed over the last twenty years. What do you think has led to this renaissance?
I think the renaissance in the 2000s grew from a range of factors, such as relative political stability, giving the space to create more reflective horror, combined with a range of social issues that were emerging from the rapid and fundamental socio-economic developments. Horror writers everywhere are keen to delve into the deep and dark crevices of the human condition, and Chinese writers are no different. Issues such as social and familial disintegration, extreme pressures at the workplace, and the lack of affordable housing (for both the living and the dead), are still surfacing. Thanks to the game changers that are smart phones and social media, folks are more able to share their experience, a lot more people are coming to writing too, so there’s a wide range of writers, looking at a wide range of problems. I wanted to try and capture this in Sinophagia. There’s also a theme of history, especially modern history, that you can tell many regions are still coming to terms with. China’s had a very turbulent past, and haven’t really had the space to stop, breathe, and examine its lasting scars. The other major factor is a modern revival of the zhiguai, or strange tales tradition. It’s a type of writing that began as far back as the early dynastic times, becoming immortalised by collections like Pu Songing’s “Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio”. This new wave of writings, both set in the modern day and historical times, shows that the Chinese are still as ever, fascinated by stories of the strange and marvellous.
I was struck by how many online communities and authors the collection noted. Is this a popular form of genre readership in China generally or just for horror?
Publishing online enabled horror writers to continue creating in the genre during the censorship. I won’t go into details about the exact formats, for the protection of those communities, which I want to continue to thrive. Because of how supernatural literature originated and evolved in China, there’s still a vibrant tradition of oral storytelling, which has now evolved in ways where a lot of that is online. Interpersonal, rather than oral, though you can get some great audios, spinetingling stories like reverse ASMR.
You could say that online spaces are particularly conducive to horror literature, or any genre that isn’t actively promoted by mainstream publishers. In fact, I’ve written about China’s internet literature revolution, it’s a platform that has really facilitated SFF communities in general, especially genres such as Western and Eastern style fantasy (qihuan, xuanhuan), A.U. and portal fantasies, martial arts fiction (wuxia) and mysteries, women and queer SFF. Without getting too academic, it’s a positive, affirming, flexible medium for writers that also keeps them on their toes, a very accessible and affordable system for the readers. This massive database probably churns out a lot of shoddy works, but also a lot of brilliant ones that we are reading, watching and consuming all around us. Look up your favourite contemporary Cdrama or film and you’ll find it probably started life as an internet novel.
As both editor and translator for the collection how does the process with an author work to agree language and does our concept of particular types of horror change with language too?
In terms of my anthologies, I’ve tried to hold on to the term “curator”, and started to see others using it as well, as it also helps encompass the whole ‘cat wrangling’ and project management aspects. But if we’re just looking at the “Editing and Translating”, the editorial process starts with my initial engagement with the original text, which involves the act of translating and localising, but also structure editing. Ironing out logical and logistical issues, giving certain key phrases further consideration, on how to carry the meaning, the connotation, and the cultural significance of certain elements. And that all leads to some quite in-depth discussions with the authors and my own editor, thinking about what approaches to take with certain elements, often picking up on things that the original writer missed, and having to wait whilst they fix it to their satisfaction, or discuss it back and forth till it slots into place. My own copy editor has a key role, and their work must be done from a separate brain than the translator’s. You see this clearly when it’s the other way round, and you’re doing the copy editing for other translators – when you’re too close to the original text, you make assumptions, for instance, that a reader may have the same base experiences as you, and you need someone to come to it cold and actually say if something doesn’t make sense. At the end of these collaborative processes though, someone needs to collate it, make it work, and make a final decision, which again, is my role as as the overall editor. When the manuscript goes to the publishers, there are yet more rounds of editing, and discussions, I have been fortunate in having intelligent and understanding managing editors at publishers who have mostly trusted me in cases where I have maintained certain approaches, such as swapping narrative tense part way through Immortal Beauty, because that change of perspective (IYKYK, and if you don’t, read it) offers such a chilling moment, if articulated properly.
The second part of that question is a particularly interesting one. Language is inextricably linked to culture, and types of horror in the literary traditions around the world would therefore differ to some extent. The Chinese sense of horror certainly has its peculiarities. The supernatural are traditionally considered a natural part of the universe. So ghost stories for the Chinese don’t necessarily signify horror fiction. Pu Songling’s tales are famously filled with friendly ghosts and romantic fox ladies. However, when the spirits are discontent, or when forbidding boundaries are crossed, then we get a scary situation. Because of how modern Chinese horror originated via early cinema, which closely linked it to the sociopolitical climate at the time, social horror has been quite a natural path for both film and fiction. Those very cinematic images are key to the Chinese regional genre, whereas some Western horror aficionados seem to see stories without a lot of physical threats, jump scares or ghouls as “not proper horror”. On the other hand, psychological horror seems more developed in the West, and whilst the dread in Chinese horror has traditionally relied on ideas of karma, I really can see it developing now, and Chinese writers are doing a lot of fresh and exciting things with the sub-genre. We’re all human, so of course there are plenty of universalities in the literature of dread, such as fear of the unknown and the horror of the uncanny.
If readers seek more where should they be looking for these authors and more like them?
I seem to be saying this a lot in conversations - most of them haven’t been published in English before! It’s always exciting to find new voices such as Fan Zhou, Chuan Ge and Su Min. Chu Xidao has a couple of stories in other genres published in “The Way Spring Arrives” and “Pathlight”, I believe. There’s a sort of magic realist piece by Cai Jun in “Book of Shanghai”, but I believe this is his first horror publication in English. Zhou Haohui’s thriller series “Death Notice” is out in English, as is his horror novel “Valley of Terror”, though I’m surprised the latter’s not better known, because his story, Forbidden Rooms in Sinophagia has been a real hit with readers. If you read other languages apart from English and Chinese, it’s worth looking up writers like Hong Niangzi and Zhou Dedong, who’ve had a little more success in Europe. I’m afraid that as far as adventurous reading goes, the Anglosphere is lagging a bit behind others, and I’m trying to change that.
What else can we look forward to from you in the future and where can we find out more?
I’ve got a few more pieces of translated science fiction in short form to be published soon, as well as some longer works with a few writers, though everything seems very up in the air at the moment. I’m planning a couple of anthologies for which I have already started collecting pieces, but it all depends on which one finds a home first. I’ve also been writing the next non-fiction book, which is on martial arts fantasy (wuxia) culture and storytelling. Apart from that, keep an eye on my socials on Bluesky and Instagram for updates on my public appearances (the next one should be January) and as always, the cultural articles.
What great books have you enjoyed recently?
This year has been the final year of my post-grad in Chinese Studies, and with my authorial engagements on top of that, I haven’t had much time to read for pleasure. After the book tour though, I did have a chance to get some in, such as the contemplative and thought-provoking “Dehiscent” from a unique and literary voice in horror Ashley Deng. And I picked up “Dawn’s Cozy Horror Corner”, a heart-breaking and alsouplifting queer anthology that I loved. Earlier in the year I greatly enjoyed Premee Mohamed’s “Beneath the Rising”. Alongside some wuxia novels, I’m currently making my way through T. L. Huchu’s amazing “Edinburgh Night” series and Nuzo Ono’s “Sleepless”, which I’m finding intensely gripping and disturbing in equal measure.
