Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音

I am happy to share with you, the first episode of my BookTube series “Voices under he Sun”. The theme of this episode is “Wandering”. You can find it HERE, with English subtitles.

In this episode, I talk about the forthcoming English edition of Taiwanese author Sanmao’s Stories of the Sahara (1976), as well as a famous resignation letter in the Chinese World that was inspired by the idea of “wandering”. I proceed to discuss the recent Chinese blockbuster The Wandering Earth (2019), and Chinese science fiction author Chen Qiufan’s interpretation of the film. Finally, in necessary contrast to the notion of “wandering”, I discuss the Chinese concept of the land in Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth (1931).

The idea of making a BookTube series came from my presentation of reading inspirations for adults at the Chinese Reading and Writing Festival at the Whitehorse Manningham Libraries earlier this year. While I have always thought of myself as an introvert, I was told that when I talk about books, my face lights up, as it shows me as the real me. Whatever that means, I am happy to have this opportunity to share some of my favourite books with the world.

I want to draw your attention to two articles that have inspired me to turn my idea of making a BookTube series into reality. One is “BookTubers: Why a new generation of Australian book reviewers are finding a YouTube audience“, written by Sarah L’Estrange for the ABC’s Hub on Books and published on October 24, 2018. The other — and this one is really awesome — is “How Booktubing Changed Nada El Shabrawy’s Life“, posted by M Lynx Qualey on her blog “ArabLit – Arabic Literature in Translation” on May 14, 2019.

Finally, please note that although “Voices under the Sun” as a BookTube series is produced in Mandarin, it does have English subtitles for those Anglophone readers who are interested in exploring a wide range of book-related topics and themes in both English and Chinese Worlds. Think of it as part of my continued efforts to bridge the Chinese/English cultural and linguistic barriers.

I look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions on how I can improve my BookTube series. Thank you.

Updated June 23, 2019: You can find an English transcript of this episode, in the form of a 24-page zine, here.