“W

e know Canadian contemporary literature much better than they know ours,” says Bai Ye, director of the China Contemporary Literature Study Association, at a recent forum in Beijing on cultural translation and studies.

Bai relates a story from about 10 years ago, when Liu Zhenyun, writer of I Didn’t Kill My Husband and The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon, and Bai went to a literary event at a Confucius Institute in Canada.

Bai had a dialogue with a famous Canadian critic at the event. As they discussed Canadian literature, Bai gave examples of several authors that he liked. The Canadian critic, on the other hand, could not think of any Chinese writer that she read.

“She told me to wait and she would think of one that she really loved. She didn’t think of the name until we dined together later. It was Li Bai,” he says.

That almost hit Bai like a blow, because the poet Li lived in the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

“I study only Chinese literature, but I read a lot of foreign literary works. Obviously, foreign readers know nothing about Chinese literature. And I think it’s time for us to