Interview with Julia Lovell

Julia Lovell is professor of modern Chinese history and literature at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include Maoism: A Global History, winner of the 2019 Cundill Prize for History. Her latest book is Monkey King, an abridged translation of Wu Cheng’en’s Journey to the West, a 16th-century epic considered a cornerstone of Chinese mythology.

When and where were you born?
In 1975 in Carlisle.

Was there something in your early education that sparked a love of books?
My parents were teachers, and our house always contained a lot of books, some of them in European languages. My father was a music teacher, but learned excellent French and German as a teenager, and that stayed with him all his life. My mother is a classicist by training, and also has very good German and Italian. Unsurprisingly, then, I was a bookish child, with a particular love of fiction. My parents always encouraged me to learn foreign languages seriously; as I was growing up in provincial England, and my family did not have any connection with the non-European world, my focus was on European languages.

How did you become interested in China?
It was only when I got to the University of Cambridge, which has excellent departments of Asian languages, that I got the opportunity to study Chinese. The event that triggered that decision was my mother lending me a book that circulated very widely in the UK from the 1990s onwards: Wild Swans, by Jung Chang. I read it in a weekend and decided that I needed to know more about China, and the best way to go about it was to learn Chinese.

Tell me about your first visit to China.
My very first visit to China – indeed, to Asia – was in the summer of 1996, after I had spent six weeks studying in Taiwan. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to visit the mainland, too, and was very fortunate to be invited to spend a few days in the residence of the Australian consul in Shanghai, the diplomat and scholar Richard Rigby.

What did you observe?
I remember my amazement at the city’s architecture: the tall, Europeanised buildings of the French Concession, looming up over low-rise Chinese houses and apartments. The future futuristic skyscrapers of the Pudong development were just a building site at the time, but I took a ferry over the river to explore the one completed structure – the Oriental Pearl Tower, finished just a year previously. From the viewing platform at the top of the tower, you could sense the scale and ambition of the development-in-progress.

Why did you decide to translate Journey to the West?
I was invited to undertake the project by the remarkable Penguin editor John Siciliano, who’s done so much to commission and promote new translations of the Chinese classics. The idea immediately made very good intellectual sense to me, as a way of developing my interests and knowledge. First, it was a great opportunity to take a deep dive into the language and structures of pre-modern vernacular fiction, which are an important influence on many of the contemporary novelists that I’ve studied, such as Mo Yan. Also, between 2012 and 2018, I was working on a global history of Maoism, and Journey to the West and the monkey character were favourites of Mao, so working intensively on the novel was a fascinating way of understanding one facet of Mao’s personality.

How important is Journey to the West in Chinese culture?
Journey to the West is one of the masterworks of pre-20th century Chinese fiction, one of its “qishu” [great masterpieces]. It’s enormously beloved of audiences in east Asia, and also in the Chinese diaspora all over the world, who are very familiar with its characters and stories. It’s also a novel that’s passed on across the ages through new interpretations and adaptations. The 100-chapter version first published in 1592 sprang from much older, oral versions of the story. Over the past five centuries, dozens of adaptations have appeared across print, theatre, film, music dance and fine arts.

You have also translated 20th-century and contemporary greats: Lu Xun, Eileen Chang, science fiction writer Han Shaogong and film-maker Zhu Wen. How important is it for audiences to access these works?
Literary translations are a great way to encounter Chinese culture in ways that are both direct and complex, because they represent one individual’s experiences and perceptions. I’d warmly recommend anyone interested in China to invest time in reading its literature in translation – from whichever period, or by whichever writer.

Chinese student mobility to the West has grown. Do you see an improvement in cross-cultural understanding?
Certainly, there’s a huge contrast between my experience and that of my children, which I’m thrilled about. Growing up in provincial England between the 1970s and 1990s, I’m afraid that I did not encounter a Chinese person until I started studying Chinese at university, in 1995. My children, by contrast, born between 2003 and 2012, have many friends and classmates whose parents were born in China and settled in England after coming here to study; Chinese language, food and culture are a completely normal part of my children’s lives.

Do you expect to travel again to China soon?
I’d love to go back, once travel becomes less restricted. I’m always so excited to visit China: every trip opens my eyes to new knowledge and understanding.

joyce.lau@timeshighereducation.com

Appointments

Catriona Cannon has been appointed librarian of the University of London’s Senate House Library. She has been deputy librarian and head of academic library services at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries since 2014. At London, Ms Cannon will also be director of the library transformation programme. She said the “institutional will to transform and exploit the libraries, in ways previously undreamed of, creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity. I am thrilled to be part of the team that embraces that opportunity.”

Sarah Springman has been elected the next principal of St Hilda’s College, Oxford. She has been rector of ETH Zurich since 2015, having been professor of geotechnical engineering there since 1997. A former European triathlon champion, Professor Springman will take up her new post in February 2022. Georgina Paul, the college’s vice-principal, said Professor Springman’s “exceptional achievements in expanding the boundaries of knowledge in her discipline, her lifelong advocacy of women in science…and her championing of environmental responsibility make her an excellent fit with the values of St Hilda’s”.

Hans Tjio has been named dean of the Faculty of Law at the National University of Singapore. Currently NUS’ C. J. Koh professor of law and director of its E. W. Barker Centre for Law and Business, having spent more than 30 years at the university, Professor Tjio will take up his new role in July, succeeding Simon Chesterman.

Beck Taylor has been elected president of Alabama’s Samford University. Currently president of Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, Professor Taylor will succeed Andrew Westmoreland in July, having previously served as dean of Samford’s Brock School of Business between 2005 and 2010.

Rebecca Fortnum has been appointed head of the School of Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art. She is currently professor of fine art and research lead in the Royal College of Art’s School of Arts and Humanities.