Route 312

In order to escape from research and teaching, I usually immerse myself into the books interested me and out of my field unrelated to my research interest, yet sometimes in one way or the other useful for teaching. One of my favourites recently is Rob Gifford's China road: a journey into the future of a rising power (London: Bloomsbury, 2007).

Talking about reading, I used to insist on picking original English edition in particular for scholarly ones. But for leisure ones, I very often turn to Chinese translated edition when I surf the library catalogue by series and grab the books interested me most in a lot of five or six, or even more, through the interlibrary loan system because they are not normally available at my university library so I have to turn to other libraries.

While searching for particular series, I tend to turn (or limit) myself to the books translated and published in Taiwan. First, I prefer standard Chinese characters because I feel it natural and comfortable with standard characters rather than lifeless simplified characters, and perhaps simply because I, as a Hongkonger, was born and bred with it. Second, Taiwan's Chinese translated versions release earlier and more often are the only available Chinese versions.

For this Gifford's book, I first checked out the Chinese translated version (published two years later in 2009) and returned to the original English one for this post to quote some interesting excerpts. The Chinese version invented another title that is completely different but rather terrific to Chinese readers: Route 312 (in Chinese 312號公路, but in mainland China, it should be called 312號國道, which refers to National Highway instead of merely Highway), which virtually means next to nothing to English readers unfamiliar with China. Anyhow, I was deeply attracted by this juicy title and I guess if I know the English title first I would probably turn away as it is to me just among one of the many journalistic accounts of China, uninteresting and boring. Yet I find this one the opposite.

to be continued..