Seattle Translator Brings Chinese Writer To U.S. Readers

Martha Avery is a soft-spoken, handsomely dressed, businesslike Seattle translator who this month is espousing a cause - to bring Chinese novelist Zhang Xianliang to the attention of the American public. She'll read and discuss Zhang's work at Elliott Bay Book Co. tonight at 7:30. Admission is free.

Now in his 50s, Zhang was born the son of a family Avery describes as elite and educated, but he has been in and out of prison and labor camps since 1956. His crime? His well-to-do background and his writings, which have led him afoul of the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and almost every other zealot-driven political movement in China over the past 30 years.

Communist authorities' attempts at re-educating him haven't worked (his writing is proof of that), but they have maimed and distorted his life irrevocably.

Only his sense of humor and erotic appetites have saved him - or so ``Getting Used to Dying'' (Harper Collins, $19.95), his second book to be published in the U.S., suggests.

The novel begins in the 1930s, ends in 2001, and blends autobiography, Swiftian essay, bawdy travelogue and futuristic fantasy. Its playful, vagabond hero - a persecuted writer like Zhang - has had his sense of reality so violated by his labor-camp experience that he sometimes thinks of himself in the third person.

This split self is homicidal or suicidal, depending on how you look at him: ``I'' sees ``he'' as his ``co-inhabitor,'' and would like to kill him. ``But dying is not so simple; it can become quite a feat,'' we're told. ``We normally achieve it only once in a lifetime.''

There you have, in a single sentence, the jauntily mordant tone that prevents this account of grim sufferings from being grim itself. Instead, Zhang serves up a nimble mix of ``memory, fact, and dreams'' as his murderous, memory-burdened hero wanders from China to San Francisco to Paris, trying to decide on his future while rendezvousing with lovers in every town.

``Getting Used to Dying'' is the second book by Zhang to be translated by Avery. Over coffee last week, she explained that Zhang wrote it with the knowledge that she would help place it before a Western audience, as she did his earlier novel, ``Half of Man Is Woman.'' He's aiming at the West.

In this case, Avery's role went beyond translation to include editing. With the author's consent, she made some minor cuts to the text and transposed certain passages for the sake of clarity. Her footnoted annotations on Zhang's cultural and historical references are a model of their kind. She provides comment on the literal meanings and connotations of the original Chinese text, along with a chronology of events in the narrator's life, which helps in sorting out a time-scheme complicated by numerous flashbacks.

Avery brings an extensive Asian background to her translating task. Her careers in international trade, investment banking and publishing have taken her to Japan, China and Hong Kong.

Her move to Seattle came only a year ago, when she and her husband, John Stevenson, found themselves attracted to the city's independent, creative spirit and its wealth of Asian art. Husband and wife both write about the art and archaeology of the Far East.

Avery's interest in Asia was sparked in 1970, following the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The Far East offered itself more as a sanctuary than a destination. ``The American scene was so tumultuous and incomprehensible to me,'' she says, ``I decided to go to another culture.''

After a year of studying Chinese, she moved to Taiwan with the intention of staying there: ``For a year, I didn't speak a word of English. Really, I almost went native.''

Eventually, she softened her stance, while retaining an interest in all things Asian. A stint in Japan was followed by eight years in Hong Kong, where she worked for John Wiley, the technical publisher. Her job took her to mainland China once a month, and it was through a friend in Shanghai that she became aware of Zhang.

After an evening banquet at a book fair in Beijing, she looked him up, meeting him at midnight in a tiny hotel down some dark alleys in the northern part of the city.

``We talked and talked, and really liked each other. He's a very charismatic person - has an extremely deep, sexy voice, probably because he smokes so many cigarettes. He's tall and lean - he'll never get fat after so many years in hard labor - and he's very funny.''

With the U.S. publication of ``Half of Man Is Woman,'' Zhang was dubbed ``the Chinese Kundera'' and seemed all set for success in both the U.S. and China, thanks to a liberalized regime. Then came the Tiananmen Square massacre of June 4, 1989.

``Getting Used To Dying'' had already been serialized in Chinese periodicals earlier that year, but when it came time for Zhang to meet with Avery so they could go over her English version of it, his visa was deemed invalid. She had to meet with him just across the border from Hong Kong.

Emotions ran high, she says, with intellectuals really not knowing if they faced imminent arrest.

A year and half later, Zhang remains free but is no longer acknowledged by China's Writers' Association. He continues to write but is unable to publish. To Avery's knowledge, ``Getting Used To Dying'' has never appeared in book form on the Chinese mainland. (It did appear in Hong Kong.)

As a translator, Avery draws on years of job-related interpreting experience. She writes a literal translation first and then, over the course of five or six drafts, uses a free hand in giving an English sense and rhythm to her prose: ``You have to speak in the language you're translating into.''

Translating, she says, is a ``hobby'' she pursues for sheer pleasure. In addition to writing about Asian art and archaeology, Avery is president of Avery Press, based in Boulder, Colo., where she was raised. The press specializes in Asian art and business interests.

While there are some untranslated Chinese writers whom Avery thinks are superb, she feels that Zhang's work is ``real'' in a sense that a lot of Chinese writing isn't. She finds his books gripping, lyrical, sophisticated and humorous.

``He sees the ugliness and he refuses to look away from it. He's unique in knowing both sides - erudite society and the world of labor camps and executions. He has a voice, and he can say what he sees.''

Thanks to Avery, Americans can now share the strangely upbeat exhilaration that informs Zhang's portrait of a country where ``human relations (have) been ground into mere flavorings for political use.''

It's a rare chance to get a firsthand glimpse of recent Chinese history.