Joel Martinsen

GRAND SECRETARY. The Grand Secretariat 內閣 nei ko, inner hall, was the Supreme Council under the Ming dynasty, but was in practice superseded later by the Grand Council (q.v.). It then formed a Court of Archives with four Grand Secretaries, two Manchu and two Chinese, with the title (colloquial) 中堂chung t'ang central hall, or (literary)宰相 tsai hsiang. The office, with its nominal duties, was the highest honour to which an official could attain. Under the Ming Emperors the familiar title was ko lao 閣老, Elder of the (nei) ko. This was written Colào by the Jesuit missionaries.

閣老. From The Encyclopaedia Sinica, by Samuel Couling, 1917 www.google.com/books/editio...

If anyone is interested in the sequel to COHERENCE, we finally landed on a story worthy of the mission. Unless the actors revolt, we will probably do it just like the first one, where they know their own character details, but don't know what the other actors are going to say or do. Like real life.

Go read this lovely translation of a fantastic story now! Pseudo-Science Fiction Stories is such an imaginative collection. It’s a real shame Cui’s work is out of print on the mainland (and that the early 2000s editions used lousy glue are crumbling to pieces).

Chart comparing length in characters of Chinese source text, length in words of English translation, the and ratio between the two. 字数 Words 汉字:Words 320,000 188,000 1.70:1 185,000 108,000 1.71:1 205,000 116,500 1.76:1 175,500 112,000 1.56:1 230,000 136,000 1.69:1 91,600 61,100 1.5:1 169,000 95,000 1.78:1 159,000 96,000 1.66:1 78,600 45,000 1.75:1

I tend to use 1.6:1 (字数 inclusive of punctuation:words), but the actual number varies. The bigger ratios in this chart (all harder SF titles) are probably due to tech jargon and foreign names. But I’m positive that if I took another look at that 1.5:1 outlier, I’d find a pretty baggy translation.

Congratulations! 🧨

Tom Clancy’s Junk

big news!
could not be more excited to be translating《小花旦》by Wang Zhanhei 王占黑.

www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/...

Old Arthur’s really having a moment. Just this week he shows up as quotesperation alongside Epictetus and Aristotle in a new Gin Lee video, 隨時隨地 www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2NC...

The Fantastic Four: First Steps Revels in Its Vintage Comic and Sitcom Influences - Reactor The Fantastic Four: First Steps begins a few floors above a warmly lit dining room. An impatient Johnny Storm waits for his sister and brother-in-law, noisily eating dry breakfast cereal out of the bo...

Hello. For @reactorsff.bsky.social I wrote about the domestic side of the Fantastic Four and their comic and television roots.

I picked up 女仙外史 and 绿野仙踪 off a mention in a 倪湛舸 interview and started them both, but Daoist sorcery quickly won out over military strategy. I should really give it another go. Alice Poon recently published a retelling of the Tang Sai’er story, which I’ve heard good things about but haven’t read.

He was walking up and down the line encouraging people to ask him about the rules

A woman yelled, "Can you sing us the rules?"

He immediately sang, "Don't bring your firearms on the plane/There are signs everywhere that you ignooore"

A photo of an Apple keyboard with the alphabet keys changed depending on the frequency of letters in English in this case. the E, A, D, T, I, O, L and N keys are quite large, while Q, X, Z, K, and V are quite small.

Studies have found the most logical and fastest keyboard layout is not between key orders like qwerty and dvorak, but one that prioritises the size of keys depending on the frequency of those letters in the language being typed, regardless of the ordering.

燃烧的石头 - YouTube

Today’s background music: 野孩子 Wild Children’s new album 燃烧的石头 Flaming Rock, adapted from their soundtrack to the animated film 燃比娃 A Story about Fire. Wordless folk rock, a little bit bluesy, a little bit cinematic, with cool instrumentation and quirky rhythms. www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

The voice does feel a little elevated but it’s pretty inconsistent—dialogue is largely 白话 and even the narration lapses into vernacular. Maybe it’s situation dependent? I’m reminded of 笏山记, which interrupts archaic 三国-style passages with more ordinary 19th century prose.

I remember being impressed by the visuals but have absolutely no memory of the plot—what stands out in my mind is the Falungong advertisement inserted mid-way through the .rm file I downloaded via P2P. I ought to give it a proper rewatch.

cover of book by You Hua Zai Ye (There Are Flowers in the Wild) it is stick figure drawings and very cute and casual, does not give an idea of the lovecraftian environmentalist end stage capitalism horror at all

ok i’ve dealt w all my obligations for the week/day i take a break: i want talk about this web novel—it won an award with the official Chinese Writers Association. that’s a big deal for a web novel published on Jinjiang, a platform meant for women readers only. sci-fi/horror/dystopian/lovecraftian

Fantastic four but it’s parks and recreation references sorry

IT’S VALENTIMES!

In an early 1950s Mandarin shortwave broadcast of Kowloon produce prices, would 圆头菜 refer to turnips or cabbage? (The broadcast is essentially a numbers station so the actual meaning has no bearing on the plot—I’m just interested in historical accuracy.)

Do it! Immortalize the note-taker online.

Baidu search for 三百亿兮 First result is a link to a page hosted on Baidu Wenku: 胡取禾三百亿兮 - 百度文库 胡取禾三百亿兮的意思 一页 发布时间：2023年12月26日 "胡取禾三百亿兮"是一向出自《诗经•邶风•丘中有麻》的古代诗向。它的意思是指一个人贪图禾稻（即粮食）达到三百亿的数量。以下是对这句诗句的丰富内容解释：1. 胡：

胡取禾三百亿兮的意思 "胡取禾三百亿兮"是一向出自《诗经•邶风•丘中有麻》的古代诗向。它的意思是指一个人贪图禾稻（即粮食）达到三百亿的数量。以下是对这句诗句的丰富内容解释： 1. 胡：指无节制地贪梦、贪心。 2. 取禾：指渴望获取大量的粮食，是一种物质欲望的表达。 3. 三百亿：在古代，三百亿是一个非常庞大的数字，意味着极度贪婪和无度的欲望。这里的数字并不是字面意义上的具体数量，而是用来强调贪婪的程度。

Entirely off-topic, but while pulling up the 三百亿兮 citation, I got this garbage as my first search result—and it’s Baidu-hosted garbage to boot! Incorrect source, plus a gloss for 胡 (胡：指无节制地贪婪、贪心) that’s like a ’60s Analects commentary, only illiterate. (On-topic: 亿 is a bushel, 万 is a peck.)

from A catalogue of Chinese works in the Bodleian Library by Joseph Edkins: "72 肉蒲團 Jǔh p'o poo. Garden of Meat and Spinach. A novel. No date of composition or author's name. 4 vols. Reprinted, 1810."

Lol no, this is a wild mistranslation...

Now imagining some shocked Victorian students picking up 肉蒲團 after reading about it in this 1876 guide to Chinese books in the Bodleian and suddenly having a lot of new thoughts about China and Chinese literature... (but not about meat or spinach)

The Götterdämmerung of It All! Kate Wagner's radical reinterpretation of Richard Wagner's "Ring" cycle from the political left.

I wrote a radical (full) guide to Wagner’s ring cycle for @vanmusicmag.bsky.social van-magazine.com/mag/wagner-r...

A stimulating Chinese review of my film
stephenjones.blog/2025/05/29/g...

YouTube video by hak bun cs 陰陽路7之撞到正 china love song

One possibility is 陰陽路柒撞到正 Troublesome Night 7, which isn’t from the ’80s (it’s a 2000 release) but does feature a film crew on an island shoot and uses Teresa Teng’s 海韻 Rhythm of the Sea to soundtrack a reunion of ghost lovers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9RR...

“Black dragon”=oolong, because the Hangzhou variety apparently originated in the Wuyi Mountains. It’s not an oolong tea, so the literal translation is less misleading. (Or: a charming legend says a boy turned into a black dragon and carved the nine bends.) Source: www.zjskw.gov.cn/art/2022/9/2...

maybe I am digging too deeply into this but "recommending the name of a company even though it makes no grammatical sense" feels like a bad sign

Lost and Found: The Unexpected Journey of the MingKwai Typewriter | Made in China Journal It began as an innocuous inquiry on Facebook. Nelson Felix, a resident of New York State, posted in the group ‘What’s My Typewriter Worth?’ about a curious find he made while clearing out the basement...

The lone long-lost MingKwai typewriter, invented by Lin Yutang in 1947, has resurfaced in a NY basement. How did it get there? Where might it go next? The journey of the groundbreaking invention embodies the search for modernity and Chinese identity. My latest:
madeinchinajournal.com/2025/05/02/l...

Thanks! I love footnotes that point out clever translation solutions. So 64 must point out the addition of a cut throat to preserve that line’s internal rhyme.

So that’s the source of the scans reproduced in the article I linked! Footnote 63 is attached to one of the most straightforward lines in the poem — I’m curious what Chao has to add.