S and C Road Trip: China
Sports Cinema: Mandarin-style
Wow! That was a strange feeling, like a dream…except I couldn’t make out the words! I only knew it was mine because the author’s name on the cover was in English.
The Author with his newly-translated book at the popular Wangfujing Xinhua Store in Beijing
Who would have thought to find my sports cinema book, flying off the shelves in a Beijing bookstore? Yet there I was looking at it with my own eyes last Saturday afternoon at the Wangfujing Xinhua Bookstore in the Dongcheng District of Beijing, about four blocks from the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square and one of the Chinese capital’s most famous shopping streets operating with consumers since the middle of the Ming Dynasty.
Flipping through the pages of a book that took six years to write, now in a very strange alphabet, I was reflecting on the days reviewing films and writing when a clerk, in broken English, asked if I had seen some of these movies. When I told him I seen them all because I wrote the book, he proceeded to tell me his favorites and that he learned a lot about America from watching some of these films online. Small world. He left telling me they’ve contacted the publisher for more copies.
CCTV Producer Wu Deng (l) and Publisher Liu Haitao (r)
It seems only yesterday (2008) that my US publisher (John Cerullo) made a deal with a Chinese publisher (Liu Haitao) to have the book translated into Mandarin and sold throughout the country. What ensued over the months were a flurry of emails and phone calls from MissMiss (aka Polly) the tireless translator contacting me wondering what this phrase or expression meant having no idea about the extent of American slang and what she was in for when she took the position with Mr. Liu.
I am pleased to say the effort has been well worth it. Xie Xie to the dedicated toils of my colleagues in Beijing for making it happen.
Who’s next? India……?
