Bridge of Ajia

Tags: Short History

  • 《原创图画书阅读与精品》访谈（三）

    Interview on “Original Picture Book Reading and Masterpieces” (Part 3)

    Intro­duc­tion: This is an inter­view pod­cast con­duct­ed on “Pic­ture Book Lol­lipop”, host­ed by Xiaox­i­ang and guest Ajia. Start­ing from the ref­er­ence book “Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books: Select­ed Read­ings and High­lights” pub­lished at the end of 2024, an in-depth con­ver­sa­tion was held around the selec­tion cri­te­ria, his­tor­i­cal con­text, cur­rent themes and future devel­op­ment of orig­i­nal pic­ture books. The record­ing time is on the evening of Jan­u­ary 3, 2025, and the broad­cast time is Jan­u­ary 17, 2025.

    The fol­low­ing text is com­piled as an excerpt. To lis­ten to the full pod­cast, please click the fol­low­ing audio link:

    Himalaya:38 Dia­logue with Teacher Ajia: Has the Spring of Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books Arrived?Pic­ture Book Lol­lipopFree online read­ing, lis­ten­ing and down­load­ing— Himalayas

    Micro­cosm:http://t.cn/A6uDFbvy

    Click to open »> Part I | Part 2

    Part 3

    …

    Every­one thinks that this book (“The Radish is Back”) is a long-stand­ing folk tale, but in fact it is an orig­i­nal work by a Chi­nese writer in 1955, and it is adapt­ed from a sto­ry about “The Bat­tle of Shang­gan­ling” dur­ing the War to Resist U.S. Aggres­sion and Aid Korea.

    Xiaox­i­ang:

    Yes, I also learned about this after read­ing your book. It’s real­ly amaz­ing!

    I also remem­ber that at the Shang­hai Chil­dren’s Book Fair last year, I inter­viewed Mr. Ye Jun­liang from the French Hongfei Pub­lish­ing House. He men­tioned that they also pub­lished this book “The Return of Radish” in France, and the illus­tra­tor was the French girl Clemence Pol­let who drew the French ver­sion of “Mulan”. Her illus­tra­tions are very con­sis­tent with the con­tem­po­rary aes­thet­ic style. So I think this sto­ry is real­ly mag­i­cal. ​

    French ver­sion of “The Return of Radish”

    Then I think we can talk about some fur­ther top­ics.

    (more…)
  • 《原创图画书阅读与精品》访谈（二）

    Interview on “Original Picture Books: Selected Readings and Highlights” (Part 2)

    Intro­duc­tion: This is an inter­view pod­cast con­duct­ed on “Pic­ture Book Lol­lipop”, host­ed by Xiaox­i­ang and guest Ajia. Start­ing from the ref­er­ence book “Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books: Select­ed Read­ings and High­lights” pub­lished at the end of 2024, an in-depth con­ver­sa­tion was held around the selec­tion cri­te­ria, his­tor­i­cal con­text, cur­rent themes and future devel­op­ment of orig­i­nal pic­ture books. The record­ing time is on the evening of Jan­u­ary 3, 2025, and the broad­cast time is Jan­u­ary 17, 2025.

    The fol­low­ing text is com­piled as an excerpt. To lis­ten to the full pod­cast, please click the fol­low­ing audio link:

    Himalaya:38 Dia­logue with Teacher Ajia: Has the Spring of Orig­i­nal Pic­ture Books Arrived?Pic­ture Book Lol­lipopFree online read­ing, lis­ten­ing and down­load­ing – Himalayas

    Micro­cosm:http://t.cn/A6uDFbvy

    »> Click to open Part 1

    [Part 2]

    …

    So I had a basic idea at that time: if we were to write the first book on the com­pi­la­tion of orig­i­nal pic­ture books, we must not miss those basic books.

    This was my ini­tial start­ing point.

    Xiaox­i­ang:

    Was the process of draft­ing your list of 62 books quick? Or did you actu­al­ly think about it for a long time?

    Among these 62 books, which one or which ones do you think are the most dif­fi­cult to choose? And which ones can you decide very quick­ly and feel that “this is a must-have”? Can you give some exam­ples?

    Ajia:

    We prob­a­bly start­ed this in 2021. The time­line I record­ed start­ed in April 2021. When I was sure I was going to do it, I actu­al­ly had a list in my mind because I had been prepar­ing for it over the years.

    But I still have to con­vince every­one, I need a good rea­son. I cer­tain­ly don’t say that I have already decid­ed “these are the books”, but I have an idea why I chose these books. This idea can actu­al­ly be traced back to 2005 to 2006, when it was already in its infan­cy.

    Why do I say so?

    (more…)
  • 闲聊李奥尼的人生花絮

    Talking about Leo Lionni’s life

    The orig­i­nal text was writ­ten in Chi­nese on March 8, 2010, as a post­script to Leo Lion­ni’s series of trans­la­tions, and was also pub­lished on Sina Blog.

    Over the past year or so, Leo Lion­ni has occu­pied a very impor­tant posi­tion in my life. I often repeat what he said, put one or two of his books in my bag wher­ev­er I go, and search for all the infor­ma­tion about him when­ev­er I think of him… But more often, I will stare at the pages where he wrote and drew for a long time, think­ing absent­mind­ed­ly: What on earth is this guy try­ing to say here?

    I feel very lucky to have trans­lat­ed nine of Lion­ni’s pic­ture books in more than a year. It is very sat­is­fy­ing to have in-depth exchanges with this mas­ter in this way. As the trans­la­tion work is com­ing to an end, the edi­tor asked me to write a lit­tle about Lion­ni, but for a long time I did­n’t know where to start. Every­thing about Leo Lion­ni is there, in his books: the lit­tle black fish, Alfred, Cor­nelius, Matthew, Alexan­der… They are all him, what else is there to say? I will talk about some anec­dotes in Lion­ni’s life — main­ly those that have had some influ­ence on my under­stand­ing in trans­la­tion.

    On a warm day about thir­ty years ago, in a farm­house in Tus­cany, Italy, an old man in his sev­en­ties was chat­ting with some­one on the phone, but his mind grad­u­al­ly wan­dered, and he was seen scrib­bling on a notepad. The draw­ing looked like the graf­fi­ti of naughty chil­dren. It was rough­ly a lizard, and it looked like a croc­o­dile when you looked left and right, but from the per­spec­tive of nat­ur­al sci­ence, it was nei­ther, because it was a rep­tile that walked upright! It is said that this is how Lion­ni’s “Cor­nelius” the Croc­o­dile was first cre­at­ed.

    When I first came across this book, I want­ed to trans­late Cor­nelius as “鳄鱼小克 Croc­o­dile Lit­tle K”, per­haps chil­dren would like it more. But as I learned more about Lion­ni, this name seemed to have a deep­er mean­ing. On the sur­face, it is just sim­i­lar to croc­o­dile, but if you think about it care­ful­ly, it is a com­mon name in Italy, and the most famous one is usu­al­ly trans­lat­ed as Cor­nelius, a cen­tu­ri­on in the New Tes­ta­ment of the Bible, and the first non-Jew to con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty. Is this just a coin­ci­dence? To be hon­est, I don’t know, but I think it’s bet­ter to keep the name Cor­nelius for this unique croc­o­dile, and leave the judg­ment of whether it is a coin­ci­dence to the read­ers.

    (more…)
en_USEng­lish
zh_CN简体中文 en_USEng­lish