The Authentic Voice of China's Modern Transformation

An Exclusive Interview with Gang Chen, Translator of the English Edition of Human Realm

Ma Zhuo & Gang Chen · March 20, 2026 · Source: Left Review (左评) Public Account

Original published at Wuyouzhixiang, web-edition

Interviewer: Ma Zhuo

Interviewee: Gang Chen, publisher at Vero Publishing (USA) and literary translator, currently residing in Florida. His principal translations include Black and White and Human Realm.

Ma Zhuo: Following Black and White, you have now translated another novel by Liu Jiming — Human Realm — into English. What was your thinking behind this decision?

Gang Chen: If Black and White is the "heavy artillery" of Liu Jiming's ideological maturity, then Human Realm is the work that sounded the keynote of his transition — from a neoliberal stance toward a socialist one. My reason for translating Human Realm is to show the world how a Chinese intellectual gradually moved away from writing shaped by "avant-garde literature" [note: the Chinese literary avant-garde movement of the 1980s, heavily influenced by Western modernism] and mainstream ideology, and found his way back to the land and the people. It is the logical starting point for understanding the full universe of Liu Jiming's work.

Ma Zhuo: Human Realm was published by the Writers Publishing House in 2016 — nearly a decade ago now. It made a powerful impression on the Chinese literary world upon its release: it ranked fourth on Harvest magazine's 2016 literary rankings, received a nomination for the Lu Yao Literary Prize [note: an award named after the author of Ordinary World, honoring works of realist fiction with broad popular appeal], was selected as one of the forty major novels of the forty years of Reform and Opening Up, and was hailed by critics as a pioneering work of new socialist literature. How do you see the inner connections between this novel and Black and White — what are their similarities and differences?

Gang Chen: The two are continuous with each other.

Connection: They share the same spiritual core — a deep concern for the fate of the countryside under the expansion of capital.

Difference: Human Realm was published in 2016, when Liu Jiming was still in the throes of his transition. The complete and radical ideological framework he would later display in Black and White is only just beginning to take shape in Human Realm.

Social receptivity: It is precisely because Human Realm retained more of literature's warmth and restraint that it was still accepted by the mainstream literary establishment of the time, earning multiple major prizes — the Harvest rankings, the Lu Yao Literary Prize nomination, and others.

Ma Zhuo: Liu Jiming once wrote in the afterword to Human Realm that it was the most important work of his life. Yet some readers feel that Black and White — judging by both the writing itself and the response it generated after publication — has clearly surpassed it. What is your view?

Gang Chen:

1. An "exponential leap" in narrative scale and historical scope

In terms of sheer volume and depth of time and space, Black and White presents an overwhelming case:

Scale: Critics once compared Human Realm to an elephant among novels — but having read Black and White, one would say that next to its 1.2 million Chinese characters, Human Realm is at most a tiger.

Historical span: If Human Realm is "a spiritual history of the reform era," focused primarily on reflection since the New Period [note: referring to the post-Mao era beginning in the late 1970s], then Black and White extends its reach across a full century of Chinese history, from the Revolution of 1911 to the early twenty-first century. It is not merely a contemporary history but a panoramic chronicle of modern Chinese social development.

2. A "downward shift" and "breakthrough" in readership

This is the most striking way in which Black and White surpasses its predecessor, embodying the principle of "written for the people, judged by the people":

Reader composition: The response to Human Realm was largely confined to professional critics and elite cultural circles. The commentators on Black and White, by contrast, are overwhelmingly ordinary readers — workers, farmers, teachers, doctors, and university students. This phenomenon-level enthusiasm among non-elite audiences is considered comparable only to Lu Yao's Ordinary World and Dao Lang's song "Luocha Haishi." [note: Ordinary World (平凡的世界) is a beloved realist novel by Lu Yao; "Luocha Haishi" (罗刹海市) is a 2023 song by the folk-pop artist Dao Lang that went viral as a parable of social critique]

Mode of circulation: Rather than following the traditional path from literary journal to publishing house, Black and White spread quietly among "the silent majority" through serialization online, an AI reading companion called "Xiaobai," and live audio-video broadcasts across multiple platforms — creating a distinctive chapter in the history of reading.

3. A radicalization of intellectual depth: from "reform" to "resistance"

In terms of ideological orientation, Black and White represents a major advance beyond Human Realm:

Paths of awakening: Ma La's awakening in Human Realm is closer to Levin's [note: Levin is the reflective landowner protagonist of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, known for his solitary moral searching] — solitary contemplation and social amelioration, as embodied in the founding of a cooperative. Wang Sheng in Black and White, by contrast, is thrust into far more direct and brutal class conflict and the predatory encirclement of power; his resistance carries a greater sense of tragic heroism and revolutionary urgency.

The return of class narrative: In Black and White, Liu Jiming breaks entirely free from the constraints of "pure literature" and reaches directly to the bottom of the age. The novel no longer merely looks with compassion upon the suffering of the lower classes; it employs a Marxist lens to lay bare the class roots of social tragedy, earning it the reputation of "the vanguard work of people's realism."

4. The complexity of the character gallery: a mirror that reveals history's demons

Black and White makes a more powerful contribution to the creation of representative characters than Human Realm:

Depth of antagonists: The novel gives us extraordinarily complex figures such as Song Qiankun, Wu Baizhong, and Hong Taixing. Song Qiankun in particular — the archetypal "true on both ends" [note: 两头真, a term describing those who were genuine revolutionaries in their youth and genuine in their later revisionism, but opportunists throughout] — delivers a penetrating exposé of the historical logic of opportunism within revolutionary ranks.

Social mirror: Through its portrayal of the "Yanshan Society" [note: a fictional elite networking club representing entrenched power interests] and the restructuring of Dongang Steel, the novel vividly renders the collusion between bureaucratic capital and comprador interest groups. This cold-eyed anatomizing of social relations cuts far deeper than the idealism that colors Human Realm.

5. The author's inner transformation: from "observer" to "participant"

Liu Jiming's own assessment of the two works reflects a profound shift in his spiritual orientation:

While writing Human Realm, he says, there was still a wall — or a pane of glass — between him and reality; he maintained the detachment of an observer. By the time he wrote Black and White, he had broken through that glass and plunged directly into the tangled mirror of the age, becoming a full participant.

He has freely acknowledged that Black and White was an "unexpected gift" from his writing life — perhaps even the crowning achievement with which he might bid farewell to literature, for, as he put it, "to write another word of fiction after this would be superfluous."

Ma Zhuo: Some critics have suggested that Ma La, the protagonist of Human Realm, and Wang Sheng, the protagonist of Black and White, share a great deal in common — that Ma La is Wang Sheng in middle age, and Wang Sheng is Ma La in his youth. Do you agree with this reading?

Gang Chen: I find it deeply convincing. Ma La is a peasant figure who returns to the land after serving his sentence — a man whose resilience, "solitary but never desolate," represents Liu Jiming's early exploration of what becomes of the idealist. What Wang Sheng undergoes in Black and White is a far more violent collision with society, while what Ma La embodies in Human Realm is a kind of commitment in the spirit of "pressing on even knowing it cannot be done" [note: 知其不可而为之, a Confucian phrase from the Analects describing moral persistence in the face of impossibility].

Ma Zhuo: Some critics have argued that, viewed through the lens of social development and character growth, Human Realm and Black and White are companion works. Do you agree?

Gang Chen: I do. Let me try to analyze this from three dimensions: social development, character growth, and literary value.

I. Social Development: A "progressive expansion of scope"

The broadening of narrative time and space: Human Realm focuses primarily on the urban-rural transformations since the New Period and is regarded as "a spiritual history of the reform era." Black and White achieves a tremendous leap beyond this, extending its reach across a century of Chinese history from the Revolution of 1911 to the early twenty-first century. If Human Realm is a history of one era, Black and White is a history of all eras — together they sketch out how Chinese society evolved from the age of revolution and socialist construction into the complex realities of the reform-and-opening period.

A holographic social portrait: Human Realm observes society through two cross-sections: Shenhuang Isle and the Yangtze Electromechanical Plant. Black and White, by contrast, functions like a hologram, gathering hundreds of representative figures from the highest corridors of power to the grassroots underclass, spanning the worlds of politics, economics, the judiciary, and academia, and laying bare the process by which bureaucratic capital and comprador forces merged into one.

II. Character Growth: A "spiritual relay race"

The "twin souls" of Ma La and Wang Sheng: Critical consensus holds that Wang Sheng in Black and White is Ma La in his youth, while Ma La in Human Realm is Wang Sheng in middle age.

Convergence of origins and initial convictions: Both men were born in the 1960s, both come from families with deep revolutionary backgrounds — Ma La's elder brother Ma Ke, Wang Sheng's father Wang Shengli — and both were steeped in socialist culture during their formative years.

Parallel moments of disorientation and ideological drift: Both were shaken in their youth by the influence of the "New Enlightenment" [note: the 1980s Chinese liberal intellectual movement] or by liberal mentors — figures like Lü Yongjia and Lang Yongliang. Wang Sheng even changed his name (from Wang Cheng to Wang Sheng) in an attempt to break with his past.

The continuity of awakening and resistance: Black and White ends with Wang Sheng walking out of a labor reform farm and beginning a new awakening; Human Realm opens with Ma La released from prison, returning to his native soil to found a cooperative. This exit and this entry together piece together the complete arc of an intellectual's journey — from individual striving to loss of self, and finally to a homecoming among the people.

The spiritual kinship of Gu Zheng and Murong Qiu: Gu Zheng can be seen as a younger incarnation of Murong Qiu — both women possess an intensely fastidious moral idealism, and both, when confronted with the squalor of reality, travel the same road from flight and avoidance to the courage of seeking a way forward through social engagement.

III. Literary Value: A "paradigm shift"

From "observer" to "participant": Liu Jiming has said himself that while writing Human Realm he remained an observer — his characters and their world still carried the heavy fragrance of idealism and romance. By the time of Black and White, he had smashed through the glass and touched the very bottom of the age; he had become a participant. Accordingly, Black and White is rawer, more brutal, and more sharply critical in its revelation of human nature than Human Realm.

If Human Realm is the pioneering work of "new socialist literature," then Black and White is the deepening and the breakthrough of that tradition. It completes what Human Realm left unfinished — extending the question of "who are the traitors" from history into the present, and raising explicitly the possibility of continuing the revolution.

In sum: Human Realm is like an opening statement, full of idealist coloring; Black and White is its weighty conclusion, arrived at after a comprehensive sociological reckoning with everything the first work proposed. They illuminate each other, and together they form something rare in contemporary literature: a "red literary family" united by a single epic logic.

Ma Zhuo: You have previously compared Black and White to Tolstoy's great novel War and Peace, and others have drawn comparisons between Human Realm and Anna Karenina, finding the two works kindred in narrative structure and characterization. Could you share your thoughts on this?

Gang Chen: The affinity between Human Realm and Anna Karenina lies in its inward spiritual gravity and its return to the land. Ma La's labor on the abandoned fields of Shenhuang Isle mirrors Levin's meditations in the fields — it is, in both cases, a re-consecration of the dignity of work. Black and White, on the other hand, is closer to the panoramic grandeur of War and Peace — that epic reckoning with the collision between the individual and the great wheel of history.

Ma Zhuo: Considering the intellectual and artistic achievements of Human Realm and Black and White, where would you place these two works — and their author, Liu Jiming — in the landscape of Chinese and world literature? What kind of influence might they go on to have?

Gang Chen:

I. Literary Standing: A Milestone of China's "People's Realism"

Filling a void in historical narrative: Black and White is considered to fill a significant gap in Chinese literature since the New Period. At a time when the mainstream literary world had largely retreated into personal desire, scar literature [note: 伤痕文学, a post-Cultural Revolution literary movement focused on personal trauma], or fantasy escapism, Liu Jiming stitched together the historical logic of "the first thirty years" [note: referring to the Mao era, 1949–1978] and "the later forty years" [note: the reform era, 1978 to the present], bridging the narrative rupture between two periods of the People's Republic.

A singular character gallery: He has successfully created complex antagonist archetypes in figures like Song Qiankun, Hong Taixing, and Wu Baizhong, as well as positive figures — Wang Shengli, the old principal, Luo Zheng, Wang Sheng — who either hold fast to their original convictions or find their way back after losing them. His penetrating analysis of the "opportunist revolutionary," exemplified by Song Qiankun, has been hailed as a blazing new beacon in China's literature of moral exposure.

A subversion of the mainstream aesthetic: His work has broken entirely free of the elitist "pure literature" paradigm, returning to the time-honored tradition of proletarian literature. If Human Realm is the pioneering work of "new socialist literature," then Black and White is the milestone of "people's realism."

II. Intellectual Achievement: A Vivid History of Contemporary Chinese Thought

Liu Jiming's work has transcended the purely literary, attaining a profound significance in both sociology and intellectual history.

Testimony of an era: His novels are regarded as a cold-eyed dissection of the social transformations since Reform and Opening Up, documenting the process by which the working class fell from being the leading class to becoming a vulnerable group.

The restoration of class narrative: In a depoliticized cultural climate, he has reestablished the analytical power of class analysis within literature, exposing the social reality of collusion between bureaucratic capital and comprador interest groups.

Spiritual redemption and awakening: His work explores how intellectuals can break free from the entrapments of individualism and liberalism and find their way back, at last, to a position among the people.

III. A World Literary Horizon: The International Resonance of an Eastern Epic

As Black and White has been translated and circulated, Liu Jiming's literary stature has begun to find its footing in a global frame of reference.

Measured against Tolstoy: Russian translator Ilya Farikovsky has argued that in terms of narrative scale and its bitter meditation on revolution, Black and White can only be compared to Tolstoy's War and Peace.

The potential of a world classic: Translator Gang Chen has observed that the significance of Black and White to contemporary China is analogous to that of Tolstoy's masterpiece to nineteenth-century Russia — and that it stands as a powerful contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The continuation of critical realism: His work extends the tradition of Hugo, Balzac, and Gorky — that great lineage of world literature that keeps faith with the underclass and condemns oppression — and sends out to the world the authentic voice of China's modern transformation.

IV. Future Influence: Seeds of Enlightenment for a New Age of Awakening

These two major works may go on to produce far-reaching social and cultural effects:

The awakening of a new generation: The young characters who appear at the close of the novels — Tian Qingqing, Liang Tian, and others — symbolize the revival and transmission of Marxism in the twenty-first century. The works are poised to serve as "consciousness-awakening texts" for a generation of young people ground down by capital.

The return of people's art: The circulation model of Black and White — "written for the people, judged by the people" — heralds a renaissance of people's art that breaks free from elite monopoly and returns to a popular system of evaluation.

An anchor for historical truth: As time passes, these two works will stand as "testimony against time" — becoming the most authentic, most indelible historical coordinates by which future generations look back upon this century of history, and especially upon the pivotal transformations of the reform era.

Ma Zhuo: Are there plans to adapt Human Realm and Black and White for television?

Gang Chen: Substantial progress has already been made on adapting Human Realm for the screen: ten episodes, forty-five minutes each, totaling four hundred and fifty minutes, with production to be completed before the end of the year. Once it has been successfully broadcast, we plan to bring Black and White to the screen as well — currently projected at eighty episodes.

Ma Zhuo: What a magnificent undertaking — truly something to look forward to. We wish you every success!

(Source: Cao Zhenglu–Liu Jiming Research Center)