A Circle Comes Together

In life we are constantly forming or bringing circles together, knowingly and unknowingly. This time it all started with a group of small gems—haiku by Maxine Hong Kingston, called “Malu Cycles.”

After traveling for more than half a year following my mother’s passing in Nanjing, China, I returned to my home in San Francisco, completing a full circle around the world on July 1, 2024. Shortly after, I received a message from Maxine, inviting me to translate her poetry into Chinese for Poetry magazine. This opportunity felt like a special gift—a way to reconnect with my native language through poetry after a deep loss and a long, wandering journey. The selected works included a series of twenty-nine haiku and a longer poem titled “Chinese Time.”

Although haiku is distinctly Japanese, its origins can be traced back to the influence of classical Chinese poetry—particularly the concise, evocative verses on nature and spiritual truths by poets such as Wang Wei, Li Bai, Du Fu, and Su Shi of the Tang and Song dynasties. Meanwhile, haiku has flourished in the English world for over a century, with poets including Ezra Pound, Gary Snyder, Sonia Sanchez, and Etheridge Knight incorporating haiku-like techniques into their work. They often capture the spirit of the form without strictly adhering to its syllable count, an American haiku tradition that Maxine also follows.

Maxine is a Chinese American writer and poet deeply rooted in Chinese cultural and poetic traditions, who writes her haiku in English. Each haiku is a multifaceted gem, reflecting the languages and cultures from both Maxine’s Chinese heritage and her American life. My goal as a translator is to honor this shared literary heritage by finding poetic expressions in Chinese that reflect the universal themes, emotions, human experiences, wisdom, and humor woven into these poems.

As two of the most widely spoken and written languages in the world, English and Chinese differ significantly in sound, form, and origin. Translating English poetry into Chinese is a delicate task that requires balancing fidelity to the original text with the expressive potential of the target language. One particular challenge I encountered is that English poetry often relies on specific rhythmic patterns, sound devices, and idiomatic expressions that have no direct equivalents in Chinese. However, the poet’s Chinese perspective behind the English poems allows for a more nuanced and intricate translation.

For example, I struggled to convey the pun of “Corvid-19” in Chinese until I realized I could combine the abbreviated terms of Covid (新冠 instead of 新冠病毒) and crow (鴉 instead of 烏鴉) into the “新冠鴉” for Corvid. This coined phrase means the “Covid crow,” but also literally translates to the “crow with a new hat” or “newly crowned crow.” By omitting 烏 (black) from the phrase, it also allows more room for imagination regarding the color of the “Covid crow,” before emphasizing its black color in the next line.

Another fun challenge was translating Maxine’s grandchildren’s names, Hana Mei and Malu Hua, which reflect the Chinese, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Western cultural heritages of three generations in Maxine’s multicultural family. Translating the names purely phonetically would strip away much of the meaning and cultural significance for Chinese readers. Additionally, Japanese names are typically transliterated into Chinese characters based on their kanji (Chinese-origin characters) rather than their phonetic sounds. After days of reflection, solutions emerged for both names: Hana Mei, 花子美, meaning “flower beauty,” and Malu Hua, 瑪璐華, meaning “true gem splendor.”

One important decision I had to make with Maxine was whether we wanted the Chinese translation to follow the 5-7-5 haiku syllable count. Since Maxine didn’t adhere to a strict structure in English, we decided not to follow any specific haiku structure in Chinese, which often requires the translator to take liberties with the original material. Instead, I focused on conveying the meaning and spirit of her haiku as accurately as possible while shaping the translation to achieve certain structural and linguistic symmetries and aesthetics, and maintaining the inner rhythm of  her original work.

In this translation process, I aspire to provide Chinese readers with a version of Maxine’s haiku on American life that feels both foreign and familiar, new and ancient. My aim is to bridge the cultural and linguistic histories of this beloved poetic form, as interpreted by one of the most admired American writers of our time—a child of “illegal aliens” who came across the ocean from an ancient Eastern culture. She is a descendant of the royal family of the Song dynasty, writing in a form that originated in her ancestral land’s neighboring country, now finding new expression in a Western language.

For over three thousand years, poetry has been a central force in Chinese culture. Since the time of the Shijing (Book of Songs), which dates back to the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1046–256 BCE), poetry has served not only as an artistic form but also as a vehicle for moral guidance, emotional expression, political commentary, religious teaching, and personal reflection. It has permeated both elite and popular culture, shaping every aspect of Chinese life. Maxine’s poem “Chinese Time” moves across millennia, revealing the profound ways in which we are all interconnected through the power of poetry, even a thousand years apart. This connection is sustained by the vital thread of loving-kindness, as poet Fred Marchant, whom I had the honor of meeting through Maxine, beautifully describes in his introduction to Maxine’s work.

I first connected with Maxine in 2005 through my memoir in free verse, Little Green: Growing Up During the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Receiving an extraordinary endorsement from her via my publisher was a profound honor—especially for an immigrant and a first-time author writing in her non-native language. I attended one of  her book events to express my gratitude, where she was presenting The Fifth Book of Peace, with the support of her veteran writers’ group. Since then, I have been part of their community.

From Maxine, I learned that writing and listening can be profound acts of kindness—both toward ourselves and others, and for the world at large. Maxine, Fred, and our veteran writers’ community have guided and supported me in finding my path as a writer, poet, and a relatively new member of the society I now call home. They’ve shown me how to contribute meaningfully, no matter how distant or diverse our cultural roots may be.

Lastly, my heartfelt thanks to Professor King-Kok Cheung 張敬珏 of UCLA, as well as Cun Xie 解村, Shuang Wu 吳爽, and Shirong Yin 殷世榮 from China, for their assistance in editing the Chinese translations, each contributing their unique perspectives. Our circle of poets, writers, and translators has come together and will continue to come together in Chinese, American, and all times, through poetry, beauty, and light, as we do in “Malu Cycles/瑪璐循環.”