Hikayat Pinggir Air / Water Margin
Got this Bahasa Melayu translation (published by the Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka) of “Water Margin” for RM30 at the recent PBAKL.
That title’s, quite literally: “Tale of The Water’s Edge”.
It paints a Song China full of mountain bandits and roadside inns and martial-arts masters kneeling to each other. I am slowly making my way through it, because its classical style is leisurely and prone to poetic asides. Also it’s in BM, which I don’t read as quickly as I do English.
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This BM translation is probably the only way I’ll read “Water Margin”.
For most of my childhood, I wanted to be white. I was annoyingly Sinophobic, and refused to learn Chinese. This antagonism was reciprocated. Because You Are Chinese, How Can You Not Speak Chinese? (Race Traitor.)
On one hand: Chinese ethno-superiority. On the other: Anglophone class privilege.
So it’s fraught. I can’t read “Water Margin” in Mandarin, because I don’t know the language. Reading an English translation feels bad and wrong.
BM is not a comfortable option, either -- and the position of Malayness presents its own frictions, vis a vis whiteness and Chineseness -- but it offers me a back door, a way in.
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Inexpertly translated, from the BM:
' Lu Zhishen stared at them both, and asked: “You miscreants! Are your heads as hard as this pine tree?”
And they replied: “These heads our parents gave us are meagre skin and flesh, wrapping a mere few bones!” With a swift stroke Zhishen swung his monk’s club at the trunk of the pine tree. That single strike left groove two inches deep; the tree cracked and immediately fell over. In a loud voice, Zhishen yelled: “You two miscreants! If you intend evil, I will break your heads like I broke this tree!” ’
