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Not Aesopian Enough: A Chinese Publishing Fable

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

James W. Loewen
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In April 2008, Ma Wanli, a professor of American history at Nanchang Hangkong University in Nanchang, China, emailed me to introduce himself as the translator of the Chinese version of my U.S. best seller, Lies My Teacher Told Me. He also invited me to write a preface for this new edition. I agreed.

Lies exposes seamy aspects of the U.S. past. The preface I wrote for the Chinese edition suggests that a similar exposé might be useful in China. As I wrote, I realized that saying this in China might be problematic, but on behalf of the publisher, Central Chinese Compilation & Translation Press, one of the largest publishers in China, Ma Wanli assured me that my preface would not be censored. I finished the preface in late fall, and the Chinese translation reached me in December of 2008. My U.S. publisher had it translated back into English and assured me that my meaning had not been changed. All seemed well.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 23 , June 2010 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2010

References

Notes

1 Howard W. French, “China's Textbooks Twist and Omit History,” New York Times (12/6/2004), found here.

2 Ibid.

3 Joseph Kahn, “Where's Mao? Chinese Revise History Books,” New York Times, 9/1/2006, found here.

4 However, to expect Chinese teachers to teach against their textbooks is asking a lot of them.

Teachers know that during the Cultural Revolution, from 1966 to 1976, gangs of students beat teachers in the name of political correctness.