The Watch 表 (1980) #

By Leonid Panteleyev, adapted by Dong Qingdong 董青冬, illustrated by Hua Sanchuan 华三川, Beijing: Lianhuanhua chubanshe, 2003. (Reprint of an earlier edition by Renmin meishu chubanshe, Beijing, 1980, translated by Laura Aymar, Bettina Jin, Piet Kortenjan, Lena Henningsen, Sascha Sacknieß, Sophia Schöller, Joschua Seiler, Miriam Stadler, Yixiong Wang and Jenny Wiggermann).¹

Introduction to the text #

Lena Henningsen

“The Watch” is a soviet Russian children’s story whose transcultural journey into China merits attention. The author, Leonid Panteleyev (also: Panteleev, pen name of Alexei Ivanovich Jeremejew) was born 1908 in St. Petersburg and died 1987 in the same city (then called Leningrad). After the turmoil of the October Revolution, the family had left the city and Panteleyev returned alone in 1921. He ended up in a school commune for homeless and difficult youngsters. Together with Grigory Georgiyevich Belykh (1906-1938), Panteleyev wrote the novel The Republic of ShKID (published in 1927) which is based to some extent on their experiences there. “The Watch” is set in a similar environment and was published only a year later in 1928. Panteleyev later continued to weave historical events into the stories he wrote for children and youth readers.

Addressing a young readership, the plot of “The Watch” serves a certain didactic agenda, which it combines with elements of a bildungsroman and entertaining, sometimes even comic scenes and episodes. The characters are lively, and defy easy characterization into “good” or “bad”. The adults may be strict, but believe in the good sides of the children. Petka – the protagonist of the story – is an eleven-year-old boy who learned to survive on the streets and at first appears as a stubborn and unruly character. The treatment he receives at the reformatory to which he is sent, however, help him mature into a responsible young boy diligently studying and doing his chores for the community. Also, he acknowledges past mistakes – and tries to amend them, at least to a certain degree, leaving a certain amount of ambivalence right to the end. This situates the story firmly within the socialist literary cosmos, as a children’s story affirming the values of the communist system, while at the same time calling for a sympathetic reading, for taking sides with the protagonist, despite (or because of) the ambivalence of his character.

Soon after its publication, “The Watch” was translated into into Spanish (El Reloj o Las Aventuras de Petika, published in 1931 by Cenit) and into German (Die Uhr, transl. Maria Eisenstein, published in 1930 by Verlag der Jugendinternationale). In Nazi Germany, it was forbidden, but was republished both in East and West Germany after the War. The first East German publication appeared in 1949 and saw countless republications until the 1980s, though not without controversies as some found the contradictions within the soviet system inappropriate in a literary text for children (Pieper 2006: 1048-1049). The first West German publication appeared in 1974, with two more publications until the late 1980s.

The Chinese translation was produced by no one less than Lu Xun in 1935, shortly before his death and was based on the German translation. In the preface to the translation, Lu Xun also acknowledges a translation into Japanese which helped him through the text and some of its idiomatic expressions, but he took the German version as his core point of reference. He also states as his aim that the story should provide young readers in China with new contents (as opposed to the old contents in most available literature) and target them by using words that a ten-year-old would be able to read (Lu Xun 1935: “Preface”). “The Watch” is one of a few pieces of children’s literature translated by Lu Xun and thus form part of the effort of Lu Xun and a number of other members of his generation to foster the creation of an indigenous children’s literature. While most of the children’s literature translated by Lu Xun still had a predominantly adult readership, “The Watch” enjoyed distinct popularity among younger readers and was even staged as a children’s play in Kunming during the 1940s (Lundberg 1989: 196-208; 264).

Overall, the lianhuanhua follows the plot line set out in the original story, and in a number of places, it uses phrases from Lu Xun’s translation. There are, however, significant simplifications in a number of sub-plots and in the overall language of the text – targeting, most likely, juvenile readers almost half a century later. Often, and similar to other literary adaptations into lianhuanhua, words from Lu Xun’s translation find their way into the characters’ speech. In the beginning and the end, the lianhuanhua follows the plot line closely in its illustrations, spending one or two panels on each page in the translation. In the middle, however, the lianhuanhua strides forward at a faster pace thus significantly reducing the content reproduced. This holds true, in particular, for the passages which delve into Petka’s inner life: page 40, thus omits a longish passage in which Petka fantasizes about what he would want to buy in exchange for the golden watch; page 49 omits a quarrel among the boys, a dream by Petka and a reference to Gogol’s Nose and the merits of reading; pages 54-57 reduce the content of 14 pages and thus purge several explorations of moral values, responsibility, and guilt; likewise, Petka’s transformation is treated much more elaborately in the original (page 65 as compared to p. 82 in the translation) – and the amusements that Petka and Natasha experience are reduced from 5 pages to just one page (66).

The story gained what may be called second order prominence in 1977 through the short story “The Class Teacher” (班主任) by Liu Xinwu 刘心武 (Liu 1977). This story is one of the central texts of the scar literature genre, a first attempt to confront the pain and scars inflicted upon individuals during the Cultural Revolution. As I have elaborated elsewhere (Henningsen 2022 forthcoming), “The Watch” operates as a powerful intertext to “The Class Teacher”: On the first level, Teacher Zhang, the protagonist of the story, discusses the text with his students in order to come to terms with a prospective new student in the class. Lu Xun is explicitly referred to in the story as having translated the story with “great ardor”, thus adding to the weight of the story. On the second level, “The Watch” provides the narrative frame for the plot line of “The Class Teacher” as the plot of the latter text is clearly modeled on the first. Knowledge of “The Watch” thus adds another layer of interpretation to “The Class Teacher”. Soon after, in 1980, the present adaptation appeared as a lianhuanhua – almost contemporaneous to the lianhuanhua version of “The Class Teacher” (Liu 1978).

References #

Henningsen, Lena 2022 (forthcoming): “Fictional Texts as Sites of Knowledge: From Intertexts to Transtextuality”, in: Martin Hofmann, Virginia Leung, Joachim Kurtz [ed.]: Wissensorte in China, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Liu Xinwu 刘心武 1977: “The Class Teacher” 班主任, in Renmin wenxue 11, 16–29.

Liu Xinwu 刘心武 1978: The Class Teacher 班主任, adapted by Sun Jianying 孙剑影, illustrated by Xu Xiuyu 徐修余, Jiangsu: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe.

Liu, Hsin-wu (Liu Xinwu) 1979: “The Class Teacher”, in: Yang, Winston L. Y., Nathan K. Mao [eds.]: Stories of Contemporary China, New York: Paragon Book Gallery, 83-103.

Liu, Xinwu 1995 (1978): “The Class Teacher” (transl. Zhihua Fang), in: Fang, Zhihua [ed.]: Chinese Short Stories of the Twentieth Century: An Anthology in English, New York: Garland Publishing, 85-120.

Lu, Xun 鲁迅 [1935]: “Preface”, in: Panteleyev, Leonid [1935]: The Watch 表, transl. by Lu Xun 鲁迅, Shanghai: Shenghuo Shudian, I-IV.

Lundberg, Lennart 1989: Lu Xun as a Translator: Lu Xun’s Translation and Introduction of Literature and Literary Theory, 1903-1936, Stockholm: Orientaliska Studier, Stockholm University.

Panteleyev, Leonid [1935]: The Watch 表, transl. by Lu Xun 鲁迅, Shanghai: Shenghuo Shudian.

Panteleyev, Leonid 2003 [1980]: The Watch 表, adapted by Zhong Qingdong 重青冬, Hua Sanchuan 华三川 Beijing: Lianhuanhua chubanshe.

Pantelejew, Leonid [1958]: Die Uhr, transl. by Maria Eisenstein, illustrated by Paul Rosiè, Berlin: Der Kinderbuchverlag.

Pieper, Katrin 2006: “Die besten Helden: Literatur für Kinder und Jugendliche nach sowjetischen Vorbildern”, in: Karl Eimermacher and Astrid Volpert [ed.]: Tauwetter, Eiszeit und gelenkte Dialoge: Russen und Deutsche nach 1945, München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1033-1056.

About the translation #

This translation is the outcome of a joint translation project taught in the winter of 2020/2021 at the University of Freiburg. Our aim in this translation was to remain as faithful as possible to the Chinese original while at the same time conveying a tone of narration in line with a comic book addressed to young readers based on a “classical” piece of children’s literature. As the story takes place in early 20^th century Russia, the given names of the characters are given in Russian. To allow for an undisturbed reading experience, we decided against the use of footnotes, though two items may call for explanation:

Page 63 refers to the Paris Commune Memorial Day. The Paris Commune was an attempt of establishing a revolutionary government in Paris after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. It ended 72 days after its establishment in bloodshed carried out by the troops of the Third French Republic. Throughout the 20^th century, it has been glorified as a model for socialist revolutions.

As is common in Chinese literary practice, page 12 contains a Chinese idiom that refers to the premodern Chinese literary tradition: “The wise man was right about gaining profit by misfortune” (聪明人说得对，因祸得福。) This idiom (which is not present in Lu Xun’s translation of the story) expresses how bad luck eventually turns into something fortunate. Alternatively, the idiom is often translated as “a fault on the right side” or “a blessing in disguise”. It can be traced back to a passage in the “Guan Yan biographies” (Guan yan liezhuan, 管晏列传) in the Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史记), written by the historian Sima Qian (司马迁, c. 145 – c. 86 BC).

We have taken much effort to contact the publisher of this comic in order to acquire permission by the copyright holder to publish the pages online. We regret that we have not received responses to our inquiries. If you believe that copyrights are not being respected, please send us an email message. We will respond as soon as possible and will work with you to either accredit the material correctly or remove it entirely.

Read the translated lianhuanhua #

Front and back cover

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