Open up an Incredibly Fascinating World of Asian Literature

In Ukraine, I studied international law and the Chinese language. We had Chinese classes only three times a week, but I loved Chinese more than law. In the third year of studies, the university offered an opportunity to go to China within a student exchange program. I left for Tianjin Polytechnic University as part of the group. After the first semester, a few of my friends and I decided to stay longer but transfer to a different university. We applied to Nankai University, and it turned out that it was not only better than the previous one, but one of the best in China. At first, it was quite difficult to study because the philology department for foreigners was really demanding. At that time, I could speak and understand Chinese a little, but I could not write at all. So, I had to study very hard.

I learned about the graduate school fellowships for foreigners by chance at the dean's office. I’d been dreaming of moving to Beijing, so I applied to one of its universities, Beijing Normal University. It was risky, though, because I could apply to three universities at once, not just one. I also changed my major, law, to art history. I was accepted, but they did not allow me to go to graduate school right away—I was supposed to study Chinese for another year.

I was upset at first, thinking that the studies would take too long. In China, master's degrees are completed in as long as three years. But looking back at it, I really appreciated the university’s decision. I studied in Chinese, and I was the only foreigner in the college of arts because art history is not a popular major for foreigners in China. The first year of graduate school was very challenging, since I had to read a lot. And in my second year, I started writing my thesis in Chinese, «On the Influence of European Abstract Art on the Chinese Artists of the French School». I researched how Wasily Kandinsky influenced Wu Guanzhong, a famous Chinese artist.

Most of the Ukrainians I know stayed in China after finishing their studies or married foreigners and moved elsewhere. Only a few of them returned to Ukraine. I didn’t want to stay in China, though. In 2015, I relocated back to Ukraine, but I didn’t have a job related to China. I started to forget the Chinese language.

I got the idea of setting up a publishing house when I studied at the Publishing Business School run by Litosvita. I first thought about creating a magazine about Asia. I even developed its concept. My plan was to sell ads to Asian companies and make money on advertising. I was thinking of distributing the magazine at airports and other public places. I even came up with its name and the ideas for the first few articles. But then the Revolution of Dignity began, and the crisis broke out. On top of that, I struggled with some personal issues. The idea of a magazine grew irrelevant.

In the summer of 2018, IZONE creative space invited me to give a lecture on Wu Guanzhong’s artworks. I was happy to see so many people coming interested in Asian art. Overall, Asian art, literature, and cinema are barely known in Ukraine. And it’s a shame—it’s enough to remember that the South Korean «Parasite» made Oscars history as the first foreign-language to win the best picture.

At the Publishing Business School in late 2016, I realized that the niche of Asian books in Ukraine was free. Then I spent a long while researching how other countries worked with Asian literature. I started with French presses specializing in literature from Asia and then moved to the British, American, and Polish publishing houses. There aren’t that many of them, but every country has at least one. In France, however, all presses publish Asian books as part of their wider portfolios, but some specialize exclusively in Asia.

I studied the market for a long while to figure out what to expect. I have Excel tables with info about many Asian countries, so I do not have to think hard about what books to publish next. It’s enough to pull up a relevant chart and pick a book. All in all, that was my general strategy.

I asked my friends to introduce me to the orientalists who might have been working on translations. Then I met with them and wondered if they translated anything for the drawer or felt like translating. That was how our first two books, «Zhuangzi» and «The Classic of Tea», were born.

Lu Yu’s «The Classic of Tea» was one of those for-the-drawer translations. It was quite raw, so in the summer of 2017, we started closer cooperation with the translator, Yevheniya Hobova, trying to work out the concept of that book at the same time. We arrived at the idea of complementing the text with the history of tea—its origin, varieties, and geography. «The Classic of Tea» is quite a hard read, and we wanted to make it interesting for people without much background knowledge about tea. The first Ukrainian translation of this iconic book is also a wonderful gift for tea connoisseurs.

When it comes to the visual part, I once came across an article about Oksana Bulkevych, an illustrator. It included some of her illustrations—apparently, from her thesis. Oksana had never illustrated books before. But I sensed that she had some kind of affinity with Asia. I emailed her, and it turned out that she was fascinated by Japan. Oksana and I met at the International Book Arsenal Festival last year. I just returned from Bologna Children’s Book Fair with a Chilean book about vegetables and fruit originating from Latin America—quinoa, peanuts, avocado. The book was beautifully illustrated and received numerous awards, so I suggested that Oksana adopt a similar style. I’d never seen Ukrainian books talk about food without photos.

In summer, Oksana and I went to the Tea House at Druzhby Narodiv boulevard, where Oksana Yakubynska, tea master, did an exquisite 2,5-hour-long tea ceremony for us! Getting a boost of inspiration, Oksana got down to work. In addition to creative freedom and trust, I gave Oksana a luxurious «History of Chinese Porcelain» that I’d brought from China. Yevheniya was sending the chapters of her translation, and Oksana was drawing. I didn’t see most of the illustrations until the final layout—all I saw was the design concept Oksana suggested. In fact, this book was born out of a translation already available.

Now «Zhuangzi» is a different story. A friend introduced me to translator Won Hak on Facebook a few months after I decided to set up a publishing house. I asked him about his translations and preferences, and he said he’d translated one chapter from «Zhuangzi». I’d read this book in my first year of graduate school (in Russian translation, of course), and I remember thinking that it had been a source of inspiration for «The House of Flying Daggers» and other movies. Won Hak agreed to translate the entire text—all 33 chapters. But he warned me right there and then that he was a monk, and he followed the routine of living for three months in the secular world and another three at the retreat. And it was only in the secular world that he was able to translate.

We spent two years and two months working on this project. In Ukraine, it was the first-ever publication of the ancient Chinese classics of that significance and scale. The original text was accompanied by foreword and commentaries. The publication passed through the hands of two independent reviewers: textual critic Yegor Grebnev from the Oxford University, who researched the period of the Zhou dynasty when the book was written (3rd century B.C.), and Anastasia Strelkova, PhD from the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.

«Zhuangzi» comes with a classical design. For the book cover, we used the painting «Nighttime Anchorage» from the Chinese collection of the Bohdan and Varvara Khanenko National Museum of Arts. It shows a sage lying inside the boat. At the end of the book, there’s a commentary about this painting written by Marta Logvyn, a leading research associate at the Khanenko museum. Marta also doubled as an academic editor of «Zhuangzi».

We have also published the translation of «Decoded», a bestselling spy novel by the Chinese writer Mai Jia. It was an idea of its translator, Nadiya Kirnosova. I must say that as a publisher, I do not just commission the books. When our press starts collaborating with translators from eastern languages, we agree right away to work as one team and focus on one result. Asian literature was not published in Ukraine before, so as orientalists, we have to be interested in filling this publishing niche together.

We published «The Classic of Tea» following the Palladius transcription system localized for the Ukrainian language. Let me explain it to those who never wondered about the intricacies of rendering the Asian languages in writing. This system is a set of rules on transcribing and transliterating the Chinese language in Russian Cyrillic. It was used in the publications in the Russian Empire after the Chinese-Russian dictionary by Palladiy and Popov was published in 1888. Later, it was followed in the USSR, and in 2009, the system was localized for the Ukrainian alphabet. This transcription system has traditionally been used in Ukrainian translations because, in Soviet times, there were no departments of Asian studies in Ukraine. Orientalists could study only in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, or Vladivostok. That’s why the system does not account for the characteristics of the Ukrainian language, in particular, the distinction between letters «г» and «ґ» or «і» and «ї». There were no officially approved rules at the time: some translators adapted the sounding according to their own principles, while others followed the traditional Palladius transcription system without any adaptations. So, when I received the first three translations in winter, each one followed a different spelling. It did not work for me. In Ukraine, there is also a lack of professional editors speaking Asian languages. On our first couple of books, we cooperated with Oleksandr Stukalo, Yulia Dzhuhastrianska, and Olena Podorozhnia—excellent professionals bold enough to take on complicated texts. If not for them, we would’ve never pulled off those projects. At the same time, the publishing house was supposed to guide the editors through the nuances they weren’t familiar with.

Meanwhile, it happened so that I got a call from Ukrainian Catholic University in November. They said they wanted to organize an orthographic seminar on the Chinese language in memory of Oleksa Horbach. I took along our translator Nadiya Kirnosova, associate professor of Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University, as she had already been working on this issue. Actually, it was Nadiya who adapted the Russian Palladius system to the Ukrainian language back in 2009. Unfortunately, the academic community ignored her proposals on how to work this problem out.

UCU decided to organize the seminar given that one of their associate professors, Nataliya Tsisar, had taught the Ukrainian language in China for three years. She grounded her report and conclusions on her personal experience and observations she made when teaching Ukrainian to Chinese students. It was the first seminar focused entirely on an Asian language, but it was just one in the whole series of seminars organized throughout the year with the participation of linguists specializing in English, German, Latin, and other languages. The experience of fellow linguists was invaluable. The discussion went on for six hours! Afterward, Nadiya and Nataliya finalized their orthographic system together, based on the conclusions made during the seminar.

«The Classic of Tea» was done earlier, so we kept the Palladius system localized for the Ukrainian language. But «Zhuangzi» was published following the Kirnosova-Tsisar system. According to the old system, the philosopher’s name is transcribed as «Чжуан-цзи», while according to the new one, it’s «Джвандзи». The team working on «Zhuangzi» accepted the changes and agreed to redo all the transcriptions in the book that was almost ready for print. Frankly, it was the academic editor and I who did most of the work, but I think it was worth it, as the new transcription worked in the translated text perfectly well. In the end, we decided to adopt the Kirnosova-Tsisar transcription system as the standard for our publishing house. So, all our new translations from Chinese will be published following this system.

As a mother, I have always dreamt of publishing children’s books. In 2018, China was the guest of honor at Bologna Children’s Book Fair. So, it was a great chance to explore the Asian market of children’s books. In Asia, children’s books—for example, Korean—have completely different visual aesthetics. It was really hard to make your way to the Korean stalls in Bologna. People were standing in long lines to get to them. Korea is so trendy. I would love to publish some Korean books, but I am not sure yet what parents would think about them. I guess they would buy these books for themselves, not for their children.

Our first children’s book will be «Himalayan Stories. Tales from Tibet, Bhutan, Ladakh, and Sikkim». It’s curious that it was written by a Czech expert in Tibetan studies, Miroslav Pošta. He curated the collection of fairy tales from those regions, retelling and translating them from Tibetan and English. Tetiana Savchenko translated the book, and Olena Ognieva, the only Ukrainian expert in Tibetan studies, helped us as a consultant. We kept the original design but hesitated about publishing a foreword for children. We discussed it for quite a while. The Czech edition includes a long afterword about the characteristics of the Tibetan language and numbers, and we decided to keep it. Finally, we did include a short foreword written by Olena Ognieva. There will be a blurb written by Tetiana Yalovchak, the first Ukrainian woman to conquer all the seven highest mountains around the globe, including Everest. She will send her greetings to the Ukrainian children.

In French, «safran» means «saffron». Originally from Asia, this flower has conquered the whole world. For many centuries, it has been the world’s most expensive spice. A gram of saffron costs more than a gram of gold, and one can harvest only a few hundred grams of it from a huge flower field. It is no wonder that the saffron color became the color of Chinese emperors, Buddhist monks, and later European aristocracy. Saffron has also been linked to numerous health benefits. It increases the levels of serotonin, a hormone of happiness, so it is commonly used for pain, melancholy, and depression.

At our publishing house, we harvest symbolic saffron, bringing together Asian writers and Ukrainian scholars, translators, Eastern languages experts, artists, and designers familiar with the aesthetics of Eastern art to create unique books. We would like our readers to open them and enjoy contact with the majestic and mysterious world of Asia.

A fascinating book about Chinese cuisine written by Kateryna Zavertailo, a Ukrainian woman who lived in China for many years. This book will include ten adapted recipes of the Chinese dishes that readers would be able to cook in their own kitchen using ingredients available in Ukraine. Let’s hope that our books will open up a new world to Ukrainian readers.

By Mariana Khemiy

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