The translation of

Hans Christian Andersen’s

fairy tales in China
A socio-historical interpretation

Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

Guangxi University | Tsinghua University

Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales have been popular among Chinese
readers since they were introduced to China through translation a century
ago. This paper studies the translation of Andersen’s fairy tales in China by
focusing on prominent Chinese translators of Andersen and their landmark
translations. Regarding translation as a social activity, the author attempts to
interpret the behaviour of the translator in terms of the historical context in
which it occurred, as well as the corresponding ideology of literature. It is
argued that the language styles and translating strategies adopted by the
translators of different ages have varied according to the translator’s under-
standing of the original works, his purpose of translating, the publishers’
interests and the readers’ expectations in the target culture, as well as the
image of Andersen constructed in the socio-cultural context from which the
translation emerged. Therefore, the translation practice, which has
contributed to the canonization of Andersen in China, is a process of the
translators’ negotiations with the fluid Chinese poetics and ideology of the
20th century.

Keywords: Hans Christian Andersen, Chinese translation, fairy tales, socio-

cultural contexts

1. Introduction

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) is perhaps the most well-known Danish

writer in the history of world literature. Born in Odense, Andersen left his home-
town when he was only fourteen and travelled to Copenhagen where he began
to work for the Royal Theatre. Although he had attempted to start his literary
career by writing plays for the theatre, his talent of creating short narratives

https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00086.luo | Published online: 27 June 2019

Babel 65:2 (2019), pp. 153–174. issn 0521-9744 | e‑issn 1569-9668 © John Benjamins Publishing Company
154 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

finally helped him to gain a reputation of the most important writer of fairy tales
in the 19th century. Andersen’s first booklet of stories written in Danish, Fairy
Tales Told for Children, was published in 1835, only eleven years before the tales
were first introduced into English-speaking world. Nevertheless, it took several
more decades for Andersen’s tales to travel from Denmark to China. Even though
Andersen had become famous in Europe in the 1840s, his name did not appear
in Chinese until the early 20th century. After Zhou Zuoren (周作人), a modern
Chinese intellectual, had published an essay entitled “Biography of Andersen, a
Danish Poet” (《丹麥詩人安兌爾然轉 – Dānmài Shìrén Anduìěrrán Zhuàn) to
introduce Andersen to Chinese readers, early Chinese translations of his works
gradually emerged.
The 20th century has witnessed the publication of (re)transations and inter-
cultural adaptations of Andersen’s works around the world. While the translations
of the early 20th century China were, in most cases, rendered into classical
Chinese and targeted to the educated adult readers, those produced in recent
decades are always expressly prepared for children. The boom in publishing
industry after the 1990s has led to a proliferation of Chinese translations of
Andersen’s works, giving this internationally reputable storyteller more opportu-
nities to share his stories with his Chinese readers; meanwhile, some of the trans-
lated works become canonized in the process of reprinting. The most frequently
reprinted translations after the establishment of People’ Republic of China are
accomplished by Ye Junjian (葉君健), a distinguished translator and writer who
has been the first person to translate Andersen’s stories directly from Danish to
Chinese.
Andersen has been very influential in modern Chinese literature and culture
since he was introduced to China. Enlightened by Andersen’s writings, the
Chinese fairy tale writers in the early 20th century have either imitated his style
or woven the motifs of his stories into their own literary creation. As Bamberger
(1978: 23) points out, “the English collectors (of fairy tales) Andrew Lang and
Joseph Jacobs may in certain respects be regarded as pupils of the Brothers
Grimm”, so has Ye Shengtao (葉聖陶), who is “assured of a permanent place in the
history of Chinese children’s literature as the pioneer of the fairytale “(Farquhar
1999: 94), once claimed that he initiated his career of writing fairy tales in the 1920s
under the influence of western writers including Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar
Wilde and Grimm, who had been introduced to China around the May 4th Revo-
lution (Ye 1990: 1). Owing to the efforts of the prominent translators, Andersen is a
household name in China today and almost every Chinese people is familiar with
his stories, “The Ugly Duckling”, “The Little Match Girl”, and “The Emperor’s New
Clothes”, among others.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 155

Recent researches on the translation and reception of Andersen’s works in

China can be roughly reduced to four categories:
1. the translation and reception of Andersen’s fairy tales in a particular period
(such as around the May 4th revolution or in the early 20th century) (Qin
2004; Li 2006);
2. translators’ behavior in particular socio-cultural context (Liu and Luo 2014;
Ye 2016);
3. the impact of Andersen’s fairy tales on Chinese literature and culture (Zhang
1992; Li 2002; Wang 2009);
4. the translating of Andersen’s works and its interplay with the ideology of
China (Lu 1999; Liang 2006).
Li (2014) has accomplished a comprehensive study focusing on the Chinese trans-
lations of Andersen’s fairy tales and her study is significant in that it takes both
linguistic and non-linguistic factors into consideration when discussing the trans-
lation of Andersen’s fairy tales in China.
In the present paper, the author will firstly deal with major translations of
Andersen’s works before 1918. With the socio-cultural context of early 20th
century taken into consideration, the author will examine the translated texts
and review essential critiques on those translations to explain how Andersen’s
works were introduced to China in that particular period. Then, the author will
briefly sketch a century-long history (1918–2017) of the translation and reception
of Andersen’s works in China by drawing on some important translators and their
vernacular Chinese translations published after the outbreak of the New Cultural
Movement.

2. A Danish storyteller comes to China: Early Chinese translations of

Andersen’s tales and the socio-cultural context

Andersen’s name was first introduced to China in 1909 by Sun Yuxiu (孫毓修),
who served as an editor of “Lilliput Library Series”1 (童話系列 – Tónghuà Xìliè),

1. A typical definition for the term” fairy tales” (or fairy stories) in English may be “short
narratives, set in the distant past, of events that would be impossible in the real world” (Hanh
2015: 195). Zhou Zuoren points out that there might be literary works resembling western fairy
tales in ancient China, but no special name was invented for them (Zhao 1927). According to
Zhu (2015: 133), Sun Yuxiu may be the first person to use the term “tonghua” (written as 童话
in simplified Chinese), a loan word from Japanese (written as 童話) where it means stories for
children. However, Sun did not adopt “fairy tales”, but instead, “Lilliput” as the English trans-
lation of the term “童话” when he was the editor for “Lilliput Library Series”. Today, “童话”
156 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

a series of 102 chapbooks published for children by the Commercial Press2 during
1908 and 1923. Among the stories of those books, some were retellings of the
traditional Chinese tales to children, some were interlingual adaptations of the
canonized western tales while others were created by the editor himself. Sun
accomplished 77 categories of the whole series and his being the editor of “Lilliput
Library Series”, as well as his achievements in translating and writing fairy tales
have left the public an impression that he is the patriarch of children’s books in
modern China. In his essay “Notes on Classical European and American Novels”
(《讀歐美名家小說札記 – Dú Ouměi Míngjiā Xiǎoshuō Zhājì), Sun translated,
for the first time, “Andersen” into “安徒生” (Antúshēng), a name that is widely
accepted in China today. In that essay, Sun wrote

The Danish storyteller Andersen is famous for his mastery of simple language.
His fairy tales have impressed many (foreign) readers and are still popular among
them today. In western languages, the colloquial style coincides well with the
written one. Thus, all the witty remarks and even the barks of animals can be
recorded with letters. That is why when you read Andersen, you will feel as if you
were hearing him talking volubly, through which you will be impressed…
(Sun 1909; translated by the author from Chinese)

Sun’s comments indicate his appreciation of the language style that Andersen
adopted and meanwhile he also added Andersen’s titles such as the “Little
Mermaid” (1917) and the “Brave Tin Soldier” (1918) into the “Lilliput Library
Series”. Nevertheless, his efforts to the transmission and reception of Andersen in
China are always neglected by Chinese scholars today. Some Chinese researchers
have mistaken “安兌爾然” (Anduìěrrán), a name first used in 1912 (three years
after Sun’s “安徒生”) by Zhou Zuoren, as the first Chinese name of Andersen.
(Wang 2005; Li 2005). Zhou Zuoren published his “A Brief Discussion on Fairy
Tales” (《童話略論》 – Tóng huà Lüèlùn) in 1912 where he mentioned Andersen

has become an accepted Chinese equivalent for western “fairy tales” even though its denotative
meaning in the modern Chinese context may be, as is defined in the Modern Chinese Dictio-
nary, children’s stories or imaginative mythical, often gothic stories that suites children’s taste,
partially identical to that of “fairy tales”.
2. The Commercial Press (商務印書館有限公司, Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī),
founded in Shanghai in the year of 1897, is the first modern publishing organization in China.
In 1903, it became China’s first primary education textbook publisher and later produced 2550
secondary school textbooks that became popular in China. Besides, it also launched many
magazines for the young, among which there were Education Magazine (《教育雜誌》，
Jiàoyù Zázhì), Youth Magazine (《少年雜誌》，Shàonián Zázhì), Students’ Magazine (《學生
雜誌》，Xuéshēng Zázhì) etc.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 157

Creating fairy tales is so difficult a task that one who tries it must have a thorough
understanding of children’s psychology and that he could write fairy tales well
only when his psychological traits have much in common with those of children.
Among all the European creators of fairy tales today, Andersen is the most
eminent because of his childlike nature, which did not fade even until the time
when he was nearly 70 years old.
(Zhou 1989, translated by the author from Chinese)

In 1913, Zhou published another essay i.e. “Biography of Andersen, a Danish

Poet” in order to introduce him to Chinese readers. Zhou’s own Chinese trans-
lation of the “Fourteenth Night” in Andersen’s A Picture Book without Pictures
was attached to that essay where he praised Andersen as “a perpetual child who
is talented in perceiving the outer and expressing his inner world” (Zhou 1995).
Even though Zhou believed that “the innocence in Andersen’s stories caters to the
young readers” (ibid.), the translation of the “Fourteenth Night” was exquisitely
rendered into classical Chinese, a language style that would hardly appeal to most
children at that time, who were rarely educated, as is argued by Zhu (2015: 35),
“children’s world represented in children’s literature is always constructed with
vernacular Chinese because classical Chinese is usually incompatible with chil-
dren’s soul”.
In ancient China, the status of children was very low, which is a similar case to
that of European countries before the seventeen century. The feudal social system
of China resulted in a misunderstanding that children were merely smaller adult
dependent upon their parents and the specific needs of children were not widely
recognized until the May 4th revolution. Zohar (1986: 3) argues that “the creation
of the notion of childhood was an indispensable precondition for the production
of children’s books and determined to a large extent the development and options
of development for children’s literature”. In ancient China, there were few books
written specially for children and there was not an official name for what is viewed
today as “children’s literature”. The peripheral position of children’s literature in
Chinese literary system and that of children within the ancient Chinese cultural
system may explain why the name of Sun Yuxiu, an editor of children’s books has
not appeared in the literary history of China as frequently as that of Zhou Zuoren,
who was a professor of Peking University in 1918, and why Zhou’s translation of
the Fourteenth Night was not targeted to children even though he, as the trans-
lator, had noticed the childlikeness in Andersen’s tales.
If, as is argued by André Lefevere (1992: 9), “translation is the most obviously
recognizable type of rewriting”, then Liu Bannong’s (劉半農) adaptive translation
of Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is perhaps one of the most typical
cases of translation as rewriting. Free translation of literary works was a fashion in
late Qing Dynasty, when translating was used as an instrument for the innovation
158 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

of traditional Chinese culture and society. Under such circumstances, Liu Bannong
published his “Portrait of an Afficionado of Things Western” (《洋迷小影》 –
Yángmí Xiǎoyǐng), which is still regarded by many studies as the “earliest transla-
tion” of Andersen’s work in China (Hu 1982; Li 2005; Wang 2009)3 even though the
target work seems to be more an intercultural adaptation of “The Emperor’s New
Clothes” than a translation. Liu’s translation begins with his own voice

The following work is originally entitled “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, which is a
fairy tale of Andersen, a distinguished Danish writer of the monogatari. As a tale
with rich moral messages and jocular wording, it has been adapted into a Japanese
comedy known as “New Clothes”…I will, on the basis of Chinese traditions and
customs, transfer the moral messages of the Japanese adaptation and those of the
original Danish work into the present piece, with which I will severely criticize
the fetishists of western things in our country.
(Liu 1914, translated by the author from Chinese)

In fact, Liu recreated a new comic fiction intertexutual with Andersen’s “The
Emperor’s New Clothes” where he satirized a Chinese student who, after studying
abroad, became a fetishist of western goods. Like the emperor in Andersen’s tale,
the protagonist (the student) in Liu Bannong’s fiction was exceedingly found of
western things. When two swindlers from western countries came to him and said
that they were the best weavers in the world who could weave the latest invented
western fabrics, which were only visible to people with a kind heart, the story
began to develop almost in parallel with Andersen’s original one. Obviously, Liu
Bannong’s trans-rewriting of Andersen’s “The New Clothes of the Emperor” is a
purposeful activity of social and political significance to the early 20th century
China, a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society where even some educated people
would probably be ambivalent about their citizenship. The language used in Liu’s
translation is half vernacular, indicating that the priority was given by the translator
to the readability and hence the reception of the story among the mass audience.
In January of 1918, the first book of Andersen’s fairy tales in Chinese was
published by China Publishing House (中華書局 – Zhōnghuá Shūjǘ). This little
book is entitled Nine out of Ten (《十之九》 – Shí Zhī Jiǔ) and consists of six
fairy tales of Andersen, translated by Chen Jialin (陳家麟) and Chen Dadeng

3. Some scholars believe that Zhou Zuoren’s translation of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in
classical Chinese published in 1911, which is nearly three years before Liu Bannong’s “Portrait
of an Afficionado of Things Western”, is the first Chinese translation of Andersen’s fairy tale.
(See Li 2014: 7 footnotes) Zhou had produced the translations of Andersen’s fairy tales in clas-
sical Chinese before 1915, but after the New Culture Movement broke out, he gradually became
a critic of traditional Chinese culture and a pioneer advocating the new culture and vernacular
Chinese language style.(see Part 3)
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 159

(陳大鐙). The translation, however, is criticized by Zhou Zuoren to be too

literary for child readers because the language adopted by the translators is clas-
sical Chinese. Zhou’s critique on the book, Nine Out of Ten, entitled “Random
Jottings no.24”, (《隨感錄二十四》 – Suígǎnlù Er shísì) appeared merely eight
months later on the New Youth (《新青年》 – Xīn Qīngnián). According to
Zhou Zuoren,

Translating from [foreign languages] into monosyllabic Chinese characters is

extremely difficult. Even though the translation is an elaborate piece, what is
transferred may be merely the meaning rather than the tone of the original. This
situation will become worse if the translators are literary giants who are self-
absorbed and translate with classical Chinese only… They tend to render all of
the alien didactic texts into a traditional Chinese style …which is as complex as
the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius. Such practice is undoubtedly devas-
tating for Andersen since his uniqueness lies in the childlike writing style and his
innocent mind. (Zhou 1918, translated by the author from Chinese)

Zhou’s approval of Andersen’s writing style can be traced back to his philosophy
of humane literature, which argues for the humanitarian nature of literature. The
notion of humane literature on which Zhou Zuoren insisted has also led to his
theory of child-oriented literature, a revolutionary notion of children’s literature
influential to children’s culture during the early 1920s.

3. Translating Andersen’s fairy tales into vernacular Chinese Literature:

The storyteller’s centurial travelling in China

Deeply rooted in Confucianism, traditional Chinese literature had been governed

by feudalism for about two thousand years when the eruption of the May Fourth
Movement in 1919 brought about a radical literary revolution. However, the May
Fourth Movement is by no means accidental. Closely associated with it is the
New Culture Movement4 launched in 1915. In that year, New Youth,5 as a magazine

4. The New Culture Movement (新文化運動 – Xīn Wénhuà Yùndòng) sprang from the disil-
lusionment with traditional Chinese culture for its failure to address China’s problems at that
time. Therefore, the intellectuals including Chen Duxiu, Hu Shi, Zhou Zuoren, Lu Xun etc. began
to lead a revolt against Confucianism and they advocated the “western thoughts” whose core
concepts are science and democracy. The major aspects of this revolutionary movement include
a call for vernacular literature, women’s liberation, democratic and egalitarian values etc.
5. New Youth (《新青年》 – Xīn Qīngnián) is a magazine founded on September, 15th, 1915
by Chen Duxiu, and it has played an important role in initiating the New Culture Movement in
the 1910s and spreading new ideas and thoughts during the period of May Fourth Movement.
160 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

through which the new ideas of culture and literature were spread within China
during the period of May Fourth Movement,6 was established.
Spearheaded by a cohort of pioneering writers including Chen Duxiu (陳獨
秀), Hu Shi (胡適), Lu Xun (魯迅), Liu Bannong (劉半農), and Zhou Zuoren (周
作人) etc., the New Culture Movement advocates a literary campaign to promote
a new literature written in vernacular instead of classical Chinese. The movement
had a stranglehold on Chinese political, intellectual and literary discourse (Ying
2010: 148). While most of the traditional Chinese literary works were only targeted
to educated adult readers in late Qing Dynasty, the new literature, according to
the reformists, should be simple, lucid and fresh enough for the accessibility of the
average people. The literary campaign was officially announced by several Chinese
innovative intellectuals. Hu Shi’s essay, “Modest Proposals for the Reform of Liter-
ature” (《文學改良芻議》 – Wénxué Gǎiliáng Chúyì) appeared in January, 1917,
on New Youth, in which he suggested eight specific ways of innovating the tradi-
tional literature.Chen Duxiu, in his “On the Literary Revolution” (《文學革命
論》 – Wénxué Gémìng Lùn), proposed three goals for the literary campaign,
which has “unquestionably accomplished a great deal in its attack of feudalism
and the old literature” (Tang 1993: 5).
After the year of 1918, a number of new translations of Andersen’s fairy tales
came into being. The translations are “new” because firstly they are rendered in
vernacular Chinese, a new language style advocated by the New Culture Move-
ment and meanwhile, many of them are translated expressly for children, repre-
senting a new conception of children’s literature (i.e. child-oriented literature) in
modern China.

The magazine was also a platform for vernacular Chinese literature at that time where Lu Xun
published his” A Madman’s Diary” (《狂人日記》 – Kuáng Rén Rì Jì), the first literary work in
vernacular Chinese throughout the history.
6. The May Fourth Movement (五四運動 – Wǔ-sìYùndòng) is an anti-imperialistic, social
and political movement motivated by the Chinese government’s weak response to the Treaty
of Versailles signed on 28, April, 1919, awarding Japan the territories of Jiaozhou, Shandong
Province, which had been surrendered by Germany after the siege of Qingdao. The movement
started on May, 4th, 1919 with the protests of students and teachers in Peking University and
more demonstrations and strikes soon spread all over the country. Gradually, it evolved into a
national movement to reevaluate the traditional Chinese culture and values, which were identi-
fied by Chinese intellectuals as the reasons for China’s backwardness.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 161

3.1 The translators and their new translations of Andersen in the period of
the Republic of China (1918–1949)

Zhou Zuoren published his “Humane Literature” (《人的文學》 – Rén De

Wénxué) in the December issue of New Youth in 1918. Zhou elaborated his concept
of “humane literature” as follows

What I call humanitarianism is not charity as referred to in such common saying

as “have pity and commiserate with the people” or “wide generosity and relief of
distress among the masses.” It is rather an individualistic ideology of basing every-
thing on man…. (Zhou 1996, translated from Chinese by Wolff: 154)

Nevertheless, Zhu (2014: 65) believes that “the literature proposed by Zhou Zuoren
in his “Humane Literature” is first and foremost the literature that is meant to
further children’s and women’s right to be human”, because according to Zhou
(1996: 157), “humane literature must take morality as its basis”, and the point of
view that was illustrated by Zhou himself with two kinds of love, i.e. the love
between couples (or men and women) and that between adults and their chil-
dren.(ibid.). Shortly after the publication of “Humane Literature”, Zhou’s Chinese
translation of Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” (《賣火柴的女兒》 – Mài
Huǒchái De Nǚér）appeared on the January issue of New Youth in 1919. Zhou
adopted vernacular Chinese in his translation, which is relatively more reader-
friendly to children and the broad masses than previous archaistic translations,
yet his translation is not targeted to child readers. On one hand, Zhou’s translation
is a text written in premature vernacular Chinese and still carries some traces of
classical Chinese (Li 2014: 90);on the other hand, the New Youth, as a magazine for
innovative thoughts and theories, was hardly regarded as a publication for chil-
dren. Zhou added an epilogue to his translation in order to provide the readers
with the background information of the author and the original story. At the end
of the epilogue, Zhou compared Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” with N. A.
Nekrasov’s “Red-Nosed Frost”,7 arguing that the two works are related because
both of the writers have depicted “females frozen to death” (Zhou 1919). This
comparative conclusion may indicate Zhou’s special attention on the tragic ending
of the story and his humanitarian concern for women and children, which will
corroborate the translator’s idea of “humane literature”, and that kind of concern

7. Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov (1821–1878) is a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher,
whose deeply compassionate poems about peasants Russia made him the hero of liberal and
radical circles of Russian intelligentsia. Red-Nosed Frost is a narrative poem about a young
widow who, after burying her husband freezes to death while chopping wood in the forest
(Chandler et al. 2015).
162 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

may also be the motivation of Zhou’s choosing “The Little Match Girl” as his first
attempt of translating Andersen in vernacular Chinese.
During the decade following the year of 1919, many Chinese translations
of Andersen’s fairy tales were produced, most of which appeared on the major
literary journals and newspapers such as Fiction Monthly8 (《小說月報》 –
Xiǎoshuō Yuènào), Supplement to the Morning Post (《晨報副刊》 – Chénbào
Fùkān), Women’s Magazine (《婦女雜誌》 – Fùnǚ Zázhì), and Literature Weekly
(《文學週報》 – Wénxué Zhōub-ào). Andersen’s 120th anniversary falls on the
year of 1925 when Fiction Monthly devoted two special issues to its commemo-
ration. The contributors of the special issues include Zhao Jingshen (趙景深)，
Gu Junzheng (顧均正), Zheng Zhenduo (鄭振鐸), Xu Tiaofu (徐調孚) etc. The
two special issues published 21 fairy tales created by Andersen, all of which were
translated by these contributors. Together with the stories were some introduc-
tory essays on Andersen’s childhood, homeland, life and his fairy tales. Gu and Xu
compiled a chronicle of Andersen’s life and Zheng Zhenduo, who was the chief
editor of Fiction Monthly, accomplished “Andersen’s Works and Some References
on Andersen” (《安徒生的作品及關於安徒生的參考書籍》 – Antúshēng De
Zuòpǐn Jí Guānyú Antúshēng De Cānkǎo Shūjí), an index for Andersen’s works,
their Chinese and English translations and critiques written in Chinese at that
time. According to the statistics provided by Zheng (1925), there would have been
at least forty translations of Andersen’s fairy tales (published on journals and
magazines) and four collections of his tales by the end of 1925, the year in which
the two special issues of Fiction Monthly were published. Undoubtedly, Fiction
Monthly has played an important role in the popularization of Andersen in the
20th century China.
Zhao Jingshen and Gu Junzheng were among the most productive translators
of Andersen’s fairy tales in the 1930s. As one of the activist literary critics during
the period the May Fourth Movement, Zhao became interested in Andersen after
reading Zhou Zuoren’s “Radom Jottings no.24” when he was a middle school
student. The epistolary exchanges between Zhou and Zhao focusing on the defi-
nition, function and classification of fairy tales were published on the Supplement
for the Morning Post in 1922. Like most of his contemporaries, Zhao Jingshen
also appreciated Andersen’s writing style, which, according to him, “stays close

8. Fiction Monthly is a Chinese literary journal launched by the Commercial Press in 1910. At
the beginning, it only published literature in classical Chinese, but its editorial direction was
changed when Mao Dun (茅盾) took the position of chief editor in 1921. In the first issue of
the 12th volume (published in 1921), the journal proclaimed its “new editorial direction”, that is,
to publish the translations and critical essays of western literary works and to encourage new
literature, especially the literature of realism which is a reflection of life and society. The journal
published two special issues for Andersen in 1925, when the chief editor was Zheng Zhenduo.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 163

to the heart of children and delights them with the objects and phenomena of
nature” (Zhao 1924). However, what makes Zhao different is his perception of
“dual readers” in Andersen’s fairy tales. According to Lathey (2016: 2), “in many
early children’s books, the adult-child relationship is inscribed within the text
in the form of an omniscient adult narrator who inspires or admonishes young
readers, while tacitly or even overtly addressing the adult”. Andersen’s fairy tales is
a case of such, as is pointed out by Coillie (2008: 550), “although Andersen wrote
down his fairy tales for children, he certainly had his adult public in mind”. In his
letter to Zhou Zuoren written in 1922, Zhao argued that

What is narrated in Andersen’s fairy tales, especially in “The Snow Queen” and
“The Wild Swan”, which are filled with artistry, is not as simple as that in Grimm’s
tales. Children can hardly be capable of understanding such a poetic and
marvelous style of utterances, which are seldom used by themselves. Thus, I
believe that Andersen has adopted the tone of a storyteller for children in some
(but not all) of his tales.
(Zhao 1927: 72–73, translated by the author from Chinese)

Credited as the first writer of literary fairy tales, Andersen has filled his works
with his own imagination, which is crucial to childhood, but represented them
with a poetic language style, which belongs to the world of adult. That is why Zhao
believes the tone of storyteller for children is only adapted in some of Andersen’s
tales. In his “Critical Biography of Andersen” (《安徒生評傳》 – An Tú Shēng
Píng Zhuàn), Zhao compared Andersen to “a flower blooming in the icy wind and
snow, which not only enjoys its popularity among children, but also brings adult
readers, whether young or old, to the place where innocence is found” (ibid.: 115).
Zhao Jingshen’s translations of Andersen began to appear on such journals
as Woman’s Magazine and Youth Magazine shortly after Zhou’s publication of
“Radom Jottings no.24”. His translations were quickly recognized by various
publishers, literary authorities and organizations even though he was only a
middle school student who translated tales from their English translations. Zhao’s
translation of A Picture Book without Pictures was published by the New Culture
Bookstore (新文化書店 – Xīn Wénhuà Shūdiàn) in 1923. Following it were A
Collection of Andersen’s Fairy Tales (《安徒生童話集》 – Antúshēng Tónghuàjí)
published in 1924 and A New Collection of Andersen’s Fairy Tales (《安徒生童話
新集》 – Antúsheēng Tónghu-à Xīn Jí) published in 1928. Of the eight stories in
the latter “New Collection”, seven were new stories translated for the first time,
except “The Princess and the Pea”, which, according to Zhao (1928: 1), “was the
retranslation of a story that had been included in the book of 1924”.
Zhao declared that his new translation of “The Princess and The Pea” (1928)
was based on the English translation published by Oxford University Press, which
164 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

was worked out by W.A&J.K Craigie. Even though Zhao has claimed in the preface
of A New Collection of Andersen’s Fairy Tales that “the new translation of ‘The
Princess on the Pea’ is completely different from his translation accomplished in
1924 “(ibid.), a textual analysis will verify that his “new translation” is undoubtedly
influenced by his previous translation, because some phrases in the “new trans-
lation”, of which the English equivalents are absent in Craigie’s English transla-
tion, were directly copied by Zhao from his former translation. In the following
examples where “ST” indicates Craigie’s English translation of “The Princess and
the Pea”, and “TT1“ and “TT2“indicate Zhao Jingshen’s two Chinese translations
produced in 1928 (TT1) and 1924 (TT2), will illustrate this point.
Example 1. ST: So he came home again, and was quite sad; for he wished so much
to have a real princess. (Andersen 1914)
TT1: 後來他很憂悶的回到王宮，一心只想有一個真正的公主做他
的妻。 (Andersen 1928)
[Hòulái, tā hěn yōumèn de huídào wánggōng, yī xīn zhǐ xiǎng yǒu
yīgè zhēn gōngzhǔ zuò tāde qī.]
TT2: 後來他很憂悶的回到王宮，一心只想有一個真正的公主做他
的妻。 (Andersen 1924)
[Hòulái, tā hěn yōumèn de huídào wánggōng, yì xīn zhǐ xiǎng yǒu
yīgè zhēn gōngzhǔ zuò tāde qī.]
Back Translation of TT1 and TT2: So he came home again, and was quite
sad; for he wished so much to have a real princess to be his wife.
Example 2. ST: Then there was a knocking at the town-gate, and the old King
went out to open it. (Andersen 1914)
TT1: 那時門很急的敲着，太子的父親，老王親自去開門。
(Andersen 1928)
[Nàshí chéngmén hěn jíde qiāo zhe, tàizǐde fùqīn, lǎowáng
qīnzìchūqǜ kāi mén.]
TT2: 忽然門很急的敲着，太子的父親，老王親自去開門。
(Andersen 1924)
[Hūrán mén hěn jíde qiāo zhe, tàizǐde fùqīn, lǎowáng qīn zì
chūqǜ kāi mén.]
Back Translation of TT1: Then, there was a peremptory knocking at the
gate, and the prince’s father, the old King went out to open it.
Back Translation of TT2: Suddenly, there was a peremptory knocking at
the gate, and the prince’s father, the old King went out to open it.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 165

Example 3. ST: ‘Yes, we will soon find out,’ thought the old Queen. But she said
nothing, only went into the bed chamber. (Andersen 1914)
TT1: 老王后想，”不久我們就能知道了！”， 伊設下計策，一個字
也不露出，只是 悄悄的跑到臥室裏。 (Andersen 1924)
[Lǎowánghòu xiǎng, “bùjiǔ wǒmén jiù néng zhīdào le!”, yī shè xià
jìcè, yī gè zì yě bū lòuchū, zhǐ shì qiāo qiāo de pǎodào wòshìlǐ.]
TT2: 老王后想，”不久我們就能知道了！”， 伊設下計策，一個字
也不露出，只 是悄悄的跑到臥室裏。 (Andersen 1928)
[Lǎowánghòu xiǎng, “bùjiǔ wǒmén jiù néng zhīdào le!”, yī shè xià
jìcè, yī gè zì yě bū lòuchū, zhǐ shì qiāoqiāo de pǎodào wòshì lǐ.]
Back Translation of TT1 and TT2: The old Queen thought, ‘yes, we will
soon find out’. She ciphered out a scheme but said nothing, only went
into the bed chamber without being noticed.

For the examples above, if we only carry out contrastive analysis between STs
and TT1s, which are claimed by the translator to be their translations, the under-
lined phrases such as 做他的妻 (to be his wife), 很急的 (peremptory), 太子的
父親 (the Prince’s father) may be considered as the result of translator’s visibility
in literary translation. But if we compare TT1s with TT2s, a new conclusion could
be drawn that instead of being a matter of translator’s visibility, the underlined
phrases are merely copied by the translator from his earlier translation (the bold
characters in TT2s are copied into TT1s). As is pointed out by Lathey (2010: 162),
translators sometimes use existing translations as a benchmark against which
to measure and refine their works. This is true for the case of Zhao Jingshen’s
“retranslation” of “The Princess and the Pea”, yet the two versions do have some-
thing that is significantly different, that is, their different endings. While the trans-
lation of 1928 ends with “你們留意，這是一個真實的故事” (Nǐmén liúyì, zhè
shì yīgè zhēnshí de gùshi), which is a literal reproduction of Craigie’s “You look,
this is a true story”, his translation of 1924 ends with “這樣的公主是不是很敏銳
呢?” (Zhèyàng de gōngzhǔ shìbushì hěn mǐngruìne? ；Isn’t the princess keenly
sensitive?). According to Pedersen (2004: 266), W. A. and J. K. Craigie’s transla-
tion “is really quite reliable at any rate” and his “Princess and Pea” is “virtu-
ally identical with Dulcken’s (translation)…but is closer to Danish version than
Dulcken’s”. Obviously Craigie’s translation, which is faithful to the original Danish
tale implies that the ending of the original tale has some practical purposes, such
as to satirize the old queen (or the ruling class) who uses a pea to identify the
real princess or the princess who is extremely tender-skinned. Zhao Jingshen once
claimed that while the translations of Andersen’s tales he produced in the 1920s
were mostly on the basis of the abridged or adapted English translations published
as children’s Christmas gifts, those he produced after the 1930s were usually relay
166 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

translations of faithful English translations published by Oxford University Press.

(Zhao 1989: 618) Therefore, the reason why the ending of Zhao’s first translation
was manipulated is probably that the translators (either Zhao or the Danish-
English translator) believes that the expected readers will be too young to inter-
pret the implications of “You look, this is a true story”.
Around the 1930s, Kaiming Book Company (開明書店 – Kāimíng Shūdiàn)
launched “Series of World Literature for Young Readers” (世界少年文學叢刊 –
Shìjiè Shàonián Wénxué Cóngkān), an publishing program lasted for 20 years in
which eight collections of Andersen’s fairy tales in Chinese were chosen. Zhao
Jingshen was the translator for three of them: Tales That Moon Can Tell (《月的
話》 – Yuè De Huà), Under the Willow (《柳下》 – Liǚxià) and The Emperor’s
New Clothes (《皇帝的新衣》 – Huángdì De Xīnyī). Gu Junzheng, who was then
an editor of the book company, was responsible for another three: The Nightingale
(《夜鶯》 – Yèyīng), The Fir Tree (《小樹衫》 – Xiǎo Shùshān), and The Lotus
(《水蓮花》 – Shuǐliánhuā, literally translated as The Marsh King’s Daughter).
Xu Tiaofu, as the chief editor of the series, accomplished one: The Story of a
Mother (《母親的故事》 – Mǔqīn De Gùshi). According to Zhao Jingshen, the
reason why he turned to the “Oxford edition” as the source text for transla-
tion after the 1930s was that Xu Tiaofu, the editor of “Series of World Liter-
ature for Young Readers” only accepted faithful translations and would reject
any abridged versions” (Zhao unpublished: 16). In spite of the wars and the
decline of the publishing industry in the 1930s, Andersen maintained a high pres-
tige in China. In 1931, Children’s Book Company (兒童書局 – Ertóng Shūjú)
published a three-volume collection of Andersen’s fairy tales translated by Xu
Peiren (徐培仁), and in the following two decades, more works of Andersen were
brought out by famous publishers in Shanghai such as World Book Company (世
界書局 – Shìjiè Shūjǘ), China Publishing House (中華書局 – Zhōnghuá Shūjǘ)
and Commercial Press (商務印書館 – Shāngwù Yìnshūguǎn). The popularity of
Andersen even aroused readers’ curiosity and passion for reading Danish liter-
ature. Therefore, two anthologies of Danish fairy tales were published in the
middle 1930s, namely Invisible Hat (《隱身帽》 – Yǐngshēn Mào, by Kaiming
Book Company in 1933) and An Anthology of Danish Fairy Tales (《丹麥童話
故事集》 – DānMài Tónghuà Gùshijí, by China Publishing House in 1934). The
boost in the publication of Andersen’s books, especially in that of those produced
for young readers, may evidence that Andersen was being canonized as children’s
literature in Chinese literary system during the 1930s.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 167

3.2 The translation of Andersen’s fairy tales during the period of P.R.C
(1949– )

The year of 1949 witnessed the birth of a new regime – the People’s Republic of
China (P.R.C.) under the governance of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.)
and along with the new regime was the new ideology of literature. In his “Talks
at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and the Arts” (《延安文藝座談會上的講
話》”Yán’ ān Wényì Zuòtánhuì Shàng De Jiǎnghuà”), Mao Zedong (毛澤東), the
first chairman of the P.R.C. argued that the literature and arts in China should be
proletarian and serve the broad masses of people (Mao 1942/1975). Mao’s argu-
ment finally led to a cultural policy that “literature was to serve the state and the
state would be the sole arbiter of literature” (Chang and Owen 2010: 599), which
was the ideology of literature that has dominated China from the 1940s to the
early1980s, especially around 1949. For the newly established People’s Republic of
China, the most important task of the “literature serving the state” was to recon-
struct the national identity and to arouse patriotism among the people so that
each citizen would be loyal to the nation and the governor.
Andersen is, in the eyes of some Chinese scholars, a poetic and moreover,
patriotic writer. In 1955, the 150th anniversary of Andersen, Chen Bochui, a
Chinese writer and translator of children’s literature published an essay – “What
to Learn from Andersen” (《向安徒生學習什麼？》，“Xiàng Antúshēng Xuéxí
Shěnme”) – on People’s Daily.9 (《人民日報》，Rénmíng Rìbào) in which he said

Andersen is a fervent eulogist, who, with simple and plain language, extols the
virtue of peace…In his monumental works, we can feel that he stands by the
laboring people. He shows his deep affection to kind people; he gives sympathy to
those who are insignificant and who are suffering from oppression in a hierar-
chical society… Andersen is also a patriotic writer, who, like a painter, uses his
lyrical and multi-colored brushes to depict the beautiful landscape of his home-
land. (Chen 2005; translated by the author from Chinese)

Therefore, Andersen’s fairy tales were didactical instruments not only for chil-
dren, but also for almost all Chinese people in the 1950s. Even though there
had been translators attempting to render Andersen into Chinese before, their
works were mostly relay translations from English versions. It was not until the

9. People’s Daily, as the biggest newspaper group in China, is an official newspaper of the
Chinese Communist Party, published worldwide with a circulation of 3 million.
(see, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People’s_Daily)
168 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

1950s when his fairy tales were directly translated from Danish to Chinese by Ye
Junjian10 (葉君健).
The first work of Andersen that Ye Junjian translated into Chinese was Picture
Book without Pictures (《沒有畫的畫冊》，Méiyǒu Huà De Huàcè). Although
the first book was not popular among readers as he expected, his other transla-
tions of Andersen have turned out to be the most frequently published and most
widely spread ones in China till today. During the 1950s, Ye published several
translated works, among which there were Selections from Andersen’s Fairy Tales
(1955) (《安徒生童話選集》，Antúshēng Tónghuà Xuǒn jí)，Selections from
Andersen’s Fairy Tales and Stories (1956) (《安徒生童話和故事選》，Antúshēng
Tónghuà Hé Gùshixuǎn) Selected Fairy Tales of Andersen (1958) (《安徒生童話
選》，Antúshēng Tónghuàxuǎn). He once claimed that his motivation for trans-
lating Andersen’s fairy tales was that “he would like to do something for the young
citizens of China since the future of the nation largely relies upon them, so their
education should be unquestionably emphasized” (Ye 2005: 462). Ye also pointed
out that

Children’s writers in China usually feel constrained by the lack of adequate

resources and by the absence of the tradition of written children’s literature when
creating literary works for children. Therefore, it is necessary to enrich Chinese
children’s literature with excellent western works. That is why I naturally think of
Andersen, whose writings are invaluable heritage of the world children’s litera-
ture. He is a good example from whom we can learn, so, we need to transplant his
works into our culture and turn them into proper reading materials for Chinese
children and into references for Chinese writers of children’s literature.
(ibid.: 462–463; translated by the author from Chinese)

Ye Junjian’s motivation for translating Andersen’s fairy tales is undoubtedly

didactic because his act of translating aims primarily at educating children by
providing them proper reading materials. While translating Andersen, Ye Junjian
was importing new literary resources from alien countries, which were expected
to enhance the development of Chinese children’s literature. Even so, the signif-
icance of publishing Andersen’s tales in the 1950s went far beyond children’s

10. Ye Junjian (1914–1999) was born in Hubei Province of China. He was admitted at Wuhan
University in the year of 1933, where he studied western literature. After his graduation from
the university, Ye went to Japan in May, 1937, where he taught English. After the Sino-Japan war
broke out in July, he was arrested for “subversive activities” and was soon repatriated to China.
In 1944, he went to U.K. and was employed by the Department of Wartime Publicity, where he
gave speeches to the public. He stated in his speeches the Chinese people’s war efforts against
the Japanese invaders. He began learning Danish in July, 1946, two years before he embarked on
translating Andersen’s fairy tales.
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 169

culture. Although some publishers also produced illustrated or adapted versions

targeted to child readers, most of Andersen’s works translated by Ye Junjian were
then published by People’s Literature Publishing House (人民文學出版社，
Rénmíng Wénxué Chūbǎnshè), the most official and authoritative publisher for
canonized literary works in China, which is known for scholarly publications,
editions of classical literature, and dictionaries. This means that Andersen’s works
were at least ideologically supported as canonized literature for both children
and adults during the 1950s. The literary fame of Andersen in the P.R.C. under
the governance of the C.C.P. can be attributed to his affinity to the mainstream
ideology of the Chinese literature, and that is also why the prestige of this
“perpetual child” has lasted for more than half a century in the P.R.C.
During the twenty years from 1959 to 1978, there were seldom new trans-
lations of Andersen published in China because frequent political movements
resulted in a radical cultural policy disadvantageous to western literature. Fortu-
nately, a resurgence coming after the Reform and Opening-up Policy11 has
ushered in a “new era” for literature. The National Library of China today keeps a
stock of over 1700 volumes of Chinese translations of Andersen’s works (including
adapted and abridged editions) published since 1978.12 Those publications can be
classified as follows
a. Literary translations from Danish or English produced by scholars of foreign
languages and published by major literary publishers (such as People’s Litera-
ture Publishing House) as classical literature. Ye Junjian, Lin Hua (林樺) and
Shi Qin’e (石琴娥) are three translators who have published their direct trans-
lations of Andersen’s tales from Danish since 1949.
b. Adaptations or translations produced by children’s literary translators or
writers which are targeted to middle or primary school students in order to
improve their literary taste. These translations are usually relay translations
from a third language (e.g. Ren Rongrong’s (任溶溶) translation from
English) or rewritings of canonized translations.
c. Chapbooks for pre-school children with fine illustrations, which are recom-
mended as materials for early childhood education. In recent years, there
have been an increasing number of publications of this type. The books are
usually exquisitely decorated and published in series, some of which are even

11. An economical diplomatic and ideological policy inaugurated by Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平)
in 1978, representing a turning point in the history of P.R.C. after which China began to open
up again to the international world after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976.
12. The author of this paper searched the website of National Library of China (opac.nlc.cn)
on 11/4/2017 with “安徒生” as the “author” and obtained 1813 results, among which more than
1700 volumes are translations or adaptations of H. C. Andersen’s fairy tales published after 1978.
170 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

imported into China from Japan, South Korea, France, Italy, Denmark and
other European countries.
d. The retranslations of Andersen’s fairy tales from Chinese into the ethnic
minority languages in China. Today, Andersen’s works have been translated
into Uighur, Mongolian, Tibetan, Zhuang language (or Sawcuengh). Many
of those retranslations are based on Ye Junjian’s Chinese translation and
Andersen, as the “extoller of peace”, is expected to enhance the social pros-
perity and stability of China, a multi-ethnic country.
e. Bilingual editions. As English has become a lingua franca, some English-
Chinese editions of Andersen’s fairy tales are published for English learners
in China. Tsinghua University Press has published, for example, A Complete
Andersen in English-Chinese (1999), which binds Craigie’s English and Ye
Junjian’s Chinese translations.
f. Digital publications. With the development of science and technology, there
have also been multimedia products (such as films, cartoons, aloud story-
telling, stage plays) related to Andersen’s stories in the Chinese market.
Although “Andersen” seems to have become an ubiquitous name thanks to the
prosperity of the publishing industry in the present era of globalization, his contri-
butions to Chinese culture and literature calls for more academic attention. The
cultural and literary significance of Andersen in China should not be confined to
his role of a storyteller for children, but lies in his enrichment of modern Chinese
literature and culture, which may be further discussed by the author in the future.

4. Conclusion

The translation of Andersen’s fairy tales in China is a process of the translators’

negotiations with the fluid Chinese poetics and ideology. The language styles and
strategies adopted by the translators of different ages have varied according to the
translators’ understanding of the original works, their purposes of translating, the
publishers’ interests and the readers’ expectations in the target culture, as well as
the images of Andersen constructed in the socio-cultural context in which the
translations are produced. The conflation of a new genre for children with a new
vernacular form of writing during the May fourth period, when the new ideals
were privilege in a new society and culture, has brought about new translations
of Andersen in Chinese. While the translations of Andersen’s fairy tales in the
early twentieth century were mostly targeted to adult readers, and were sometimes
manipulated by particular socio-cultural context, the vernacular translations after
the 1920s, which have contributed to the popularization of Andersen in China,
 The translation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales in China 171

tended to be more reader-friendly, and the new translations that have emerged
since the 1930s gradually became faithful to the original versions. It is in the
process of retranslation that Andersen tales have found a position in the Chinese
literary system. In recent decades, Andersen’s works, which have been canonized
in Chinese literary system, are enjoying a great popularity among Chinese readers
of all ages even though most of them are currently being published in the name of
international classics of children’s literature.

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174 Luo Xuanmin and Zhu Jiachun

Résumé
Les contes de Hans Christian Andersen sont populaires auprès des lecteurs chinois depuis qu’ils
ont été introduits en Chine par le biais de la traduction il y a un siècle. Cet article étudie
la traduction des contes d’Andersen en Chine en se concentrant sur les principaux traduc-
teurs chinois d’Andersen et leurs traductions emblématiques. Considérant que la traduction est
une activité sociale, l’auteur tente d’interpréter l’attitude du traducteur en fonction du contexte
historique dans lequel la traduction a été faite et de l’idéologie littéraire correspondante. Il
soutient que les styles linguistiques et les stratégies de traduction adoptés par les traducteurs
de différentes époques diffèrent en fonction de leur compréhension des œuvres originales, de
l’objectif de leur traduction, des intérêts des éditeurs et des attentes des lecteurs dans la culture
cible, tout comme de l’image d’Andersen qui s’est construite dans le contexte socioculturel dans
lequel la traduction a vu le jour. Par conséquent, la pratique de la traduction, qui a contribué à
la « canonisation » d’Andersen en Chine, est un processus de négociation entre la poésie fluide
chinoise et l’idéologie du XXe siècle par les traducteurs.

Mots-clés: Hans Christian Andersen, traduction chinoise, contes, contextes socioculturels

Address for correspondence

Luo Xuanmin
Guangxi University
100 University Road
Xi Xiang Tan District, Nanning, Guangxi
P.R. China
luoxm@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn

Co-author information

Zhu Jiachun
Tsinghua University, Beijing
zhujc19@gmail.com