Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

11/10/2026

𝐍𝐄𝐖 Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 | We are pleased to present Greg Solomon's "Engagement". Greg on his story:

/ One of the things I enjoy about Hong Kong is the diversity of people who live, work (and love) side by side. This is the social embodiment of yin and yang: Caucasians and Asians, the wealthy and the struggling, the modern and the traditional, finance professionals and artists, talkers and listeners, 識中文同埋唔識中文 (Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers).

Whether I’m eating in a restaurant, working in a coffee shop or strolling through the streets of Hong Kong, I always devote part of my attention to observing how this interplay of yin and yang unfolds. Watching people interact across these divides, listening to their conversations and interpreting their dynamics is an enjoyable pastime, one that sometimes inspires my writing.

The story “Engagement” presents one such scenario, highlighting some of the nuances that are present but usually remain well hidden. However, in keeping with the advice to “show, not tell”, I won’t explain any further and will simply leave you to listen in on their engagement. /

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗢𝗡: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/11/engagement/
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11/10/2026

𝐍𝐄𝐖 Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 𝐅𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓 𝐈𝐌𝐏𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒 | Marsha McDonald writes about 𝐻𝑖𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑛 𝐶𝑎𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑠 𝐹𝑜𝑟𝑚𝑒𝑑 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑂𝑙𝑑 𝑅𝑜𝑜𝑡𝑠: 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑃𝑜𝑒𝑚𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑌𝑢 𝑋𝑢𝑎𝑛𝑗𝑖 (Oxford University Press, 2024), translated by Lucas Klein.

/ “Rebuilding the fishtrap”, the title of this review, is a phrase taken from Lucas Klein’s introduction to his translations of the poetry of Yu Xuanji, a Tang dynasty poet:

𝐼𝑛 𝑝𝑜𝑒𝑡𝑟𝑦, 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑛𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑓𝑜𝑟𝑔𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑝 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑎𝑔𝑒, 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑏𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑤𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑚𝑒𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑛𝑔. 𝐼𝑛 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑤𝑒 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑟𝑒𝑏𝑢𝑖𝑙𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑝 𝑠𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑖𝑡 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑐ℎ 𝑓𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑘𝑖𝑛𝑑. (p. xxvi)

Yu Xuanji’s small body of extant work, comprising 50 short poems as well as poetic fragments, is presented here in Chinese and English. There have been many English translations of Yu Xuanji’s work. What does Klein’s translation offer? /

𝐌𝐨𝐫𝐞: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/11/fishtrap/

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𝗙𝗜𝗥𝗦𝗧 𝗜𝗠𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦 is a section of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal devoted to compact reviews of books and films (500-800 words; negotiable) that may also offer personal reflections. We welcome first impressions on any books and films, old or newly released, with an Asian angle. Information: https://chajournal.com/2025/12/25/impressions/
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11/10/2026

𝐍𝐄𝐖 Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐈𝐄𝐖 | William Carlo Antonio Sanchez reviews the Filipino horror anthology 𝐶𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑜 (2010), featuring five stories directed by Frasco Mortiz, Enrico Santos, Ato Bautista, Nick Olanka and Cathy Garcia-Sampana. He discusses each segment’s strengths and shortcomings.

/ The words “horror” and “anthology” are often synonymous. After all, what’s better than one horror story? Why, the more, the merrier! So long as it’s all for the price of one!

Every horror anthology is a single film made up of short segments, linked together by common themes or a framing story. 𝐶𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑜 is a Filipino horror anthology released in 2010, consisting of five different stories from five different directors, initially linked by a recurring hand with an R.I.P. tattoo. This mysterious hand is the subject of the opening credits, makes cameo appearances in segments two to five, and is even the main antagonist of the first segment, fittingly titled “Braso” (“Arm”). /

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/11/cinco/
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11/10/2026

𝐍𝐄𝐖 Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐘 | In this incisive review essay, John Adrianfer Atienza examines the evolving representations of Japan in American cinema before exploring how 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐹𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑢𝑠: 𝑇𝑜𝑘𝑦𝑜 𝐷𝑟𝑖𝑓𝑡 (2006; dir. Justin Lin), through its vivid portrayal of Tokyo and its street-racing scene, reflects American perceptions of Japan and the challenges of navigating its unfamiliar culture and changing place in the world.

/ The 2000s marked a significant transformation in the relationship between Japan and the United States. The decade was characterised by intensifying globalisation and the transnationalisation of peoples and media, together with the emergence of a new kind of political alliance that emphasised a broader bilateral partnership. [...] New forms of cinematic representation also emerged, in which earlier images of Japan as the “Other” were increasingly transformed as Japan came to be represented less as a wartime enemy or merely as a technological and economic rival. /

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/11/tokyo-drift/
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10/10/2026

𝐍𝐄𝐖 Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐘 | We are very delighted to welcome Ilaria Maria Sala back to 𝐶ℎ𝑎 after an absence of more than two years, with this poignant meditation on loss and separation. Tracing the intertwined histories of horses, art and Partition across Punjab, Sala takes us from Lahore’s sacred white horses to Chandigarh’s displaced museum treasures.

/ In the streets of Lahore, even on days when they are clogged with traffic, you can sometimes see young men leading a white horse by the halter and shank, usually adorned with a green saddle blanket and, at times, a head covering. The small group of humans and animal walks slowly, unperturbed by its surroundings, while cars steer respectfully around them. The drivers know better than to frighten the animal by sounding their horns, and this unusual group forms a pocket of unhurried calm amid the surrounding bustle. These white horses represent Zuljanah, the faithful horse of Imam Hussain. The grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, Imam Hussain was killed at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE, in what remains a pivotal episode in the history of Islam, one of the great tragedies remembered to this day, particularly by the Shia community. It is a historical moment that allows us to remember, to feel, to deepen our love for the divine and to experience the acute, humbling devotional pain that such love can cause. /

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/10/horses/
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10/10/2026

[𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗔𝗕𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗦]
𝐃𝐨𝐰𝐧𝐥𝐨𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐚𝐛𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐬 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄:
https://bit.ly/4hGfW8y
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𝐇𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐊𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐓𝐞𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐬, 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐬
A Hong Kong Studies Virtual Symposium
21-22 January 2027 | Online

Organised by Hong Kong Studies, this two-day symposium invites papers from across the humanities and social sciences that explore time and temporality in relation to Hong Kong's cultural, historical, technological, social and political imaginaries.

Hong Kong has long been a city peculiarly conscious of time. Its modern history has been narrated through beginnings and endings, leases and deadlines, arrivals and departures, anniversaries and countdowns. 1997 became an anticipated future long before it became history; 2047 likewise exists simultaneously as date, horizon, projection and cultural imaginary. Yet Hong Kong's temporalities extend far beyond these emblematic dates. They can be found in memories of vanished places, family histories and memoirs, experiences of migration and exile, changing generations and languages, speculative and science-fictional futures, technological acceleration, artificial intelligence, and everyday experiences of waiting, repetition, anticipation and change.

The symposium asks: what forms of time have shaped Hong Kong and its cultural imagination? How are its pasts remembered, forgotten, recovered or reinvented? How do memoir, literature, cinema, art and popular culture create alternative relationships between past, present and future? What temporalities emerge through migration, diaspora, exile and return? How do generations inhabit historical time differently? What happens to experiences of time under conditions of rapid political, urban and technological transformation? How might artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies alter our understanding of memory, prediction, authorship and futurity? And what can science fiction and speculative practices tell us about Hong Kong futures that have been anticipated, deferred, foreclosed or not yet imagined?

We welcome papers addressing topics including, but not limited to, countdowns and deadlines; history and historiography; memory and forgetting; memoir and life writing; nostalgia and post-nostalgia; futurity and anticipation; science fiction and speculative fiction; utopia and dystopia; technology and technological change; artificial intelligence and algorithmic time; digital memory and archives; ageing and generational time; migration, diaspora, exile and return; colonial and postcolonial temporalities; urban transformation and disappearing spaces; everyday rhythms, waiting and repetition; acceleration and rupture; haunting, spectrality and afterlives; alternative histories and counterfutures; and temporality in literature, cinema, music, visual art, performance and popular culture.

By bringing these approaches into conversation, the symposium seeks to consider Hong Kong as a site of intersecting temporalities, where remembered pasts, contested presents and multiple possible futures continually reshape one another.

We invite contributions from scholars at all stages of their professional development, as well as independent scholars, writers, artists, filmmakers, critics, curators, educators, technologists, and other cultural practitioners whose work engages with Hong Kong and questions of temporality. In addition to traditional academic papers, the symposium welcomes short presentations or informal talks that approach Hong Kong temporalities through creative, professional, personal, or interdisciplinary perspectives.

Please submit an abstract of 300–500 words, along with a short third-person biography (approx. 150 words), compiled in a single Word document. Submissions should be sent to [email protected] by 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝟒 𝐃𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔.

Following the symposium, selected papers (6,000–8,000 words) will be considered for publication in future issues of Hong Kong Studies(Chinese University Press).
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10/10/2026

𝐍𝐄𝐖 Cha: An Asian Literary Journal 𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐀𝐘 | In this illuminating review essay, Tyran Grillo draws out the argument in Andrea Mendoza’s 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑁𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠: 𝑅𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑎𝑙 𝐷𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑠 𝐴𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑇𝑤𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑡ℎ-𝐶𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑢𝑟𝑦 𝐽𝑎𝑝𝑎𝑛 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑀𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑐𝑜 (Duke University Press, 2026) that Japanese Pan-Asianism and Mexican 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑗𝑒 promised inclusion while licensing domination.

/ Mifune Toshirō arrived in Mexico having learned his lines phonetically. For Ismael Rodríguez’s 𝐴́𝑛𝑖𝑚𝑎𝑠 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑗𝑎𝑛𝑜 (𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐼𝑚𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑀𝑎𝑛) (1962), he would portray an impoverished Zapotec man whose desire to become important ends in banishment.

Yet the Spanish heard in the film belongs to Narciso Busquets, who also voices its opening account of Indigenous village life. The man explaining the community to us speaks again through the body it expels. In Andrea Mendoza’s reading, dubbing produces a racialised register of Indianness while erasing Mifune’s access to the language he had practised. The film makes him audible on terms that have already determined what his body can mean. Listening, here, requires attending to the authority that has entered the voice.

This technical history carries much of the unsettling force of 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝑁𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠. Mendoza traces the philosophical and cultural productions through which Japanese Pan-Asianism and Mexican 𝑚𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑗𝑒, an ideology of racial and cultural mixing rooted in Mexico’s colonial history, particularly between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, fashioned modern national belonging. Both could profess multiracial inclusion while authorising colonial domination. /

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/10/transpacific/
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09/10/2026

[𝗨𝗣𝗗𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝐇𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐊𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝗖𝗔𝗟𝗟]

While we continue to welcome general submissions that fall within the remit and ethos of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, we are especially keen to receive work related to Hong Kong. We would love to devote sustained attention to Hong Kong literature and culture, past and present, and to creative and critical work that engages with, revisits, remembers, questions, documents, or reimagines the city and its cultural life, old and new.

Additionally, we warmly welcome submissions from Hong Kong-born or -based writers on subjects beyond Hong Kong, engaging with Asia in the broadest sense. Whatever your background, whether you grew up in the city, have made it your home, or are here to work or study, we would be delighted to read your work on the literatures, histories, languages, and cultures of the wider region. We particularly seek reflections, reviews, and longer essays on books, films, exhibitions, and performances from across Asia, as well as translations of Asian literary works. In this way, we hope to spotlight the many Hong Kong-born and -based writers whose curiosity and expertise extend well beyond the city.

𝑭𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆: https://chajournal.com/2026/10/09/call-hong-kong/
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09/10/2026

We invite writers to review Akane Araki's 𝑀𝑢𝑟𝑑𝑒𝑟 𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐸𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑 (Pushkin Press, 2026), translated by Jesse Kirkwood, for Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Synopsis:

/ An asteroid is hurtling towards Earth and the human race has just over two months to live. But twenty-three-year-old Haru, stargazer and chronic worrier, is still trying to pass her driving test.

Then she finds a body in the boot of her car: a woman, stabbed and tortured. There’s a murderer on the loose. And it turns out that Haru’s driving instructor is an ex-cop with a manic devotion to justice.
So, despite the small matter of an impending apocalypse, the two women team up to catch the culprit regardless of the danger.

After all, the world’s not quite over yet… /

If you are interested in reading this book, please email [email protected] with the subject line “Review Murder". In your email, please tell us very briefly about your writing background.

𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊: https://pushkinpress.com/book/murder-at-the-end-of-the-world/


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09/10/2026