Still re-reading and organizing my thoughts on James St. André’s Translating China as Cross-Identity Performance. On Lin Yutang’s My Country and My People:
Even though Lin may have set out to write a measured account that would refute both the overblown defense of China by Sinologists and the defamation of the Western missionary, trader, and diplomat, he finds himself acting the part of a Chinese (Daoist) sage and decrying the limitations of his own people. No wonder that, according to his daughter, a popular criticism of Lin’s work in China after it was translated into Chinese was the bilingual pun “ 賣 Country and 賣 People,” where the Chinese verb “to sell” is used as a homophone for “My” in the original title, so that it now reads “Selling [My] Country and Selling [My] People”.