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Reconstructing Chinese Culture in After Yang from the Perspective of Cultural Translation ― A Comparative Study of Alexander Weinstein’s “Saying Goodbye to Yang”

  • The Journal of Study on Language and Culture of Korea and China
  • Abbr : JSLCKC
  • 2026, (81), pp.449~476
  • DOI : 10.16874/jslckc.2026..81.017
  • Publisher : Korean Society of Study on Chinese Languge and Culture
  • Research Area : Humanities > Chinese Language and Literature
  • Received : July 10, 2026
  • Accepted : August 20, 2026
  • Published : August 31, 2026

Li Zihan 1

1전남대학교 국어국문학과

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study compares Alexander Weinstein’s short story Saying Goodbye to Yang and Kogonada’s film After Yang to examine how Chinese culture is reinterpreted and re-signified in the cinematic adaptation. It further investigates how this process of cultural reconstruction is related to Kogonada’s diasporic cultural perspective. Whereas Saying Goodbye to Yang represents Chinese culture primarily as a commodified and informationalized cultural resource, After Yang reconfigures it as a site for exploring questions of identity, memory, and the formation of interpersonal relationships, thereby generating new cultural meanings. The film draws on three Chinese cultural motifs—grafting, tea, and Laozi’s philosophy—not simply as repositories of cultural knowledge, but as narrative and symbolic devices through which cultural meanings are negotiated and transformed. These motifs illuminate Bhabha’s concepts of the in-between, the ambivalence of mimicry, and the production of cultural meaning, presenting Chinese culture not as a fixed and authentic tradition but as a cultural formation that is continually translated, negotiated, and reinterpreted. Furthermore, this reconfiguration is closely connected to Kogonada’s diasporic cultural positionality at the intersection of Chinese cultural heritage and American science fiction. In this sense, After Yang may be understood as the product of an ongoing process of cultural negotiation conducted within the “in-between” space.

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