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Speaking Across Emptiness: On Translation, Self, and Silence

Even after being here for years, I still feel like I’m pretending to be someone else when I speak English.

English has an urge to explain everything without leaving room for ambiguity. Chinese, on the other hand, tends to hide meaning within words. Chinese writers enjoy playing word games with their readers. For example, in Journey to the West, the main character is Wukong, the Monkey King. But if you look at the name character by character, “Wu” means try to understand and “Kong” means emptiness (a concept in Daoism). Later, I come to realize that Wukong’s journey is actually a journey to “wu kong” — to understand emptiness. A similar wordplay appears in Dream of the Red Chamber, whose main character is named Baoyu (宝玉), meaning “precious jade.” At birth, Baoyu is found with a piece of magical jade in his mouth—this jade becomes both a literal object and a symbolic anchor of the story. The name "Baoyu" hides layered meanings: on one level, it signals his unique and privileged status; on another, it foreshadows his entrapment in material desire and illusion. Just as Wukong must transcend his name to achieve enlightenment, Baoyu must lose his jade—his “preciousness”—to awaken from the grand illusion of worldly life. Even the novel’s alternate title, The Story of the Stone, hints at this: the stone or jade is both central and deceptive, a metaphor for something that seems solid but is ultimately empty.

These stories, when read for the first time, seem like fantastical tales—one about retrieving sacred texts from the West, another a record of the lavish Grand View Garden. But upon rereading, or only after a long time, you slowly begin to grasp the truths that are never directly stated. I love these kinds of stories. They exist in English translations too—take The Little Prince, for instance. It uses fairy tale-like language to express universal truths. But the language it uses is more direct.

When I first came to the U.S., around the age of twenty, I found myself mirroring the world around me—expressions, glances, even the flicker of someone’s hand. Perhaps it was echopraxia, or perhaps just a quiet hunger to belong. With the wide-eyed curiosity of a child, I tried to catch meaning in the air, tracing sound with gesture, shadowing language I did not yet know. Communicating with my roommate required drawings, gestures, and extremely basic vocabulary. I would laugh at jokes I didn’t even understand, avoid explaining things to escape the struggle of gesturing wildly, nod at things I didn’t comprehend, and ask a thousand questions, a thousand times. In those moments, I would suddenly feel detached, feeling extremely unfamiliar with the English-speaking version of myself. Who are you? And who am I?

Before this multilingual experience, I believed that emotions and sensitivity were innate and universally shared. But I later realized this wasn’t entirely true.

There is no equivalent of the word “缘分” (yuanfen) in English. It’s often translated as “fate,” but “fate” is a different concept. I can’t quite explain to you the subtle feeling of yuanfen. Every event and encounter in your life might be because of yuanfen. It sounds like fate, but Chinese people believe in yuan, not in ming (fate). In Chinese culture, fate is something that can be challenged and changed—even an ordinary person can defy the heavens and change their destiny. But yuanfen is predestined.

Just like I may never understand why January isn’t simply called “the first month,” or why “break a leg” became a form of well-wishing—it still sounds like a curse to me, no matter what.

Language fails me—not just in translation, but in becoming a kind of cultural shackle. Hidden within language are layers of culture and subconscious suggestion. To better translate English’s gender distinctions of “he,” “she,” and “it,” Chinese in the early 20th century introduced the characters 他 (he), 她 (she), and 它 (it). Before that, Chinese didn’t mark gender in pronouns—“he” and “she” were both written as 他 and understood through context. People were described by their roles, relationships, or actions rather than by gendered categories. The language allowed for fluidity, a kind of ambiguity that reflected a different way of seeing identity.

In trying to accommodate English, Chinese adopted this gendered system. But this shift also imported a way of thinking: one that requires categorizing people by gender even when it's irrelevant. Similarly, in the late 19th century, phrases like “lose face” and “save face” entered English, borrowed from Chinese face culture.

These small borrowings add up, shaping how we think and speak. And now, I find myself caught in a crevice between English and Chinese. I want so much to describe how I feel, and yet, once again, language fails me. In English, I stumble over rigid pronouns and categorical grammar. In Chinese, I grieve the subtle forms of expression that are being lost—ways of describing people without locking them into gendered roles. Language fails me not only in its structure, but in how it frames the self.

In 2018, I wrote in my notes:

Maybe, just maybe, from the moment we’re born,

we are stripped of the right to think freely.

Eternal, unchanging ideas—they don’t exist.

Beliefs that once seemed so normal and firm—

Now, in another culture, I find they were never truly there.

Maybe everything is just... nothingness.

And what of this so-called self, the individual—does that even exist?

Eastern philosophy says: all things are empty. I don’t know whether I’ve become enlightened or lost in delusion. It reminds me of Dream of the Red Chamber—a grand dream, all things returning to emptiness. It feels a bit melancholic. It makes me think of Journey to the West—maybe going through this untranslatable, multilingual journey is a kind of spiritual trial that brings true awareness of self. And I also think of The Little Prince—perhaps if I feel with my heart, I can break through the limits of language.

Maybe when language fails me, all things return to emptiness—not as a loss, but as a release.

And in that release, a self untouched by cultural framing, by grammar and gender, might finally begin to take shape.



Weitong “ShanMu” Sun

Weitong “ShanMu” Sun (born in Jinan, China) is an experimental artist who explores live simulation, digital storytelling, artificial intelligence, and the methodology of programming languages. Her practice explores the complexity of emerging technology and computation as an alternative narrative container. Her work has been exhibited internationally at venues such as Black Brick Project (NYC, US), Instinc (Singapore), Rubicon (Australia), ICAVCU (Richmond, VA), and others. She is pursuing an MFA in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University School of Arts and holds a BS in computer science with minors in Mathematics and Arts from the University of Delaware. She taught Creative Code & Electronics at VCUarts Kinetic Imaging.