月下 | Beneath The Moon

Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “月下 | Beneath The Moon” by M.T. Lee. M. T. is from Taiwan and New Zealand, and has lived in many other places since. He holds a Masters in Transcultural Studies from the University of Heidelberg and is a graduate from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. His fiction has appeared in Podcastle. This is his first published essay. He is an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia, and you can find him on Substack at . Subscribe nowI cannot claim to be a skilled translator, but I am a practiced one. Ever since childhood, whenever I read in Chinese, I would invariably attempt an English translation inside my head. Though I rarely wrote them down and they’re never particularly good, I can nonetheless attribute some of my earliest attempts at composition to this early habit, as well as a certain sensitivity to sound and language. And it is a special joy when I…