My name is Dylan Levi King.

I translate Chinese literary fiction into English mostly. I write nonfiction and stories.

I'm working on a book about global recreational drug trends, personal experiments with research chemicals, and innovations in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry (some of it appeared as "Sinopharmacology" in The Baffler). I think I still have an agent for it; if you send me a message, I can send you the proposal.

Other current projects include articles on North Korean weightlifting, adult cinemas in Tokyo, Yu Dafu and masculinity, the reception of Giorgio Agamben in pandemic China, matsuri and modern fertility rituals, and something about Pyongyang's fragrance workshops. I'm almost done a book chapter on cybernetic imaginaries in underground Red Guard poetry.

I'm from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, but I live in Tokyo now, and spent long stretches of my adult life in Guangzhou.

Read my Substack: CJK.

Please email me.

Some of what I've written (over the past five years or so, excepting fiction):

• "Against Wagyu" The Baffler, June 2026.
• "Tokyo drift: what happens when a city stops being the future?" The Guardian, January 2025.
• "Eastern Promises The Baffler, January 2025.
• "Guangzhou at Night" CONG, August 2024.
• "Sinopharmacology," The Baffler, June 2024.
• "Writing on the Wall: A Brief History of China’s Guerrilla Ads," World of Chinese, April 2024.
• "A Brief History of Chinese Cybernetics," in Cybernetics for the 21st Century, Vol. 1: Epistemological Reconstruction, February 2024.
• "China’s war on drugs: From incarceration to rehabilitation," The China Project, June 2023.
• "Madame Mao’s Nietzschean Revolution," Palladium, March 2023.
• "Yamagami Tetsuya’s Revenge," Palladium, February 2023.
• "The world according to Lu Xinghua, China’s renegade philosopher," The China Project, January 2023.
• "The Genealogy of Chinese Cybernetics," Palladium, October 2022.
• "Environmentalism in One Country," Palladium, June 2022.
• "The Rouge Street Blues: A New Translation Breathes Life into China’s Rustbelt," World of Chinese, June 2022.
• "The Empire of the Golden Triangle," Palladium, March 2022.
• "Er Housheng, who had his eyes gouged out, dies at 58," SupChina, November 2021.

Some of what I've translated (over the past five years or so):

• "King of the Aral Sea", a translation of an excerpt from Lost Satellites《失落的卫星》by Liu Zichao 刘子超 (Equator, 2025).
• "Friends", a translation of Pengyou《朋友》by Jia Pingwa 贾平凹 (Granta, 2025).
• The Colonel and the Eunuch, a translation of Rensheng Haihai《人生海海》by Mai Jia 麦家 (Head of Zeus, 2024).
• Vessel, a translation of Pinang《皮囊》by Cai Chongda 蔡崇达 (HarperCollins, 2021).
• Shaanxi Opera, a translation of Qinqiang《秦腔》by Jia Pingwa 贾平凹, for Chinese Literature Today (6:1, 29-37) (excerpt), Ugly Stone (excerpt), and, a translation of the complete novel with Nicky Harman (forthcoming from AmazonCrossing, 2023).
• Record of Regret, a translation of Houhuilu《后悔录》by Dong Xi 东西 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017).