This episode, we go to a small island off the coast of Victoria, Canada. Shortly after he was exiled from Qing China, Kang Youwei, the rockstar amongst late Qing intellectuals, found himself on Coal Island, just north of Victoria. In this episode, I look at 1.5 of the cycle of 19 poems he wrote while […]
This week, Lee interviews Kyle Anderson, who has just published the first volume in a young adult series titled MountainSea Scrolls. This first volume is called The 9 Tailed Fox. Dr. Anderson describes the series as Narnia meets China. Dr. Anderson has also worked in translation and academia, and his work includes the translation of […]
On the previous episode, I went all the way to the beginning of Chinese literature. This episode, I explore a contemporary novel, Mo Yan’s Red Sorghum. It won Mo Yan the Nobel Prize, it has been made into a famous movie, this novel has been very influential. Let’s dive in!
The last episode in our mini-series on Zhuangzi, we look at one of the most elequent passages in all of the Zhuangzi, even if it almost certainly was not written by Zhuangzi himself. Autumn Floods focuses on understanding how tiny we are in the universe.
There is not really any good, authoritative list of China podcasts out there. I have seen a few, but most of them seem hastily concocted by podcast companies that don’t know much about China. So, I decided to make that list. The list only includes podcasts in English about China (excluding Chinese-learning podcasts, which is […]
I recently got the honor of getting to come back on the China History Podcast over with the head honcho at Teacup Media. Here are all the poems and prose text that we read on the Catastic podcast (other than Xiran Jay Zhao’s, and her excellent translations can be found here). If you see any […]
Where did the Uighur name come from? It might seem crazy, but a poet in the 1930’s took Uighur as his penname, and the Uighur people may have taken their name from that man (well, it is a little bit more complicated than that, but those are the basics). Abdukhaliq Uighur called on his people […]
What is a Zawen? It is complicated. In this episode, we try to tackle what zawen are and what they meant to Lu Xun’s career. Guiding us on our journey is Professor Andrew Jones of UC Berkeley, one of the most well-regarded scholars of Lu Xun in American academia. Professor Jones is the author of […]
We always come back to Pu Songling. This week, we are looking at his story “The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag,” which actually has little to do with either, but rather is a story about love, prostitution and a ghostly woman…join us for a spooky episode of the Chinese Literature Podcast.
Hello to all our Listeners. This is just a quick note: we are thrilled to have been invited to participate in the Modern China Lecture Series hosted by California State University, San Bernindino’s very own Dr. Jeremy Murray. And, we would love it if you would join us. Everyone is welcome! Here is the Zoom […]