Have you ever wanted to learn more about China, but were either unsure where to start, or didn’t have the money or access? Our new supplement is designed to help. Join us as we discuss our personal picks for essential works on China. Challenging, but not opaque. Interesting, but not amusing. It’s everything you need. […]
It’s here at last! We’re discussing the definitive writers for each decade in China’s 20th century, looking at how they exemplified that era’s struggles and triumphs. Join us this first week to discuss how Wang Guowei (王国维) and Wu Jianren (吴趼人) were the representative writers of China’s last imperial decade.
In the fourth and final installment of our Not Made in China series, we look at a snarky, critical poem written by a Chinese diplomat about an American election riddled with distrust, ferocious inter-party fighting, and distrust of the Chinese people. It’s just not the election you’re thinking of.
In part three of our series, we have decided to remain resolutely apart form the world of politics by discussing a poem scrawled into the wall of an Angel Island detention cell by a Chinese scholar who was being held there.
In this episode, we return to the Root-seeking authors (xungen), this time with Han Shaogong and his enigmatic story Bababa. The story, if you can call it that, has a disjointed plot. It is focused on a village, and maybe the main character is a boy who can only say two things, Papa (baba) and F#$* […]
Welcome to Cat Country! In 1932, Lao She, the famous Chinese writer, penned a book about a Chinese astronaut crashing into Mars and finding the planet populated with Cat People. These Cat People are a way for Lao She to satirize the Chinese. Let the craziness begin! http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Cat_Country_Edited_1.mp3
A character forgets whose head he has on his shoulders. An entire army delivers a unison monologue. Oh, and along the way an entire national approach to ethnicity comes into question. Shi Zhecun’s The General’s Head has a little of everything, and anyone interested in questions of nations, personal identification, and the life of the mind […]
No talking dragons. Little to no fighting. Lots of speeches. A woman warrior who just wants to go home and be a good, traditional daughter. And…rabbits? How exactly is this the Ballad of Mulan? Lee and I discuss the original story, and find ourselves split over the extent to which it qualifies as a work that […]
We had the honor recently of talking with Nick Stember, a longtime translator of Chinese fiction and comics, and the official English-language translator of the renowned writer Jia Pingwa. On this podcast, we talk with Nick about his work, and about the intriguing Jia Pingwa short story “The Ugly Stone.” If you are interested in […]
One of the earliest, and certainly fullest, examples of the frame story is the collection Idle Talk Under the Bean Arbor. Through a series of stories told by a group of people sheltering from the heat under a bean arbor, everything from karmic justice to the end of the world is discussed. We welcome a guest, Lindsey […]