Kublai Khan, Morris Rossabi and the 10th Anniversary of the Podcast

First off, I am dropping the podcast on the 10th Anniversary of our first episode. On April 9th, 2016, the Chinese Literature Podcast had its first episodes. The first episode of the podcast’s next decade is Morris Rossabi, the scholar who made the world rethink Kublai Khan and the Mongols. He wrote the first good […]

Du Fu – Spring Gazes – Tang Poetry Masters Series

Today, we finish up the 3 part series on Tang Poetry Masters with a look at Du Fu, China’s poet historian. The An Lushan Rebellion tore the Tang Dynasty in half and is one of the defining events of Chinese history. Du Fu is pivotal for our memory of that event, as his poems are […]

Tang Poetry Masters Series – Wang Wei and his Moment of Zen

Today, the podcast gets to Wang Wei and a Buddhist poem he wrote with the eye of a painter. Wang Wei is the least popular of the three High Tang poets, at least, since the Song Dynasty, but, back in the day, he was the most popular, more popular than Li Bai and Du Fu. […]

Tang Poetry Masters Series – Li Bai and the West

Today is the beginning of a three part series I am going to do on the three big Tang poets, Li Bai, Wang Wei and Du Fu. In this episode, we take a look at Li Bai, often considered China’s Greatest poet, and his relationship with the regions to China’s West, modern day Xinjiang and […]

Interview with Susan Wan Dolling

Today, Lee gets to chat with Susan Wan Dolling, Hong-Kong-American poet, novelist and translator. She recently published her latest book of Song poetry translations, What the Cuckoo Said, but she has long been working on translating Chinese poetry into an English that does what is hard to do, that preserves the music that you hear […]

Zoom Talk I gave on the Book for the Modern China Lecture Series

I was honored Professor Jeremy Murray invited me back to the Modern China Lecture Series to talk about my book, China’s Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn’t Want You to Read.

Return of the Rob

On this episode, I give a brief update on the book’s status, which should be in your hands by mid-November. And also, Rob returns, joining the podcast from France to talk about what he has been up to and also to chat with Lee about the book.  Transcript generated by AI  My name is Lee […]

Interview with Professor Emily Mokros – Peking Gazette

Today, I get to speak with Professor Emily Mokros about her fascinating book, The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China – State News and Political Authority. The book is about a media outlet in the Qing Dynasty that published discussions that the emperor held with his bureaucrats.  The book is available for purchase here at the […]

Mao Zedong – Soaked Garden in Spring – Snow

This episode, the podcast takes a look at a poem Mao Zedong wrote in February 1936, after he and his party had undergone the near-death experience of the Long March. Yet still, Mao has the gumption to imply in the poem that he would be the greatest ruler China had ever seen.  My Translation: Original […]

Fox Butterfield Interview – First Post-1949 – New York Times Correspondent in China

This episode is a special one. The podcast has a conversation with Fox Butterfield, the first correspondent for the New York Times after 1949. Mr. Butterfield set up the Beijing Bureau for the New York Times in 1979 and was the bureau chief from 1979 to 1981.  Mr. Butterfield started studying Chinese in 1958, and […]

Lu Xun – Soap – Interview with Professor Brown

Today’s podcast is an interview with Professor Carolyn Brown, author of Reading Lu Xun through Carl Jung. We had a great conversation with her about Lu Xun’s story “Soap.” This story, in Lu Xun’s collection titled 彷徨 (not the more well-known collection 吶喊), is too often ignored. Professor Brown shows that this story touches on issues […]

Lu Xun – True Story of Ah Q – Lu Xun Series #6

This week’s podcast is on one of the most important stories in modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun’s True Story of Ah Q (鲁迅 – 阿Q正传). Rob and Lee attempt to tackle the story that changed China and still echos down to the present. 

Kong Yiji – Lu Xun Series #5

Today, we have author, translator and teacher, Professor Bryan Van Norden, on the podcast to discuss Lu Xun’s short but fascinating story of Kong Yiji (鲁迅 – 孔乙己), the book-stealing scholar who Lu Xun imagined to be the symbol of the true state of China’s elite culture. Professor Van Norden, Rob and Lee walk through […]

Preface to War Cry – Interview with Professor Roy Chan

In Episode 3 in our Lu Xun Series, we interview one of the experts in the field of Lu Xun studies (and advisor to both Rob and Lee) about the Preface to Lu Xun’s most important collection of short stories War Cry (Nahan). This preface has been the subject of numerous debates in China and in […]

Lu Xun’s Early Career – Lu Xun Series – Episode 1

This is the first episode in our series on Lu Xun, and, for this episode, we are going to look at some of the earliest aspects of Lu Xun’s career, both his time growing up in Shaoxing, his time in Japan and his attempts to become a translator.  

End of the Year Podcast

This week, we change up the format a bit. Instead of talking about a specific text, we catch on our personal lives a bit, talking about grad school, what we learned in finishing our Ph.D.’s and a few other things. The podcast is also a bit longer than our normal format. 

Xiao Hong – Hands

A disturbing if sometimes trite story of a country girl who goes to boarding school in 1930’s China, gets treated like crap and is eventually pushed out of the school, all because she is low class and her hands, stained by the dye her family uses to put her through school, are ugly. Rob and […]

Shen Congwen – Bordertown

This week, we look at one of the most famous writers in modern China. It is surprising that we have not tackled Shen Congwen before…he was in contention for China’s first Nobel Prize for Literature until his death in 1988. The reason we have not discussed him is, despite his importance to Chinese literature, neither […]