Taiwan Travelogue – Yang Shuangzi

In this podcast, we look at the novel that was, a little more than a week ago, awarded the International Booker Prize. Taiwan Travelogue is a novel that pretends to be a travelogue, where a Japanese woman from Nagasaki, an important writer in the Japanese empire. She travels to Taiwan to travel and talk about […]

Stephen Owen Obituary

I am sad to report that Stephen Owen, a professor at Harvard University who wrote about Chinese poetry, just passed away at the age of 79 in Massachusetts.  This short podcast talks a bit about one of the giants of the field. Here is a Chinese-language obituary that was just published.

Li Wai-yee and the Confucius Chronicles

In this podcast, I got the chance to do a face-to-face interview with Professor Li Wai-yee, a Harvard scholar who is one of the most prolific scholars of Chinese literature. During our interview, we discussed her new book, The Confucius Chronicles, just released by Columbia University Press, along with the massive role that Confucius has […]

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 […]

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 […]

Chen Qiufan – Year of the Rat

This week, we are discussing a story from Ken Liu’s Invisible Planets, a collection of science fiction short stories that he recently translated and published. Chen Qiufan’s “The Year of the Rat” is a weird story that may or may not be science fiction but is definitely worth reading for everything it tries to say […]

Bai Juyi – Charcoal Seller

Part Two of our miniseries on Bai Juyi: this week we look at a poem of biting satire that is a good example of Bai’s more polemical poetry. Bai was eventually exiled for some of the poetry he wrote (not this poem, but an equally cutting poem). Listen as we try to work through Bai […]

Bai Juyi’s Autumn Thoughts

A seasonal poem? A meditation on death? What does one do with Bai Juyi’s poem Autumn Thoughts (秋思)? Rob and Lee hash it out as they watch the leaves fall on two different continents. 

Zhu Ziqing’s Retreating Figure

Zhu Ziqing (朱自清) wrote a short, touching essay on his father. In the essay, Retreating Figure (背影), Zhu grows up a great deal by watching his father grow old.

Ouyang Xiu – Spring at the Jade Tower

We thought we were done with the Song, but we just cannot get enough of it. Now, we are going back to Ouyang Xiu with a poem that features in a translation of a late Qing thinker that Rob is working on. The poem is by Ouyang Xiu, and Rob and Lee disagree about how […]

Elon Musk’s Chinese Poem – On Beans and Brothers

It has happened again. For the second time this year, a billionaire has used a Chinese poem on social media in a newsworthy way. And you know we had to deal with it! This week, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, tweeted a Chinese poem about fraternal problems. The poem, which he titled “Humankind” (in […]

Lu Xun’s White Light

We have another spooky story for Halloween, this time a story from Lu Xun. This story, “White Light,” is not as discussed as it ought to be, but it has a skull, a suicide and a question of China’s future direction.