…And then there were the Maoist years. Following the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in 1949, literature was tightly controlled until 1976. That means, well, it’s a pretty rough period to discuss. But we still found some gems! Join us to find out more!
There’s one decade, and one decade only, where we both agree, and this is it. Debate’s more fun, but really? It’s awfully hard to argue about Zhang Ailing.
Who owned the 1930’s: the author who gave us talking Martian cats, or the one who gave us a sentient decapitated head? Yes, it was a weird decade, was the 1930’s. Join us to learn more!
Modern Chinese Literature begins with the May 4th Movement. Well, that’s according to the orthodox understanding of Chinese literature promoted by the CCP in China. Either way, May 4th, 1919 was a turning point both in Chinese society and in Chinese literature. It was during and after this date that Lu Xun wrote some of […]
Look, just because it’s depressing doesn’t mean it isn’t also great. We bear that in mind as we discuss a truly great short story from the equally great Ding Ling, the writer of Miss Sophie’s Diary, another podcast post on the site. In it, a visiting writer takes stock of the way the Japanese invasion […]
Our last podcast was on Mao’s Yan’An lectures. If you left that podcast wondering, “Fine, but what’s an example of what Mao considered REALLY bad art?”, then we have a treat for you: Gao Xingjian’s 1981 play “Bus Stop.” A peculiar existential piece very much indebted to Samuel Beckett, it hardly seems the sort of […]
We go back to Zhang Ailing, the author Lee claims to be the best Chinese writer of the 20th Century. Rob and Lee discuss her most anthologized work in English, Sealed Off. It is a psychological story occurring inside the heads of a handful of people stuck on a tram in Shanghai under the control of the […]
50th Podcast Anniversary We Made it to 50! No one expected it, least of all us, but this is our 50th episode with the podcast. Today, Rob and Lee are going to celebrate just like the ancients used to….with a Top 5 Countdown! The pair will share what the top five works of Chinese literature […]
Lee and Rob got the chance recently to sit down with Dylan King, a scholar and translator of Chinese literature. In this podcast the three talk about the eccentricities and fascinations of post-Cultural Revolution fiction, and dive into Dylan’s recently-published English translation of Record of Regret, Dong Xi’s beautiful, and darkly humorous, account of a countryside […]
No, really: pumpkin seeds are the reason Mao and the People’s Liberation Army won the civil war in 1949, and why the generations that followed pretty much rocked. Or so says Hua Tong’s Cultural Revolution-era short story “Yan’An Seeds.” It’s Communist propaganda, so…is it crap? Yes. But, as Lee puts it, it’s some of the […]