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 […]

There Can Be Only One: The Biography of Xiang Yu

  The multi-volume Records of the Grand Historian, by Sima Qian, is one of the masterworks of Chinese history and literature . Even today it is the only source for much of our information on pre-Han (206 B.C.E.) China. One of the classic stories from the collection is The Biography of Xiang Yu (《项羽本纪》). Lee and I […]

And They Lived Happily Ever After…

In today’s podcast, we return to the Historian of the Weird, that is the late, great Pu Songling. Previously, we did a podcast on his touching love story about a man and his rock. This time, we take a look at an equally ‘touching’ love story, though here, we are talking about bad touch. In the story […]

Thinking of My Brothers on a Moonlit Night

  Today, we’re looking at one of Du Fu’s poems. We covered one of his works before, but his oeuvre is massive. Here is the poem for the day:       月夜憶舍弟   戍鼓斷人行，秋邊一雁聲。 露從今夜白，月是故鄉明。 有弟皆分散，無家問死生。 寄書長不達，況乃未休兵。   Thinking of my Brothers on a Moonlit Night   The drums of war have cut the roads […]

Journey Even MORE to the West: The Xi You Bu

In this second of two podcasts on the Journey to the West, Lee discusses his work on a very strange, and very understudied, addendum to the original Journey to the West, written some time later. It turns the original’s focus inward, presenting multiple layers of reality.               http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Xi_You_Bu.mp3

Journey to the West

  The 100 chapter picaresque novel Journey to the West (西游记) is one of the “four classic works” of Chinese literature. It is also one of the most popular pieces of writing in the Chinese language. With guest Brandon Folse, we talk about its enduring popularity, curious structure, and baroque approach to names.     […]

Zhang Ailing’s Love in a Fallen City

In this podcast we discuss the writer whom Lee asserts is the single greatest Chinese novelist of the 20th century: Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang). In particular, we take a closer look at one of her most famous stories, Love in a Fallen City (《倾城之恋》), and its depiction of the Japanese bombing of Hong Kong.   […]

Haizi – Looking Toward The Sea

In today’s podcast, we will take a look back at Haizi, post-1979 China’s most famous poet. Previously, in this episode, we talked about Haizi in this mythologically laced poem.  Today, we’re going to take a look at his most famous poem, called “Facing the Sea, the Spring Warm, Flowers Blooming.” http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Haizi_-_Poem_-_Looking_Towards_the_Sea.mp3 Below, Lee has provided […]

Junkyard Poetics: Ouyang Jianghe’s Phoenix

One of the more interesting poetry projects in recent years is Ouyang Jianghe’s opus Phoenix, an attempt to capture in print the Xu Bing sculpture, which is a pair of massive phoenixes composed entirely from things found at Beijing construction sites. Lee and I welcome a guest, Brandon Folse, as we talk about how to […]

Of Gods and…More Gods: Idle Talk Under the Bean Arbor

  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 […]

A Man and His Rock

Political allegory? Straight-ahead love story? Supernatural adventure? All of the above? Lee and Rob discuss the story “Rare Stone from Heaven” (tr. Hu Shiguang) from the renowned collection Strange Tales from Liao Zhai (《聊斋志异》), and debate just how literally you can read a story about a man’s love affair with a rock.       […]