More Swindles from the Late Ming – Sex, Scams and Sorcery – Interview with Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea

Lock up your daughters and watch your wallet. In this episode, we are going to take a look at stories from the late Ming’s most famous grift manual, a book by Zhang Yingyu. For this episode, the translators, Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea have kindly agreed to come on talk about this text without stealing […]

A Very Jewish Journey to the West

Today, we have an interview Joel Bigman, the author of The Second Journey. The Second Journey is a continuation novel of Journey to the West (西遊記). In this journey to the West, Tang monk travels ever farther to the west, all the way to modern day Israel. Bigman has written his novel with some of the same characters that you […]

2024 End of the Year Podcast

It is that time of year again, the time when the Chinese Literature Podcast takes stock of the year and what has happened. In this podcast, Lee talks about his book and also about teaching Chinese Literature at the University of Oregon.

Huang Chunming – Sayonara, Zaijian

Today, we have an exciting and disturbing episode about Taiwan and prostitution. This is Number 6 in my series on Taiwanese literature, and the second episode on Huang Chunming, Taiwan’s most famous nativist author. Last episode, the podcast looked at the story, “Drowning of an Old Cat.” This week we look at a story from […]

Huang Chunming – The Drowning of an Old Cat

Today, we take a look at Huang Chunming, one of the most important writers in Taiwan’s nativist movement. He is an author who developed this sense of a Taiwanese identity in his work.  Also, don’t worry, no cats die in this story.  Finally, I mentioned that Rob and I did a podcast on the 1884 […]

Interview with Professor Daniel Bell

Today, Lee is talking with Professor Daniel Bell, most recently the author of Dean of Shandong, but also the author of the famous China Model. Professor Bell and Lee chat about his book and about his wider experience of Chinese culture and philosophy while serving as the first foreign dean of a university in the PRC.  To purchase […]

Edward Yang – Yi Yi or A One and a Two

Today, the podcast does something different. In this episode, we are looking at a film. And not just any film. It is perhaps the greatest film ever made. Yi Yi or A One and a Two is the magmum opus of Edward Yang, the Taiwanese filmmaker. We are going to explore the symbolism of balloons, sticks and […]

Bai Xianyong – Winter Nights

The greatest of Taiwan’s modernists, Bai Xianyong’s short story, “Winter Nights,” is a tale about history and how little we are able to change things. These revolutionaries of Beijing’s hot summer of 1919 reconvene in Taipei in the 1960’s having lost their cause and their country. Lee taught this story about protestors during the height […]

Taiwanese Comfort Women

This episode is different. I am first explaining the issue of Taiwanese comfort women, and then letting yall hear a speech that I gave to a group in Vienna on the only comfort women museum in Taiwan. Stick around for some interesting history and a discussion of museums. 

Yu Yonghe – Small Sea Travel Diary

This week’s podcast is on one of the earliest documents we have in Taiwanese history, a 1697 journey by Yu Yonghe into the wilds of Taiwan’s north, where he mined sulfur amongst the barbarians. Yu gets off on traveling, and this journey is deep into the heart of Taiwan. In this podcast, I discuss the […]