In the fourth and final installment of our Not Made in China series, we look at a snarky, critical poem written by a Chinese diplomat about an American election riddled with distrust, ferocious inter-party fighting, and distrust of the Chinese people. It’s just not the election you’re thinking of.
In part three of our series, we have decided to remain resolutely apart form the world of politics by discussing a poem scrawled into the wall of an Angel Island detention cell by a Chinese scholar who was being held there.
In this episode, we return to the Root-seeking authors (xungen), this time with Han Shaogong and his enigmatic story Bababa. The story, if you can call it that, has a disjointed plot. It is focused on a village, and maybe the main character is a boy who can only say two things, Papa (baba) and F#$* […]
Welcome to Cat Country! In 1932, Lao She, the famous Chinese writer, penned a book about a Chinese astronaut crashing into Mars and finding the planet populated with Cat People. These Cat People are a way for Lao She to satirize the Chinese. Let the craziness begin! http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Cat_Country_Edited_1.mp3
A character forgets whose head he has on his shoulders. An entire army delivers a unison monologue. Oh, and along the way an entire national approach to ethnicity comes into question. Shi Zhecun’s The General’s Head has a little of everything, and anyone interested in questions of nations, personal identification, and the life of the mind […]
No talking dragons. Little to no fighting. Lots of speeches. A woman warrior who just wants to go home and be a good, traditional daughter. And…rabbits? How exactly is this the Ballad of Mulan? Lee and I discuss the original story, and find ourselves split over the extent to which it qualifies as a work that […]
We had the honor recently of talking with Nick Stember, a longtime translator of Chinese fiction and comics, and the official English-language translator of the renowned writer Jia Pingwa. On this podcast, we talk with Nick about his work, and about the intriguing Jia Pingwa short story “The Ugly Stone.” If you are interested in […]
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 […]
Talk to anyone in China, and they will telly you that May 4th, 1919 is the day that modern China began. Everything before that is feudal, everything after that progress. But is it really that black and white? Rob and Lee take a look at the May 4th Movement, both a political and literary event, and try to […]
How does a low-life moron become one of the great tragic figures in modern Chinese culture? Lu Xun’s 1921 novella The True Story of Ah Q, a masterpiece of the May 4th Movement, presents just such a situation. We discuss the story’s unique narrative choices, and Lu Xun’s varying reception in Taiwan and mainland China. […]