100 Years of Chinese Literature: 1980-1989
At last! Out of the Maoist wilderness and into what may be the single most riveting decade for literature and the arts of the entire 20th century in China.
Posts Categorized: Contemporary
100 Years of Chinese Literature: 1970-1979
The dark night lifts at last! 1976 marks the end of both the Cultural Revolution and the Maoist era. It also marks the beginning of one of the most remarkable periods of literature of Taiwan. Today we look at an underground poet in China and a Taiwanese short story writer. Join us to find out […]
The Edge of Knowing: by Roy Bing Chan
Today, we take a look at one of the more interesting works of literary analysis to come out on left-leaning literature in 20th Century China. Roy Bing Chan has done close readings of dreams in the works of Lu Xun, Mao Dun, and writers from the PRC.
100 Years of Chinese Literature: 1960-1969
You want a hard period for a good literary discussion? Then this is your port of call. The 1960’s wasn’t just a bleak literary landscape in China; it was practically nonexistent. We got around the problem by going across the Straits or underground. Join us to find out more!
The Tiananmen Square Massacre and Chinese Rock
We are posting this podcast on June 4th, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. We have decided to focus on a song (which is just a poem after all) that was performed for the protesters in the Square and that became the anthem for the movement that, thirty years ago, briefly lit […]
Interview with Robert Delaney
Today’s podcast is a solo podcast where Lee interviews China journalist and author, Robert Delaney. Delaney has just published a novel which is semi-autobiographical, in which a film-maker disappears into the maw of the Chinese police. Note: we here at the podcast had a technical difficulty on our end that, for some inexplicable reason, caused […]
Bus Stop
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 […]
Yang Huang’s My Old Faithful
Today, we get to interview a flesh-and-blood maker of Chinese literature who has recently put out a series of short stories on a fictionalized version of real Chinese families. We talked to her to find out how she went about her craft and what motivated her to write the stories she did. http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Yang_Huang_Interview_-_edited.mp3 […]
50th Podcast Anniversary
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 […]
Can Xue’s Hut on a Mountain
Can Xue is one of the most famous avant-garde authors to emerge from China in the 1980’s, and we took a look at one of her best and most enigmatic short stories, “Hut on the Mountain.” http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Cao_Xues_The_Hut_on_the_Mountain_-_edited.mp3