Monthly Archives: July 31, 2021

Rerun – A Male Mencius’ Mother

This week, Rob and I are travelling, so we have decided to go back into the vault and dig up one of our first podcasts ever…the sound quality is bad, our explanations are even worse…but the story is great. A man falls in love with a very young boy and things take off from there. […]

Su Dongpo, Part 2

In this episode, we explore a poem by Su Dongpo. This poem was critical of changes to the salt monopoly, one of the Song state’s main sources of revenue. Su worried that this was impoverishing people (though Wang Anshi, Su Dongpo’s political and poetic opponent, was actually more of an advocate for the poor). This […]

Wang Anshi – Part 2

This is part of our accidental series on the Song, and this is also our second episode on the poetry of Wang Anshi (王安石). Today, we look at a ballad that Wang wrote upon the death of his wife and continue our debate about the merits of Wang. For the original poem, check here. Lee’s […]

Su Dongpo – Part 1

This week, we decide, in the middle of doing the podcast, that the Song has so much interesting stuff going on during it that we have to make this series into a longer series. Today, we are going to tackle a single poem by Su Dongpo 苏东坡 (aka Su Shi 苏轼). The poem we are […]

Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora

This week, we have a Chinese Literature Podcast Supplement where we explore Jing Tsu’s fascinating exploration of the history of language in her book Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora.