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 […]

Ge Fei – The Invisibility Cloak

Love and amplifers is the topic of Ge Fei’s novella “The Invisibility Cloak.” Ge Fei uses a discussion of stereo systems to try to articulate changes in value system in China in the late 20th century. Turn up the volume for this exploration of one of contemporary China’s most acclaimed novelists. 

Nicky Harman Interview on Jia Pingwa’s The Sojourn Teashop

Today, the podcast interviews one of contemporary Chinese literature’s extraordinary translators. Nicky Harman translated, along with her partner in crime, Liu Jun, Jia Pingwa’s recent novel The Sojourn Teashop. Nicky is well known in Chinese literature circles as a translator and promoter of Chinese literature to the broader public. The novel, Sojourn Teashop, is available […]

Ian Johnson Interview

In today’s episode, the podcast is honored to have Ian Johnson, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author and commentator who has spent decades living in and writing about China. His most recent book is called Sparks. In it, he follows a handful of China’s underground historians who resist the increasingly heavy-handed state by writing and researching events that […]

Jin Yong – Sword of the Yue Maiden

Last episode, we talked about Jin Yong’s background. This episode, we dive into a relatively short text by Jin Yong, one of the last he wrote, “The Sword of the Yue Maiden.” This is the story of a King made a slave by a neighboring king, and his quest for vengeance. In it, he comes […]

Moonstruck: Wandering the Galaxy with Li Bai

When people in China think of poetry, two names come immediately to mind: the Tang Dynasty (618-907 B.C.E.) poets Du Fu and Li Bai. In part two of our discussion of these greats, we take a look at one of Li Bai’s most famous works, and discuss why he’s our go-to Tang literary figure to […]

Grief in a Fallen City: Du Fu’s Ever-Present Histories

When people in China think of poetry, two names spring to mind: the Tang Dynasty (618-907 B.C.E.) poets Du Fu and Li Bai. In this first of a pair of podcasts on their works, we examine a well-known poem by Du Fu and discuss why the poet was both the greatest master of Chinese poetic form, […]

High Plains Drifter: Li Shangyin

Though not as famous as his predecessors, Li Shangyin, the premier poet from the Late Tang, is an amazing poet. Furthermore, his adoration for Du Fu and other Tang poets helped create the cult of the Tang that is still going on in China. In today’s podcast, Rob and Lee take a look at a […]

Revolution or Reform: A Discussion of the May 4th Movement

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 […]

A Male Mencius’ Mother

On today’s podcast, Rob and Lee discuss a story that is relevant to today’s America as much as it is to  China: Male Mencius’ Mother, a sort of medieval Chinese version My Two Dads. In the story of A Male Mencius’ Mother, we find ourselves in Fujian, on the edge of Chinese civilization, purportedly an […]

‘Cause I’m the Taxman: The Voyages of Yu Gong

The Tribute of Yu (禹貢) is one of the oldest mythological texts related to Chinese statehood. Yu was a semi-mythical god-king who traveled around the nine states noting what each of these states had that was worth giving as tribute to the emperor. The text is almost certainly not as old as it purports to […]

Emperor Shen’s New Groove: Song Dynasty Exam Reform

Have you ever heard about China’s intense exam culture? Much like its East Asian counterparts, China both loves and loves to hates its exam system. The most infamous, the Gaokao, determines the testtaker’s college choice, and even major in some cases. What if we told you that this exam culture had more than a thousand […]

How to Be A/Political: The Seven Books of the Sun

Dead just months before the June 4th massacre in Tiananmen Square, Hai Zi is held up as the great “pure” poet of contemporary China, unconcerned with politics. But how true is that? We discuss his epic work, The Seven Books of the Sun, by way of grappling with the question.           […]

Narration and Revolution: The True Story of Ah Q

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.     […]

Censure and Celebration: Jiang Xingge Re-Encounters His Pearl Shirt

  One of the most acclaimed 话本 (hua ben – vernacular short stories) in Feng Menglong’s 1620 collection Stories Old and New (tr. Yang Shuhui and Yang Yunqin). We discuss the question of irony in a story about both marital and extramarital bliss, and explore the reasons behind the story’s famously racy details.         […]