Today, Rob and Lee change the format and have a debate about China and innovation, with Rob defending China and Lee arguing that there is something in Chinese culture that does not value innovation. Lee references Huang Tingjian and Su (Dongpo) Shi. Su Shi, the famous Song poet they did podcasts on before here and […]
This week, we take our final look at the Journey to the West, fast-forwarding all the way to the end. Today, we will look at the last three chapters of the novel, Chapters 98-100, thinking about how this passage sums up the journey, and discussing questions of Chineseness in the novel.
Part 5 in our Journey to the West Series, Rob and Lee take a look at Chapters 59-61, one of the most important fights in the book. In these chapters, Monkey struggles to take the fan from the aptly named Princess Iron Fan. With the fan, he can extinguish the fire on the, again, aptly […]
Is this novel tedious? Only when you don’t know the secret to reading Journey to the West! Join us as we discuss a fascinating methodology for reading the novel that bears a lot of resemblance to classic superhero comics who each have their own kryptonite. Below is the chart that we talk about in the […]
In this third part of the series on Journey to the West, Rob and Lee discuss the characters in the novel other than Monkey (but they still end up mostly talking about Monkey…he is just that much fun).
By far the most well-known part of Journey to the West is the first 7 chapters. A quasi-divine monkey figures out how to get nearly limitless power, has a whole lot of fun with it, then starts a war with heaven. And almost wins. Join us for a discussion of one of the most beloved […]
Today, we begin our series on on of the most influential novels in the history or China, really in the history of Asia. Today, we begin the Journey of the Journey by contextualizing the novel.
Today is the last in our podcast series on the Song (we think…). Our subject, Ouyang Xiu is one of the most famous literatis of the 11th century, and he helped inspire the turn towards antiquarianism in Chinese culture. He was obsessed with collecting old stuff, particularly epigraphs (writing carved into rocks or other medium). […]
Brandon Folse joins us in our next installment on our Song Dynasty series. Today, we are discussing what is definitely the greatest female writer of the Song dynasty and is possibly the greatest female writer in all of Chinese literature, Li Qingzhao. Some might even consider her the greatest poet in Chinese history, though this […]
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. […]