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
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.” http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/The_Ugly_Stone_-_second_try.mp3 If you are interested […]
Today, we’re looking at one of Du Fu’s poems. We covered one of his works before, but his oeuvre is massive. Here is the poem for the day: 月夜憶舍弟 戍鼓斷人行，秋邊一雁聲。 露從今夜白，月是故鄉明。 有弟皆分散，無家問死生。 寄書長不達，況乃未休兵。 Thinking of my Brothers on a Moonlit Night The drums of war have cut the roads […]
Political allegory? Straight-ahead love story? Supernatural adventure? All of the above? Lee and Rob discuss the story “Rare Stone from Heaven” (tr. Hu Shiguang) from the renowned collection Strange Tales from Liao Zhai (《聊斋志异》), and debate just how literally you can read a story about a man’s love affair with a rock. […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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. […]