…And then there were the Maoist years. Following the Chinese Communist Party’s victory in 1949, literature was tightly controlled until 1976. That means, well, it’s a pretty rough period to discuss. But we still found some gems! Join us to find out more!
Song Dynasty Children’s literature + Communist propaganda + global pandemic = today’s discussion. Last week, we talked about the Three Character Classic (三字經). It is a work of probably Song Dynasty children’s literature that functioned as many young Chinese children’s first Confucian text to memorize. The book is written with three Chinese characters in each […]
When most folks outside of China hear of the Tiananmen Square Incident, and most people either think of the massacre that occurred in 1989. But there was an earlier incident. In 1976, people were getting tired of the Cultural Revolution, but any one who stepped out of line could be criticized. Zhou Enlai, the premier […]
Today, we look at one of the most popular writers during socialist China (1949-1976). His name is Lei Feng. He wrote poetry about dump trucks, but he was killed when a dump truck backed up into a telephone pole which came crashing down on him. As they were cleaning up the deceased earthly possessions, they […]
Today, Nick Stember, the expert on Chinese Manhua (similar to Japanese Manga), joins us as we discuss a short manhua cartoon booklet that was published in 1950. The booklet was meant to be a simple way to explain the 1950 Marriage Law, one of the first acts passed by the new Communist government. The Law […]
At the 1942 Yan’An Forum on Literature in Art, held in the Shaanxi city of Yan’An, Mao Zedong delivered a series of lectures on the role played by the literary arts in shaping, and being shaped by, the “soldier, farmer, and worker.” While not literature per se, they still played a huge role in Party […]
Arguably the single most important political figure of the 20th century, Mao Zedong was also an active poet whose works are still read and, more frequently, debated. How exactly do you approach the poetry of a man whose legacy includes some of the worst man-made disasters in history? By way of exploring this question, we […]