No, really: pumpkin seeds are the reason Mao and the People’s Liberation Army won the civil war in 1949, and why the generations that followed pretty much rocked. Or so says Hua Tong’s Cultural Revolution-era short story “Yan’An Seeds.” It’s Communist propaganda, so…is it crap? Yes. But, as Lee puts it, it’s some of the […]
Look, no matter how law-abiding we all are, there’s always that part of us that wishes we didn’t have to be, and just about every culture has its stories that celebrate that. Robin Hood, anyone? How about Ocean’s 11 and its sequels? China has its own long history of outlaw stories, and we talk about […]
In this second of two podcasts on the Journey to the West, Lee discusses his work on a very strange, and very understudied, addendum to the original Journey to the West, written some time later. It turns the original’s focus inward, presenting multiple layers of reality. http://traffic.libsyn.com/chineseliteraturepodcast/Xi_You_Bu.mp3
The 100 chapter picaresque novel Journey to the West (西游记) is one of the “four classic works” of Chinese literature. It is also one of the most popular pieces of writing in the Chinese language. With guest Brandon Folse, we talk about its enduring popularity, curious structure, and baroque approach to names. […]