Chinese Literature Podcast

In today's episode, I got the chance to speak with Salih Hudayar, the Foreign Minister of the East Turkestan Government-in-Exile. We talked about Uyghur literature, Uyghur history and even American history. 

In this podcast, we look at the novel that was, a little more than a week ago, awarded the International Booker Prize. Taiwan Travelogue is a novel that pretends to be a travelogue, where a Japanese woman from Nagasaki, an important writer in the Japanese empire. She travels to Taiwan to travel and talk about her writing, but she comes to have a sort of friendship with a Taiwanese woman.  This nov...

I am sad to report that Stephen Owen, a professor at Harvard University who wrote about Chinese poetry, just passed away at the age of 79 in Massachusetts.  This short podcast talks a bit about one of the giants of the field. 

In this podcast, I got the chance to do a face-to-face interview with Professor Li Wai-yee, a Harvard scholar who is one of the most prolific scholars of Chinese literature. During our interview, we discussed her new book, The Confucius Chronicles, just released by Columbia University Press, along with the massive role that Confucius has played in Chinese history. 

First off, I am dropping the podcast on the 10th Anniversary of our first episode. On April 9th, 2016, the Chinese Literature Podcast had its first episodes. The first episode of the podcast's next decade is Morris Rossabi, the scholar who made the world rethink Kublai Khan and the Mongols. He wrote the first good English-language biography of the world-changing figure. We talk about Genghis, Kubl...

Today, we finish up the 3 part series on Tang Poetry Masters with a look at Du Fu, China's poet historian. The An Lushan Rebellion tore the Tang Dynasty in half and is one of the defining events of Chinese history. Du Fu is pivotal for our memory of that event, as his poems are often how the war is discussed, even today. In today's podcast, we look at two-ish poems that Du Fu wrote about the An Lu...

Today, the podcast gets to Wang Wei and a Buddhist poem he wrote with the eye of a painter. Wang Wei is the least popular of the three High Tang poets, at least, since the Song Dynasty, but, back in the day, he was the most popular, more popular than Li Bai and Du Fu. We'll travel to his empty mountain and see if we aren't too disturbed by women doing the laundry to learn a bit about Chinese poetr...

Today is the beginning of a three part series I am going to do on the three big Tang poets, Li Bai, Wang Wei and Du Fu. In this episode, we take a look at Li Bai, often considered China's Greatest poet, and his relationship with the regions to China's West, modern day Xinjiang and the Stans. Li Bai has a strange relationship with the West; in fact, he was probably born in modern-day Kyrgyzstan, an...

Today, Lee gets to chat with Susan Wan Dolling , Hong-Kong-American poet, novelist and translator. She recently published her latest book of Song poetry translations, What the Cuckoo Said , but she has long been working on translating Chinese poetry into an English that does what is hard to do, that preserves the music that you hear in the Chinese original. If you want to check out more of her tra...

On this episode, I give a brief update on the book's status, which should be in your hands by mid-November. And also, Rob returns, joining the podcast from France to talk about what he has been up to and also to chat with Lee about the book. 

Today, I get to speak with Professor Emily Mokros about her fascinating book,  The Peking Gazette in Late Imperial China - State News and Political Authority . The book is about a media outlet in the Qing Dynasty that published discussions that the emperor held with his bureaucrats. 

This episode, the podcast takes a look at a poem Mao Zedong wrote in February 1936, after he and his party had undergone the near-death experience of the Long March. Yet still, Mao has the gumption to imply in the poem that he would be the greatest ruler China had ever seen.    My Translation of the Poem: Spring in a Soaked Garden - Snow The north country scenery, frozen over for a thousand miles,...

This episode is a special one. The podcast has a conversation with Fox Butterfield, the first correspondent for the New York Times after 1949. Mr. Butterfield set up the Beijing Bureau for the New York Times in 1979 and was the bureau chief from 1979 to 1981.  Mr. Butterfield started studying Chinese in 1958, and was a student of John Fairbank.  In this episode, I got the priveldge of interviewing...

In today's episode, we look at a work that tackles the controversial topics of aborition and the One-Child Policy. Today's story, by Nobel-Prize Laureate Mo Yan, watches a father/government official after his wife becomes pregnant with a son. Their first child, a daughter, is not good enough for the official's dad, he wants a son. But the official is tasked with enforcing the One-Child Policy, Chi...

"Folding Beijing" is one of the most talked-about science fiction stories to come out of China since Liu Cixin, Hao Jingfang's story is about a Beijing divided into three parts. First Space is for the rich, Second Space is for the middle class and Third Space is for the poor, who clean up after First and Second Space Beijing. The three spaces never exist simultaneously, but rather when First Space...

Today, we are looking at a story involving Su Dongpo, who was the butt of the greatest fart joke in all of Chinese history. The story involves Su Dongpo, the Song Dynasty's greatest poet, and a Zen Buddhist named Buddha's Stamp. 

Lock up your daughters and watch your wallet. In this episode, we are going to take a look at stories from the late Ming's most famous grift manual, a book by Zhang Yingyu. For this episode, the translators, Bruce Rusk and Christopher Rea have kindly agreed to come on talk about this text without stealing anything.  I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to make counterfeit silver, run a g...

Today, we have an interview Joel Bigman, the author of  The Second Journey .  The Second Journey is a continuation novel of  Journey to the West  (西遊記). In this journey to the West, Tang monk travels ever farther to the west, all the way to modern day Israel. Bigman has written his novel with some of the same characters that you know and love, Tang Monk, Monkey and Pigsy, but he also has some n...

It is that time of year again, the time when the Chinese Literature Podcast takes stock of the year and what has happened. In this podcast, Lee talks about his book and also about teaching Chinese Literature at the University of Oregon. 

Today, we have an exciting and disturbing episode about Taiwan and prostitution. This is Number 6 in my series on Taiwanese literature, and the second episode on Huang Chunming, Taiwan's most famous nativist author. Last episode, the podcast looked at the story, "Drowning of an Old Cat." This week we look at a story from that same English translation. "Sayonara, Zaijian" is a story about a Taiwane...

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. 

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. 

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 condems in this amazing film. 

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 of the pro-Palestinian protests in 2024, and he describes how...

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.