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 translations, check out Hundred Tongues (volume 1 of her Song poetry translations), Superstars (volume 1 of her My China in Tang Poetry series), Floating on Clouds (volume 2 of her My China in Tang Poetry series) and Friends and Lovers (volume 3 of her My China in Tang Poetry series).

Also, my book, China's Backstory: The History Beijing Doesn't Want You to Read is out! You can purchase a copy of it here from my publisher:

https://unsungvoicesbooks.square.site/product/china-s-backstory-the-history-beijing-doesn-t-want-you-to-read-preorder/BXJSID5U6P4RVONS7V4HSZSH

Or you can purchase it on Amazon here.

If you are interested, check out the nice things smart people have said about the book here.

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. 

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. 

A disturbing if sometimes trite story of a country girl who goes to boarding school in 1930's China, gets treated like crap and is eventually pushed out of the school, all because she is low class and her hands, stained by the dye her family uses to put her through school, are ugly. Rob and Lee unpack this story of class and mistreatment for this week's podcast. 

This week, we look at one of the most famous writers in modern China. It is surprising that we have not tackled Shen Congwen before...he was in contention for China's first Nobel Prize for Literature until his death in 1988. The reason we have not discussed him is, despite his importance to Chinese literature, neither of us really like him. Listen as we work through why Shen Congwen is really valuable to read, even if we don't like him. 

This week, we are discussing a story from Ken Liu's Invisible Planets, a collection of science fiction short stories that he recently translated and published. Chen Qiufan's "The Year of the Rat" is a weird story that may or may not be science fiction but is definitely worth reading for everything it tries to say about Chinese politics.

Part Two of our miniseries on Bai Juyi: this week we look at a poem of biting satire that is a good example of Bai's more polemical poetry. Bai was eventually exiled for some of the poetry he wrote (not this poem, but an equally cutting poem). Listen as we try to work through Bai Juyi's artistry and politics in this week's edition of the Chinese Literature Podcast.

A seasonal poem? A meditation on death? What does one do with Bai Juyi's poem Autumn Thoughts (秋思)? Rob and Lee hash it out as they watch the leaves fall on two different continents. 

Zhu Ziqing (朱自清) wrote a short, touching essay on his father. In the essay, Retreating Figure (背影), Zhu grows up a great deal by watching his father grow old.

We thought we were done with the Song, but we just cannot get enough of it. Now, we are going back to Ouyang Xiu with a poem that features in a translation of a late Qing thinker that Rob is working on. The poem is by Ouyang Xiu, and Rob and Lee disagree about how to read it...no surprises there. 

It has happened again. For the second time this year, a billionaire has used a Chinese poem on social media in a newsworthy way. And you know we had to deal with it! This week, the world's richest man, Elon Musk, tweeted a Chinese poem about fraternal problems. The poem, which he titled "Humankind" (in English). It is not hard to understand the poem, but it is a little mysterious as to why Elon Musk is tweeting it. We tackle both problems on this week's podcast.

Seven Step Poem
One boils beans by igniting beanstalks
The beans in the kettle sob
"We were born out of the same roots
to fry together, why be this rash?"
Lee's Translation

Original:
七步诗
煮豆燃豆萁
豆在釜中泣
本是同根生
相煎何太急？

We have another spooky story for Halloween, this time a story from Lu Xun. This story, "White Light," is not as discussed as it ought to be, but it has a skull, a suicide and a question of China's future direction. 

We always come back to Pu Songling. This week, we are looking at his story "The Magic Sword and the Magic Bag," which actually has little to do with either, but rather is a story about love, prostitution and a ghostly woman...join us for a spooky episode of the Chinese Literature Podcast. 

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 Taiwanese man forced to pimp out his own countrywomen to the Japanese. It is fun, it is disturbing, it is triggering. In other words, it is a great work of literature. 

This week, we take a look at on of the great writers from Shanghai's 1930's modernist moment. Shi Zhecun is one of the New Sensationalist (新感觉派), and his story, "One Evening in the Rainy Season" follows the story of a man who is following a woman one rainy Shanghai night. Is he a creeper? Is he just a normal person in this metropolis? We stay inside the character's head, but we never really get a grasp on what is going on. 

This week, Rob and Lee go back to the very first poem in all of Chinese literature. The first poem in the Classic of Poetry, "Guan, Guan Goes the Osprey" has been interpreted and reinterpreted so much that it has become a staple of the canon. Rob and Lee discuss this, though, of course, this cannot be done without a few Beatles references. 

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 here.

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 named, the Fire Mountians and continue his journey west. But there are lots of complications. Take a listen to Rob and Lee's discussion of the episode, gender and colonialism in this scintillating podcast. 

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 figures in all of Chinese literature: the Monkey King (Sun Wukong).

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). This is a short prose passage/poem where we see Ouyang Xiu beginning to develop this obsession. The passage is taken from Stephen Owen's Anthology of Chinese Literature.

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. 

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 would be a controversial claim. Still, what is not controversial is that Li is one of the greats of the Song Dynasty.

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. This story has everything: an execution, a castration and a spontaneously-growing vagina. 

Did you know writing a poem could get you exiled? Well, it could and it did, in Su Dongpo's case. Join us in our ongoing accidental series on Song Dynasty poetry!

This is part of our accidental series on the Song, and this is also our second episode on the poetry of Wang Anshi (王安石). Today, we look at a ballad that Wang wrote upon the death of his wife and continue our debate about the merits of Wang.

This week, we decide, in the middle of doing the podcast, that the Song has so much interesting stuff going on during it that we have to make this series into a longer series. Today, we are going to tackle a single poem by Su Dongpo. The poem we are looking at is Su's "Waking up on a Boat at Night."

This week, we explore Jing Tsu's fascinating exploration of the history of language in her book Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora. 

On today's podcast, we go all the way back to the Northern Song Dynasty, one of the highpoints of Chinese culture, but also a point in which consensus was breaking down. Infighting in the 1070's began a process that would weaken China to the point which it could not face up against its external threats and would collapse in 1127, losing half of Song territory. Today's podcast is on Wang Anshi, one of the scholar-politicians who was at the heart of this infighting. We'll look at three of his poems in a part of a mini-series on Song figures. 

Today's podcast is an interesting poem that functions less as a beautiful poem but more a historical artifact. In 1793, the English Ambassador met with the Chinese Emperor. After their meeting, the emperor, Qianlong, wrote an interesting poem about the encounter. In today's podcast, we dissect that poem. Below is also Lee's English translation of the poem, along with the original, straight from the pen of Qianlong.

This week's episode is a Supplement, where we will talk about China's Good War, Rana Mitter's latest book. Mitter is a historian, but a lot of the content he analyzes is literary or filmic. Mitter's argument is that China today is trying to rethink World War II in a way that is advantageous to contemporary politics, both domestic and international.

In today's podcast, we interview author Yang Huang about her new book looking at the intersection of China, the US, and the politics of family and gender. The book is titled My Good Son, and it is her third work of fiction. The book's plot revolves around two father-son pairs, one Chinese, one American. In the Chinese pair, the son does not meet the father's academic standards, while in the American pair, the father is religious while the son is gay. Join us for a fascinating talk with one of the people who actually does the hard work of making literature.

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, we dig back into a podcast recorded several years before but never before aired. The topic is Nie Zheng (聂政), a story in the biography of the assassins, in Sima Qian's Shiji. The story may be one of the early predecessors to Kung Fu film and literature.

This is it, this is the end of our decade-by-decade exploration of Chinese Literature in the 20th Century. Lee explores Mo Yan, while Rob chooses Xi Chuan. Join them for the final episode in this series.

This week's episode looks at a Tang Dynasty Poem that cost Meituan Dianping, one of China's unicorn internet companies, 26 Billion dollars off its market capitalization. In this episode, we take a look at the Zhang Jie's "Book Burning Pit" and explore the full story behind the poem that the media is not explaining.

Today, we are rebroadcasting an episode that we did on the Three-Character Classic in honor of Chloe Zhao's quoting of the text during the Oscars. The audio quality is a little...well, you'll hear. We apologize. Just think, it has only been a year since we recorded this and already we are this much better. 

At last! Out of the Maoist wilderness and into what may be the most riveting period for literature and the arts in the entire 20th century in China.  

Today, the Chinese Literature Podcast asks the ultimate geopolitical question: Is Taiwan Chinese?

Actually, we are looking at a book titled Is Taiwan Chinese, an anthropological study by Melissa Brown that examines how identity, Chineseness and ethnicity are constituted on both sides of the Taiwan Straits...that is just a fancy way of saying that identity is something that one does rather than something that one is. We look at Brown's exploration of that process in China and Taiwan. 

The dark night lifts at last! 1976 marks the end of both the Cultural Revolution and the Maoist era. It also marks the beginning of one of the most remarkable periods of literature in Chinese history. Literature on Taiwan is also flourishing. Join us to find out more!

Okay, fine, so Prof. Chan is on our dissertation committees. But you know what? That lack of objectivity on our parts doesn't mean The Edge of Knowing isn't still a thoroughly remarkable book, because it is. Join us to find out more!

You want a hard period for a good literary discussion? Then this is your port of call. The 1960's wasn't just a bleak literary landscape in China; it was practically nonexistent. We got around the problem by going across the Straits or underground. Join us to find out more!

Shalom and welcome to the Chinese Literature Podcast. Today, we have a very special Chinese Literature Podcast in celebration of Passover. We will be looking at the book The Haggadah of the Kaifeng Jews of China by Fook-Kong Wong and Dalia Yasharpour. 

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. 

...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!

19 different translations of a single short Tang Dynasty poem add up to a fascinating guided tour of how rich and peculiar it is to encounter the Chinese poetic tradition. Join us to find out more!

There's only one decade whose representative writer we both agree on, and this is it. Debates are more fun, but really? It's hard to argue about Zhang Ailing.