Chinese Literature Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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. 

This podcast, we take a look at the life and times of Jin Yong, along with the genre he came to define, modern kung fu literature. We explore Jin Yong's path to becoming China's best selling writer, putting out more books than JK Rowling. We also look at the January 17th, 1954 kung fu match that inspired him and others to turn kung fu into a phenomenon that would over take the world decades later. 

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.