Chinese Literature Podcast

In May, I did a podcast on Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuangzi. I screwed something up. In this episode, I explain what I got wrong and why.

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 novel is an interrogation of Japanese and KMT colonialism in Taiwan. It may also be a romance, though that is never clear. An overall great novel that deserved the Booker.

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, Kublai (Genghis' grandson) and the effect they had on China.

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 Lushan Rebellion and try to better understand Du Fu's life.

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 poetry.

Living in the Mountains on the Cusp of Fall

Empty mountain after a new rain,

The air is late, fall is coming

The bright moon shines amid the pines,

the clear stream's water flows over a rock.

Hubbub in the bamboo, the washing lady returning

the fishing boat pushing through lotuses.

And then it happens that the flowers of spring die,

Me, a hermit, I can hang here for a while.

山居秋暝

空山新雨後，天氣晚來秋。 明月松間照，清泉石上流。 竹喧歸浣女，蓮動下漁舟。 隨意春芳歇，王孫自可留。

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, and was probably Persian, Turkic or maybe even Jewish. That's right, China's greatest poet may not have even been Chinese. Take a listen to the podcast to find out more.

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.