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. 

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 his students reacted to the story. 

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. 

This week's podcast is on one of the earliest documents we have in Taiwanese history, a 1697 journey by Yu Yonghe into the wilds of Taiwan's north, where he mined sulfur amongst the barbarians. Yu gets off on traveling, and this journey is deep into the heart of Taiwan. In this podcast, I discuss the history of Taiwan along with questions of race and racism in Chinese thought.

Love and amplifers is the topic of Ge Fei's novella "The Invisibility Cloak." Ge Fei uses a discussion of stereo systems to try to articulate changes in value system in China in the late 20th century. Turn up the volume for this exploration of one of contemporary China's most acclaimed novelists. 

Today, the podcast interviews one of contemporary Chinese literature's extraordinary translators. Nicky Harman translated, along with her partner in crime, Liu Jun, Jia Pingwa's recent novel The Sojourn Teashop. Nicky is well known in Chinese literature circles as a translator and promoter of Chinese literature to the broader public.

The novel, Sojourn Teashop, is available here, published by an excellent UK-publisher focused on Chinese literature, Sinoist, which is at the forefront of translating and publishing the best of contemporary Chinese fiction.

In today's episode, the podcast is honored to have Ian Johnson, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, author and commentator who has spent decades living in and writing about China. His most recent book is called Sparks. In it, he follows a handful of China's underground historians who resist the increasingly heavy-handed state by writing and researching events that the Chinese Communist Party would rather be forgotten.