Ink & Quill

In

2011, a real-life crime story titled "Midnight in Peking" hit the

book shelves and soon became a literary sensation.　Trying to solve a murder mystery that occurred in Beijing months before the

Japanese invasion, this gripping historical non-fiction has not only made its

way into the New York Times bestselling list, but has also put its author Paul

French into the limelight.　 Recently, this award-winning writer made a strong comeback with yet another

whodunit, City of Devils.　 But this time, instead of Beijing, Paul French takes us back to Shanghai in its

licentious 1930s and 40s, where some of the most dodgy, eccentric, and

villainous criminals the city had ever seen thrived before their downfall. In today's episode, our reporter Shiyu sat down with Paul to talk about his new

book, his fascination with early 20th century China, and how crime literature

has become the lens into history.

We know bravery when we see it. Bravery can range from running through a

collapsing building to save a trapped stranger to standing up against an

evidently much stronger individual. It can also turn out to be some action as

simply as a little child overcoming their fear of the dark.　Yes, there

are a myriad of ways to be brave in this world. And so in today's program, we

will learn the various forms of bravery and how this admirable quality can be

found in some of the most unlikely places.

Recently, a cyberspace writers' village was established in the Chinese city of Hangzhou,

an emerging global tech-hub. It is said that the establishment is going

to facilitate the development of China's online literature industry, a market

worth more than 1.3 billion US dollars. But the question is-will this

village really help the business? In this episode, our book critic Shiyu will be joined by Liu Min and Lu

Surui, hosts of the daily talk show Studio Plus, to voice their respective

opinion on the matter.

It was January 1st, 1818, when 20-year-old English writer Mary Shelley quietly and anonymously published her gothic-horror novel, Frankenstein. A literary novice then, the young woman wrote the story simply as a pet project. She could never have imagined the momentous impact that her fantasy has generated in the next two centuries. From James Whale's iconic 1931 horror film to the household TV show "The Addams Family", this dark, macabre, and troubling tale has spawned and inspired numerous movies, plays, games, animations, and many other derivative works. The two foremost literary figures of the book, Dr Victor Frankenstein and the monster he created have already seeped into all forms of media for at least a hundred years. But why are we still fascinated by this two-hundred-year old story?To answer that question, in today's Ink&Quill, our book critic Shiyu will team up with fellow bookworm Lu Sirui, to discuss what makes Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" a timeless classic.

As 2017 comes to a close, it's high time we wrap up this year by talking about

our favourite reads in the past twelve months. Therefore in this

episode, our book critic Shiyu will be joined by Ningjing and Sirui - two

bookworms with their own unique understanding of literature, to discuss some of

the best books they came across in 2017.

Apologize for the delay as our producer Shiyu was on business trips for the past few weeks. This episode is a special edition of Ink&Quill which pays tribute to the victims of the Nanjing Massacre (Rape of Nanjing) eighty years ago. The original podcast was aired on December 16th, 2017.

Sweeping across generations and continents, the

ABC Song has been one of the most popular methods of teaching toddlers the

English alphabet.  Yet in his graphical alliterative alphabet book "Animalia",

Australian author and illustrator Graeme Base has no intention to dumb down the

vocabulary: First published in 1986, over three million copies

of the book have been sold worldwide; making it one of the most successful

children's pictorial books of all time.

But Graeme hasn't stopped there. In his

thirty-plus career years as an artist, he has also created many other widely

loved works, such as "The Eleventh Hour" and "Uno's

Garden". The lush, detailed illustrations and the cleverly hidden puns

that are brimming in these works have elevated the author to international

stardom.  Recently, this Melbourne-based artist came to

China to promote his brand new Chinese publications, including Dragon Moon, his

first ever story that was inspired by his trips to China.

In this extended episode of Ink&Quill, Shiyu

sat down with Graeme to talk about his creative career, his love for drawing

animals and how he, as an Australian writer, utilizes illustration as global

language to tell a Chinese story.

Oceans and seas, lakes and rivers, are bodies of water that cover almost two-thirds of the Earth's surface. For centuries, they have captivated mankind by their mysteries, waves, and their effects on people's imaginations. But  maritime historian Lincoln Paine is determined to go further and dig deeper into our intertwined relation with these masses of water. In his over 700-page tome, "The Sea and Civilization", this American researcher peels away the cobwebs of history and charts a rather impressive panorama of human seafaring activities from the earliest days to date.

A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, Ken Liu is the author of The Dandelion Dynasty, a silkpunk epic fantasy series and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, a collection. He also wrote a Star Wars novel titled The Legends of Luke Skywalker. An unofficial ambassador who bridges Chinese sci-fi with a broader range of western readers,  Ken also translated numerous works from Chinese to English, including "The Three-Body Problem" by Liu Cixin, and “Folding Beijing", by Hao Jingfang, both Hugo winners. During Ken's recent visit to Beijing, our reporter sat down with Ken to talk about his thoughts on storytelling, the silkpunk narrative, and his translation career.

China, with its five-thousand-year-plus history and a language system that is seemingly different from everywhere else, may appear to be inscrutable and opaque to many outsiders. Yet Stewart Lee Beck, an American who has resided in the "Middle Kingdom" for over two decades, begs to differ. Styling himself as the "managing dreamer" of a project named China Simplified, Beck has worked with some other professionals to demystify China and bridge the country with the rest of the world. Their brain children are two books: one is a fun guide designed to spark genuine interest in the Chinese language; whereas another is a lighthearted, fast-paced journey through China's long past.  In this episode, our reporter talks with this China-savvy American on his books, experiences living in China, and some advice he could give to China new comers.