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. 

Transcript generated by AI

 My name is Lee Moore, and this is an addendum to the Chinese Literature podcast that you’re about to hear right after this. So we have a special episode coming up, a special guest that I guess some of y’all are going to recognize. The reason I’m adding this addendum is because I want to tell y’all about the book.

I actually had been holding this podcast much longer than I wanted to. I originally was gonna post this podcast at the end of September when the book was originally supposed to come out. The publication date was supposed to be September 30th, but. ’cause we’ve had some problems with the publication process.

It’s gonna be late. The good news is the book is still coming out. It’s just gonna be a little bit late. Last night I got word from the publisher editor Don Russo over at Unsung Voices books, who’s been working hard to make this book happen. He talked with the typesetter, the person who actually puts the words on the page and makes it look professional.

The typesetter said that the book is bigger than they had anticipated. That just means it’s packed with a lot more fun history that y’all are gonna enjoy, but it also means that it’s taking a little bit longer than they expected to do the type setting. Right now, it’s looking like the book will ship physically, like leave.

The printer in the US Postal Service on November 7th or eighth, so it should be in your hands a little bit after that if you already pre-ordered the book. So we’ll be there in time for Christmas presents or. If it’s your jam Thanksgiving presents, I will keep y’all updated on the publication status using the podcast.

I apologize for this. This is my first time getting published. I’m still learning the ropes. I think that the compromise that we ended up making being a little bit late, but having a really, really good book, that’s a trade that I would make any day of the week. But I understand this might be throwing some of y’all.

Off. I actually had someone write into me, they were giving the book as a birthday present and the birthday falls on November 4th, and she was really bummed out that the, the book wasn’t actually gonna be out until a little bit after the birthday, but we talked and I just sent her a copy of the cover that she’s gonna print out and put a note.

In the present saying, Hey, you know, this book is coming, but it’s gonna be a little late. If me getting the publication day late has caused you some issue like that, don’t hesitate to send me an email, Chinese literature [email protected]. I’m gonna do anything within reason to to fix the problems that I caused.

If I can send you a sticker with my autograph on it, so you. Stick that sticker onto the cover of a book. So your copy is kind of an autographed copy. I can do that. I thought about actually doing a promotion for the book where I write su PO’s fart worthy poem. And if you’re not sure what I’m talking about, make sure to go back to the March 29th, 2025 podcast.

The greatest fart joke in Chinese history. So I thought about doing a promotion where I actually wrote. Fart poem into the book itself. I bow my head to the heaven of heavens. That tiny ray of light that is Buddhism shines on the vast universe. The eight winds cannot move me. I sit up straight like the purple golden lotus.

And I was also gonna write. The cover, the response that pol received from Zen Master Buddhist stamps, which is literally just fart fart, FPFP. But of course, in, in Chinese fart means not just fart, but also it’s like calling BS on someone. So I was thinking about doing a promotion where I wrote the poem and fart, fart.

In the cover of the book, but it, it just turned out to be kind of difficult to coordinate that. But if I messed up a birthday with this late publication, send me an email, Chinese literature [email protected]. Show me the receipt where you. Pre-ordered the book and I will hand write that poem for you in the response of Zen Master Buddhist stamp on a sticker and send it to you so you can slap that right in there and you can know what kind of FAPE this book really is once you get it.

Okay. Just to sum everything up, the publication date originally, September 30th, 2025, but it’s probably gonna be mid-November before the book is actually physically in your hands. I’ll keep you all updated on the podcast, so keep listening. Okay, that’s enough for the addendum. Let’s get to the real thing.

Here it goes. I’m Lee Moore. And I’m Rob Moore. And this is the Chinese Literature podcast. Rob, you’re you’re back. It’s been a while. It’s been, it has been a while. A really long while. Actually. 2020 years. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. It was, it’s three years ago. Three years ago, four years. Three. What is that?

Three? I think we’re showing our, our literature cards by not being able to do basic arithmetic on our podcast. Was it three or four? I don’t remember. What’s five minus two? Rob, it’s great to have you back. We’re gonna catch up on where you are and we’ll also talk about. Where my book is in this podcast.

So originally we planned to have this podcast come out on the publication date of the book, which officially that is still what’s happening. We’ll talk a little bit about that. Yeah. China’s backstory, the history Beijing doesn’t want you to read officially. It’s set to be published on September 30th, but we are still rushing to get the books out to you.

I have seen a copy of the first round of proofs. I’m waiting on the second round. Proofs are. Rob, I know you’ve worked in the publishing and industries. Yeah. So you probably know this proofs are just where you read over a copy of the book to make sure everything’s exactly right before it goes to the printer.

So for those of y’all who have ordered it. When will it actually be coming out? Probably mid-October, but don’t hold me to that. This is my first time getting published so officially, this is my first rodeo. I’m still on a learning curve. We’ll talk a bit more about that in the podcast, but Rob, you’re in France.

I am in France. How are things? Things are great. I love being in France and I, I don’t say that in the, wow, I’m sure, glad I’m not in the US right now way. It’s just great to be in France. I enjoy France. I work at a bilingual Montessori school. It is not exactly the same career path I had when last we were podcasting, but it’s a great fit.

’cause you know, you and I talked a lot about enjoying teaching and it’s great that that’s, that’s what I do. That’s pretty much all I do all day long is teach in different subjects, different times. So it’s, it’s a lot of fun. You’ve talked about teaching a ton. What is it about teaching that you really like?

I think the biggest high in teaching is that moment of discovery or, and you know what I’m talking about. When you can, you can see something click like a student says something like, oh, the moment of discovery in them. Yes. Okay. In them. Yes. Yes. And the student. There’s nothing like that and there’s nothing like getting to introduce people to stuff that you really are interested in.

And I love to read so much. Anytime a kid is like, what’s this book about? I’m like, yes. Yes. Let’s talk about that book. Let’s do it. You know that those are the things. That’s what I, that’s what I live for at the university too. When we were doing the podcast regularly together, you told me that you would, if you could just teach at a university and not do any research, is that kind of what you’re doing now?

Kind of, yeah. I’m not teaching the same kind of stuff and occasionally I do sometimes miss the literature or the history and stuff. There is something incredible about working with kids. I work with kids between about the ages of six and 12, watching them ask certain questions for the very first time.

You know, one of the things that the university got kind of old is, and, and again, I’m preaching to the choir here, but you know, the, the students who are crying to sound much smarter than they are. The ones who are like, I think this symbolizes the following thing. And in internally you’re thinking you don’t even.

Oh, dude, just ask the question you wanna ask, which is, I’m sorry, I don’t have any idea what we’re talking about. What are we talking about? You know, and 60, this age group will say things, they’ll just look at you and be like, what are you talking about? I’m like, ha, good question. Let me see if I can rephrase that.

You know, there’s a lot of honesty in that age group. You’re, so you said it’s bilingual? Yes. You’re not using Chinese, it’s French and English, right? Correct. Okay. It’s a, it’s a big qualifier. Yes. French and English. It would be cool if you could do it in French and Chinese. That would be cool. That would be super cool.

I, it’s too hard for my brain to move between French and Chinese. English and Chinese is okay. French and Chinese is like one part of my brain. Does all the foreign language stuff and that side goes, Ooh, this is gonna be tricky. Every time I tried to speak French while in China, and I, you know, I knew I, I studied for a couple of years, my brain, by the end of the sentence, would always slip into Chinese.

Yeah. It’s, it’s really difficult to juggle. Yeah. When I was in China and speaking French regularly with a person who’s not my wife, I, I would, if, if I had been speaking French for a couple hours. If someone had called me and started speaking Chinese, I literally couldn’t remember for about six seconds how to even say niha.

Like it just was gone and then something would happen and the rhythm would kind of come back and I’d be like, oh, right. Yeah, yeah. I get it all now. It’s fine. It’s fine. So you forget stuff, but hey listen, I want to, I don’t wanna get sidetracked because we’re here to talk about, we’re gonna talk about you, Lee.

We’re here to talk about youth. That’s what we’re here to talk about. I love these specifically. Yeah. I, I love these old, the, the, the old kind of conversational style podcasts. I, because we didn’t really have to prepare for them. I didn’t, I, you know, I was thinking about it when we were originally gonna record Monday.

I was thinking about like, what do I need to do? ’cause normally I have, like, when I’m doing the show on my own, I have gotta create a script and, uh, not for these podcasts. Like we, we would do the reading and then just. It’s so cool to be back in, in this format. Yeah, but I interrupted your question. No, but we’re here because you’re publishing a book and I’ll, I’ll clarify to the listener, not a small press academic, probably never gonna know what in the world he’s talking about book, but a book for anybody sort of book.

It’s a project that actually I was a part of for a little while and then stopped doing for a long while, and then Brandon was a, for a couple years, I dunno, a year and a half, I guess. Not too, too long. We started China’s backstory, the history Beijing doesn’t want you to read it started out in late, mid to late 2020.

Brandon and I had talked about doing a book together. You got involved and we kind of divided it up. We were calling it. What were we calling it? The stories behind the story? Behind the story. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And then Brandon moved on. I moved on. We both had very different sort of interests, career trajectory and stuff.

You stuck with it and it is now finally. Getting published, not you found a publisher, but as in people, we’ll soon be able to actually buy it soon. The, the, the publication date is supposed to be September 30th, but we’re recording this on the 24th, and I still have not, we still have not finished the process, so it’s gonna be probably early to mid-October.

I’m guessing if, for those of y’all who are listeners out there, if y’all are wondering why hasn’t it been sent. Why? It’s just there are a lot of cool aspects to dealing with a smaller publisher. You get to know the people much better you, you know who’s actually doing the work. And the publishers I’m working with are Unsung Voices books.

Amy and Don are both incredible. There’s a book called A People’s Guide to Publishing by Joe Bele. He’s a Portland publisher, so based in Portland, Oregon, just. A little bit north of where I am and he talks about small presses and how cool they are, but also like some of the, the downsides. So I’ve got a copy, a copy of John Irans and Seated translated by Jeremy Tang.

It’s published by Penguin and you know, I have a physical copy that they sent me probably in like July. And the publication day was, I, I guess the publication date has passed. It was sometime in September. But like they have physical copies long before, before things are actually published. Whereas when you’re dealing with a small press, it’s kind of.

A run and gun offense, you know, this very, yeah. Not, not corporate, which you have the, like pluses of not being corporate and the, the right minuses of not being corporate. Yeah, exactly. It’s been a fantastic learning experience for me, but it, it’s, I, you know, learning in both the, the positives and the negatives.

Hmm. Well that’s, that’s what learning is, right? I mean, you sometimes have to learn through stuff that’s really difficult, so. Spoken like a true teacher. Yeah, exactly. Or, or someone who’s been through academia. Right. So I’m curious though about the, the pro, the project. ’cause as I’ve read bits and pieces of the book, it does read very differently than when we were working on, not differently, not a hundred percent differently, sorry.

But obviously differently It reads differently, right? No, no, no, no, no, no. I, I, sorry, I was trying to, oh, see, I was like. Am I being corrected? No, it’s just a terrible joke. That’s what it is. Oh, right. It’s someone who doesn’t know how to tell a joke. Right. I got that. Okay, cool. It’s a, it is a very English joke, so if you went across the channel, know, I’m sure it would be faster.

I’m sure people would be like this anyway. But it does, sorry to interrupt your question. It’s, it’s, it’s a very different kind of book than what I remember. So as it’s evolved, have you have. Altered the style or have you done things to change it consciously, or has your writing style just kind of evolved naturally?

And this is just sort of where, where it landed more? The latter. I don’t know. I, I would be curious. You see how how much of a journalist I’m, I’m trying to be, I’m gonna ask you a question when you ask me a question. Yeah. I’d be curious to hear how you thought it changed. Because, I mean, ’cause it totally did change and I saw tons of ways it changed, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t ever intentional, you know, when we first started working on it.

The Hong Kong section, which is the last section in the book. It was the section that we worked on. So you, me and Brandon project that section so many times. I think we workshopped it eight or nine times. Yeah. Dozen, something like that. Yeah. It kind of, we got sick of it almost. Hmm. And then, yeah, I think we were thinking at that point the, the, the framework of the book would be kind of, how does the American media get China wrong?

So that was very much the theme of the Hong Kong section and then actually the economy section. I don’t know if you got a chance to look at that. Yeah, I read, I think I read that draft once. Once or twice. Yeah. I wrote those kind of with y’all in mind. The the economy section was also written because I was doing something with Mercatus, the think tank that I worked with outside of dc and then.

I got a job as an adjunct professor at the UL teaching and I actually wasn’t sure at that point if the book was even gonna get published. I was, I was really a kind of in a almost Dante esque wilderness situation, wandering around, not sure where I was going. I was quite literally, I. At the midpoint in my life.

And just like Dante, it was, I turned 40 that year, and then Don Russo reached out to me out of the blue. You and I had, when we were working on the book, we had talked with Don, he’s a fan of the podcast, and he told me, Hey, you know, I’m starting at my own publishing company. Would you like to join? And, you know, bring, bring China’s, China’s backstory as our, one of our first books.

Mm-hmm. And I was like, mm-hmm. Heck yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. And so it felt really like, again, getting rescued from purgatory and Right. I don’t know why I’ve got Dante on the mind. I was about to say it’s very dramatic, but it did. You know. It did. It did. It did feel like that, like I remember in.

October, I think it was, of just thinking about giving up on the book and I wasn’t sure if it was actually gonna take off. ’cause if you don’t have a publisher, it’s really hard to pursue. You can self-publish now and that has become more respectable. But it still doesn’t have the same, you know, it doesn’t have the same cache first off, honestly.

Right. And you don’t get the same respect and, and honestly, like having gone through the publication process. Don as an editor brings so much. I remember reading the copies that I, the, the, the text that I turned into Don the Taiwan chapter and being like, this is, I, this, I don’t think this, I don’t know if this is good enough to be in a book.

And then Don works his magic and what comes some really good writing. Yeah. And so the editorial processes is a big thing. Yeah. That’s why it reads a little different. I’m gonna say different this time, not differently. So we don’t get in our, in our old not interesting argument. I think I can, I can see the, the fingerprints of the editor in there in a good way.

But what I was, I think I was specifically curious about something I read in the introduction and I didn’t, I wrote the actual phrase down. I might be able to find it again, but it’s, it’s a pretty forthright stance against what feels like against academia. Like all that stuffy stuff. Yeah. I’m not that stuff.

I’m gonna do this other thing over here. I couldn’t tell if that was, like, if that had been something you had intended all along or if over the process of writing the book made you consciously go. Because I remember, I, at least, I think, I remember when we were all working on it together talking about trying to market this as sort of like a, a, a classroom text.

Like people just getting involved with China stuff and don’t know anything. Hey, this could be a great book for them in the introduction. It sounds like you’ve almost moved away from any engagement in that, and you’re just like, no, I’m done with this. We’re going over here. Am I misreading that, or was that a conscious stance?

No, you’re absolutely right. Okay. So a couple of things happened. First, I got really frustrated with academia. I think we were all frustrated with academia and the way things work. I imagine why. I’m just so shocked. So Luke, I know right? Luke Haad, who you and I have, have both had him as a teacher. He made this speech in 2017, March, 2017, was this very impassioned call for a.

Us as academics to come up with ways to do a better job of speaking to the public. You know, I, I took that seriously to heart. Mm-hmm. And I don’t think we’ve come up with a better way for academics to speak to the public. There’s like this very hard membrane between scholars and the rest of the public.

And I, I think, mm-hmm. What I was trying to do with this book was. I don’t know, break through the membrane or get on the other side of the membrane, probably break through the membrane. ’cause I wanted to speak to a non-academic audience in a very scholarly, not in a scholarly style, but with a kind of the, the, the positives of scholarship that is, you’re grounded in evidence-based research.

And so the, the book itself is very much evidence-based. You know, there’s very few of the claims I make that I don’t back up with a quote from a Chinese source or some other scholar. But rhetorically, this is not your grandma’s. History of China. Honestly, I curse. I dropped the F bomb. I hope I don’t do it gratuitously, but it’s meant to be this kind of, you know what?

I’m gonna take as much of the good parts of academia, this sort of evidence-based humanist research, and I’m gonna take that and package it in. A rednecks guide to China almost at one point as I was, you know, thinking about the title I was, I was almost thinking like, you know, this should be maybe framed as a rednecks guide to China.

Just, just to make it so that it’s something that anyone feels like they. Can pick up so many books. Mm-hmm. Written by scholars where they’re like trying to write to the public. They don’t, they don’t. Lev Nachman and his co-author have a book where they’re trying to explain Taiwan to outside of academia, to, to the public, and they start out with a.

Reference to Fuco, Michelle Fuco, the, the famous French philosopher who’s all the rage in academia right now. And I’m just like, that’s not how you approach the public. Come on, it’s a good book. Other, like, there’s, there’s lots of good stuff in it, but it’s just like really, really hard to break out of the academic mindset.

So one of the ways I did that was just use different words. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, Rob, you’re from Texas. I sometimes speak with a southern accent. When I’m trying to explain things in a non-academic way, just because there’s, it’s very hard to, to rhetorically keep to that stuffy academic ease.

When you’re speaking with a southern accent, it just, mm-hmm. Mentally it just doesn’t work. I was writing this book with a southern accent. That’s super weird. Although I think now I’m waiting for the audio book to come out. I hear you read the entire thing. I No, but what you say is I, I can see that in the book.

I, when I say it’s a different, a little bit different style, it reads for me, and maybe this is just, it’s just bias ’cause, ’cause I’ve, I’ve known you long enough, but it reads almost journalistically and I feel like journalists, very good journalists. Are kind of at the midpoint between academic and popular, because good journalists still have high enough rhetoric that it, it kind of pushes you a little bit, but ’cause it’s not a blog.

Right. But it’s still accessible. Like people can still read it. And so it reads to be a lot like an extended, ’cause you’ve written a lot for the Economist. Like if you, if the Economist had said to you, listen, we’d like you to write us like a 30 page article, it it, it feels to me a little like that. I think, I think your point’s well taken.

I think that in terms of books, at least in terms of communication, you have to choose whether you’re gonna be writing for academics or not. There’s no way to write for both. And this is, I should, you know, you and I, I think, see eye to eye on this one, but academics tend to, they’re their own worst enemy most of the time.

They, they write. So that no one else will understand them, but the top experts in the field. Because if you’re publishing research that everyone can access and clearly it’s not advanced or groundbreaking enough as you have to go back to the drawing board. And I remember, I remember reviewing a book a couple years after I got here and it was about French Chinese writers as in Chinese writers who are writing in French.

And it was a pretty good book, except it kept trying to position it as this high theoretical intervention. And my review was basically like this book’s, like the way it actually reads these writers is incredible. But the moment it starts to tell us, Hey, you know what you can do with theory, you, you think, well, you could do that, but why would you want to, like, what’s to be gained from that?

So I, I think, I think your stance is probably pretty well chosen because at some point you gotta pick a side. You’re not gonna be able to do both the need in academics to always make a theoretical intervention. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, because like that, that gives you prestige within academia, right. But it also makes it unapproachable for.

For anyone. You can’t make high theoretical stances and also expect the public to get behind you. You just can’t. But anyway, we’re, we’re, we’re starting to, to, to turn this into a dump on academia podcast. We’ll, I need to get back into the book. So you’ve got, uh, I need to go back and check the chapter listing again, but I believe you’ve got all the chapters we talked about before.

You’ve got Taiwan, Hong Kong, Xinjiang. Oh, those have have been, lets see, those have become sections and I, because of publishing thing, so we’ve converted, we’ve, we’ve turned like the chapter division as a smaller division. But yeah, basically, yeah. Yeah. If you hear me referring to the Taiwan section, that’s what, that’s it we used to talk about as the Taiwan chapter.

So what for you, do you have a favorite part of the book? I loved that the fact that I was able to. Do this really complicated history of Xinjiang. Hmm. Which is an incredibly, it’s a very kind of, the, the history is so sedimentary. I loved, I was able to do that in a non academicy way. I have a drinking game in there where every time someone gets beheaded, you are, the reader is encouraged to take a shot.

And I’m doing lots of different stuff just to make it fun. So there’s a point where the, a religious figure from Kashgar goes flees to Tibet and has a magical dual with the D, the fifth Dalai Lama. Nice. That’s, that’s not, obviously, that’s not historical, but that is the story that we get from the, that particular Islamic tradition is that they had a, the fifth Dalai Lama and this Muslim leader had a magical dual and he convinced that he defeated the Dalai Lama and then convinced the Dalai Lama to have his Mongol allies.

The Zarian Mongols. Come down and put him in power. Of course, what really happened is that he flees to Tibet, makes a deal with the fifth Dalai Lama, the fifth Dalai Lama. Fifth incarnation of the Dalai Lama goes to his, his allies, the Zung and Mongols, and it’s like y’all can. Take a cut of the taxes that these people are gonna levy, and as long as you keep this dude in power, you’ll be fine.

So it’s this really interesting kind of discussion of history, but done in a really fun manner. Cool. I mean, I think. I, I think people are not gonna have trouble wading through any of the chapters ’cause they’re not gonna be doing much waiting. Although if they do complete the drinking game, it may be kind of, it slog afterwards to focus.

I have to, on what’s happening. I have to, I have a point in the drinking game where it’s like three beheadings on a single page or something. I’m like, so is there anything in the book that you feel like might be right on the edge of a little too much? Yeah. I don’t know if you got the chance to read the Passage, and this is a family friendly podcast.

We’ve always kept it that way. Right. But the book is not We’re we’re, we’re, we’re sponsored by Disney, so we have to, you know, keep it clean. Hopefully they don’t pull us off the air for saying this. Oh, right. Sorry. Exactly. All right. But so, you know, like the, the kind of family friendliness of the podcast.

Contrast with the book a lot. There’s a part, a chapter called the Most, and I’m not gonna say the actual word, but you can, y’all are fans of the Chinese Literature podcast. Y’all can read between the lines. It’s the called the Most Important Mother Flipper in Taiwanese history. It’s about Jji, a guy who in the 1670s has a sex scandal where he is having a sexual relationship with.

His little brother’s wet nurse. So the Chinese text tells us that he is a little weird, even though he’s in his twenties. He likes middle to older women. I’m not making this up. This is just straight from the Chinese text. He likes middle age to older women, and he is ha in this relationship with his little brother’s wet nurse, which in Chinese, in Chinese culture, your wet nurse is in a, what’s called a fictive.

Familial relationship. You know, it, it, it’s not biological, but it, socially it’s the same thing kind of as being a mother. So your younger brother’s wet nurse is your younger brother’s kind of mom. Mom. Therefore, your, your relationship to her is also kind of Right. Yeah. So it’s very, a very icky kind of relationship.

Jung Jing doesn’t care. He has this relationship with the Wener and it causes a lot of tension in Taiwan. But Jung Jing is, you know, he’s large and in charge of Taiwan in 1679, he actually rein invades China as a part of the three Atory Rebellion against the Ching Dynasty. The Ching Dynasty. Rob, you know this, but I should just say this so that we’re kind of covering our bases.

The Ching Dynasty is Manchu, they Ching Dynasty is established in 1636 up in Manchuria. They sweep down, take over China in 1644, but there’s still a lot of ethnic. Tensions because they’re Manchu. They’re not Han Chinese. There’s a rebellion in the 1670s called the three Atory Rebellion. J Jing jumps in and tries to rein invade China to kick out the ching.

He fails, then he dies in 1681. He has two sons. One of them is the product of said mother Flippery, and one of them is just a cool, good leader. He asks. That the cool good leader gets put in charge. Some people behind the throne assassinate the cool guy and put the product of said mother Flippery in the throne.

And so Taiwan is in this really weird position where they’ve got a guy who came onto the throne who nobody likes, and he came onto the throne in a way that nobody likes. And the Ching. Decide to invade Taiwan and Taiwan just sort of gives up. So there’s this real question of had it not been for the sexual scandal and the results of it, would Taiwan have actually ever been Chinese?

Hmm. So it’s a, it’s a, ah, I’ll have to use the word anyway, because people are reading between the lines. It’s a titillating chapter and, but anyway, so. I’ll ask another quick question. Let’s, let’s imagine, right, that you’re, you’re, you’re walking with somebody, you’ve got 30 seconds. They’re like, Hey, you’re writing a book.

Oh, you wrote a book. What’s the book about? And you tell ’em, how could you sell people on the book in like 20 seconds? What could you tell ’em that would be like, yes. You gotta, you gotta read this book now. And I, and I’ll specify my challenge here is not just people who already really dig, kind of, I wanna learn more about it.

People like, so in your intro. You mentioned talking with a guy named, you call him Hawk anyway, who’s basically the redneck, you’re sort of referencing sort of in implicitly throughout. Imagine you run into Hawk again and he goes, oh wow, you wrote a book. Why should I buy a book about a country I don’t care about?

What? What would you, what would you say? You may not care about China, but the US China relationship is the most important relationship in the world right now. Taiwan, Xinjiang, the Chinese economy, Hong Kong. These are the four topics that are driving that, that news that you need to care about. This is the history behind them told in a no nonsense way that won’t put you to sleep.

Hmm. That’s a good one. Were you practicing that or do you just create it just now? No, I just created it. I’m gonna have to write it down. Well done. Well, I was about to say, well done. You should write that down. That should be, that should be the thing on the back to sell the book. Like why should we care?

This is why you should care, which is, you know, teaching in university at least, I was always this way. That was always my favorite thing is to have a room full of people who were like, Ugh, poetry, why should we care about poetry? I’m like, Hmm, good. Let’s start at zero. This is great. I love this challenge.

So what’s next? So the book is coming out. Do you have any follow-up stuff planned or is it just kinda wait and see what happens? I’m not sure. You know, marketing, this book is actually a huge. Task, just because I’m reaching out to tons of people to try and get word of the book out there. Once I’m done with that and kind of the book launches completed, I have thought about doing another nonfiction work on Taiwan, and I’ve also thought about doing a spy novel actually on, again, on, on Taiwan, US China relations.

Hmm. So, yeah, I’ve been kicking both of those ideas around in my head. Or you should write a high academic theory book just to throw people off your trail and they never heard from him again. Yeah. I, I really don’t know. It’s one of those things, uh, I mean, I’ll keep doing the podcast. Mm-hmm. It’s fun. Yeah.

So, just to kinda wind things down here, it’s China’s backstory by Lee Moore. It’s coming through Unsung Voices, books. It’s available online from the publisher right now. You can now pre-order it and it will be sent as soon as it is actually hot off the press. It should be available on Amazon as well. And you could wait and watch the movie version.

I’d recommend reading the book first. But anyway, congratulations. I hope, and I think that’s about, I mean, I, we, we could get into an extremely long extended discussion about the little nitty gritty bits and pieces. That’s not the point of the podcast. The point of the podcast is to talk up the book and get people to go figure it out.

So hopefully by the time you hear this, it will be launched and you will be able to buy it. I’ll keep you the podcast listener updated, but until then, I’m Lee Moore. And I’m Rob Moore, and this is the Chinese Literature podcast.