Chinese Literature Podcast

The great romantic martyr of contemporary Chinese poetry, who killed himself at the age of 25 in 1989, Hai Zi is one of the most studied, recited, and well-known poets of the 20th century in China. Positioned alternately as the bard of the countryside or a "pure" poet, he is a figure believed to have been outside the hurly-burly of Chinese political life. Yet his unfinished epic work, The Seven Books of the Sun, which has little to no scholarship, problematizes that idea. 

How does a low-life moron become one of the great tragic figures in modern Chinese culture? Lu Xun's 1921 novella The True Story of Ah Q, a masterpiece of the May 4th Movement, presents just such a situation. We discuss the story's unique narrative choices, and Lu Xun's varying reception in Taiwan and mainland China.

One of the most acclaimed 话本 (hua ben - vernacular short stories) in Feng Menglong's 1620 collection Stories Old and New (tr. Yang Shuhui and Yang Yunqin). We discuss the question of irony in a story about both marital and extramarital bliss, and explore the reasons behind the story's famously racy details.

Here we talk about telescopes, gods, and the peculiar anxiety that results when a foreign civilization circumvents established domestic social rules.