This week, we are getting back to our roots. Some of the earliest podcasts we did were on the huaben (話本) story. The very first podcast we posted (we recorded others before, but we canned them because they weren't good enough) was a huaben that we called Of Gods and Telescopes. We also did the gender-bending huaben Male Mencius' Mother and Jiang Xingge's Pearl-Sown Shirt. The huaben is just a kind of short story from the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Huaben operate in a karmic universe where bad deeds are punished and good deeds rewarded.
In today's podcast, we look at the Feng Menglong story, "Shen Xiu and his Bird Causes 7 Deaths." The story starts with a rich layabout, Shen Xiu, who is always out playing with his bird. While he is out, Shen Xiu collapses and Zhang, a cooper, sees him lying there with his bird. He decides to steal the bird, but Shen Xiu comes to, so Zhang kills Shen Xiu and sells the bird. Afterwards, several more people die in this trail of horrors. The question that Rob and Lee argue over is whether or not a moral balance is restored to the universe.
Today, in the second podcast in the Sima Qian series, we take a look at some of the first literary evidence we have for the Nan Yue, the People of the Southern Yue, the ancestors to modern-day the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi in China and the people of Vietnam. Sima Qian describes the Han Dynasty's colonial conquest of the Yue in vivid detail.
Sima Qian is not only the first historian in Chinese history, he is also one of the greatest writers that China has ever produced. Today, writers of Kung Fu novels point to Sima Qian's stories on fighters and assassins as the origins of the Kung Fu genre. Chinese business people point to his "Biography of the Capitalists" as the reason why Chinese people today are so good at business. He documents the Chinese colonization of the Yue, who once were an independent nation that straddled the border from Guangzhou to Hanoi.
Today is the start of a series on Sima Qian. The podcast will take a look at Sima Qian the man and the broader context of China's early historiography.
Today, we do something different. We take a look at a children's book that was originally written in English, and then translated into Chinese. Strangely, the translation into Chinese was done in a way that took the English and translated it into classical poetic forms that hark back to the Tang Dynasty. Journey with me to find out how deeply Chinese poetry has influenced the Chinese today.
Today, in our last episode of the year, we look at 1079 when Su Dongpo was tried for a poem. Bitter partisan fighting, liberals versus conservatives...except for the great poetry, this Song Dynasty fight might remind you of something closer to home.
Today, we look at Qiu Fengjia, a Taiwanese-born Mandarin, who, in 1895, upon hearing that Taiwan had been given to Japan as a part of the Treaty of Shiminoseki, wrote a poem expressing his sadness and confusion. We discuss that poem and Qiu's larger legacy.
Today, we have an interview with Professor Zhang Yanshuo, a scholar at Pomona College who studies a group of people that have existed on the peripheries of Chinese soceity for several millennia. The Qiang are a group of people who exist in China today, but also who have records discussing them as early as the Oracle Bones of the Shang Dynasty 3,000 years ago. In today's podcast, we discuss what a poem on a Qiang flute says about the relationship between the Qiang and the Han Chinese.
Today we have a great interview episode with Todd Foley, an adjunct professor at NYU and the translator of Wang Anyi's book, I Love Bill and Other Stories. Our discussion of this fascinating author was a deep dive into Wang Anyi's novella, I Love Bill. Todd's translation just came out.
The Book of Poetry is the earliest work of Chinese lyric poetry in existance. But it has a reputation as being a bit fusty. Today, we are going to explore the naughtier side of the anthology.
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