Chinese Literature Podcast

The 三字經, usually translated as the Three Character Classic, is a fascinating text because it functions like a "my first Confucian text." Children were given this text when they were quite young and asked to memorize the book, teaching them moral lessons that would prepare them to master the real Confucian classics later in life. In this episode, Rob and Lee debate the first few lines of the poem. Just a note: we recorded this in 2018, and then we added a prologue to the front end of the podcast.

Today, Rob is off doing research in China, so Lee interviews Professor Van Norden. Professor Van Norden is a philosophy professor at Vassar, and he works on early Chinese philosophical texts. He recently published a textbook for learning Classical Chinese (文言文). The book is the outgrowth of Professor Van Norden's teaching, and he seeks to make Classical Chinese more approachable than do other textbooks on the language. Professor Van Norden and Lee discuss his book and wider issues related to early Chinese texts.

Yu Dafu is an early 20th Century writer known for one work: Sinking. This novella is highly autobiographical, and it discusses the trials and tribulations of a Chinese student living in Japan. His attitude towards Japanese women and the Chinese nation is both fascinating and disturbing, and Rob and Lee dive into those attitudes. This is the last of our series on Toxic Masculinity in Chinese Literature. 

The Fourth in our series on Toxic Masculinity, this is the story of a man whose wife is sleeping around, a man who is not doing a good job of taking care of his father, a man who, at least in a pre-modern Chinese context, is not a man at all. Upon learning that his wife has tricked him, Ren mans up, going on a murderous rampage, killing his wife, her lover, her parents and her maid, and thus restoring his masculinity. Does this story endorse this violent act? Or is it being ironic? That and more in another Moore debate on this episode of the Chinese Literature Podcast. 

The Water Margin, or the 水浒传 (shui hu zhuan) is one of the novels from the Ming Dynasty that we can point to as the origin of much of the Kung Fu tradition. It is the story of 108 dudes (I'm being technical here). They live outside of the boundaries of the urban Chinese world, just on the edge of civilization. The government is corrupt, so they have formed their own gang. They live by a code, brotherhood and revenge, and they kill anyone who gets in their way, including each other. This is the second in our series on toxic masculinity.

Today Brandon joins Rob and Lee for one of the weirdest stories that they have ever done. The "Biography of Lord As-You-Like-It" is a work of Ming Dynasty porn that discusses the only Empress to ever rule China, the Tang empress Wu Zetian. In this pornographic work, the idea of feminine rulership is equated with sexual promiscuity, and, according to the pornographic story, the only way to solve the problem of political illegitimacy/sexual promiscuity is for Wu Zetian to submit, both politically and sexually, to a man with a giant penis. This work of pornography is fascinating from a feminist perspective, because it makes the nexus between power and gender explicit. It is also important to literary scholars because it is one of the predecessors to the pornographic novel Jin Ping Mei, the Plum in the Golden Vase. 

We are posting this podcast on June 4th, 2019, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. We have decided to focus on a song (which is just a poem, after all) that was performed for the protesters in the Square and that became the anthem ofr the movement that, thirty years ago, briefly lit a path for Chinese democracy, before being snuffed out so brutally. 

Modern Chinese Literature begins with the May 4th Movement. Well, that's according to the orthodox understanding of Chinese literature promoted by the CCP in China. Either way, May 4th, 1919 was a turning point both in Chinese society and in Chinese literature. It was during and after this date that Lu Xun wrote some of his most important pieces of fiction. Those works came together in a book Warcry (呐喊) which is one of the monumental works in Chinese literature. The preface to that book, our subject today, is the most talked about part of that work. Today, on the 100th anniversary of the May 4th movement, we think about Lu Xun, his preface to Outcry and how we still hear echos of the work today.

This work of Daoism is one of the most translated books in the world. But what is it really about? Rob and Lee explore the Laozi (he probably was not a real person, so we call him the Laozi or the Lao tze) and a passage from his Dao De Jing.

This podcast we take a look at a story from a strange Daoist classic, the Huainanzi 淮南子. The tale is called Old Man on the Border Loses his Horse 塞翁失馬. The story title is, itself a chengyu, that means something like you never know if something that seems unfortunate is actually fortunate. Here is the original Chinese from the Huainanzi: 夫禍福之轉而相生，其變難見也。近塞上之人有善術者，馬無故亡而入胡。人皆吊之。其父曰：「此何遽不為福乎？」居數月，其馬將胡駿馬而歸。人皆賀之。其父曰：「此何遽不能為禍乎？」家富良馬，其子好騎，墮而折其髀。人皆吊之。其父曰：「此何遽不為福乎？」居一年，胡人大入塞，丁壯者引弦而戰，近塞之人，死者十九，此獨以跛之故，父子相保。故福之為禍，禍之為福，化不可極，深不可測也。 Lee's Translation: Oh, the vicissitudes of fortune and misfortune, the two are born together, and it is hard to distinguish between the two. There was a man who was a good fortune teller who lived near the border. His horse ran into the barbarian's territory. Everybody said that this was unfortunate, but the man said, "Not so fast. Maybe this is fortunate." They waited several months and the horse returned, bringing with them a barbarian horse. Everybody said, this was fortunate. The man

When most folks outside of China hear of the Tiananmen Square Incident, and most people either think of the massacre that occurred in 1989. But there was an earlier incident. In 1976, people were getting tired of the Cultural Revolution, but any one who stepped out of line could be criticized. Zhou Enlai, the premier of the country and a beloved figure, died. Mao was sick, and leftists forces were preparing to take over the country and continue the Cultural Revolution. But on the death of Zhou Enlai, masses of people filled up Tiananmen Square without authorization from the government as a way to protest the chaos of the Cultural Revolution. These people also posted numerous poems on the walls throughout the city. Today, we look at what happened during the 1976 Tiananmen Incident and analyze one of the poems. 

Today, we look at one of the most popular writers during socialist China (1949-1976). His name is Lei Feng. He wrote poetry about dump trucks, but he was killed when a dump truck backed up into a telephone pole which came crashing down on him. As they were cleaning up the deceased earthly possessions, they found a diary that showed such dedication to the party and to Chairman Mao that they decided to use Lei Feng as a model for the ideal party member. Some say it is all made up, that the communists invented Lei Feng out of thin air as a work of propaganda (but only capitalists and their running dogs believe that). Whatever you believe, take a journey with us as we read Lei Feng's Ode to a Dumptruck.

Today, Rob and Lee say goodbye, or, at least, say goodbye to the face to face format of podcasting. Rob has earned a Chateaubriand Scholarship to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he will be researching the nexus of Chinese and French culture in the late Qing. That means Lee and Rob may have to change some things up in the way the podcast is done, but fear not, the podcast will continue.  The poem they will look at is one of Li Shangyin's most famous goodbye poems. Here is Lee's translation of it: It was hard to meet, and hard to part the east wind is weak, the hundred flowers are withering the spring's silkworms move towards death, the silk is done the candle grows gray, wax tears turn dry she looks into the mirror but worries that her hair is changing at night, she chants, the moonlight's chill is all she knows the mystic home is not far away the blue bird will be the messenger of my love.    And the original: 相見時難別亦難，東風無力百花殘。 春蠶到死絲方盡，蠟炬成灰淚始乾。 曉鏡但愁雲鬢改，夜吟應覺月光寒。 蓬山此去無多路，青鳥殷勤為探看

Today, Nick Stember, the expert on Chinese Manhua (similar to Japanese Manga), joins us as we discuss a short manhua cartoon booklet that was published in 1950. The booklet was meant to be a simple way to explain the 1950 Marriage Law, one of the first acts passed by the new Communist government. The Law legitimized the Communists in the eyes of many Chinese women and their progressive allies. It was the first Chinese to legalize a woman's right to divorce (divorce had been permitted before, but under circumstances generally unfavorable to women), and it modernized many of the old customs in rural China. This was the first in a series of feminist policies the Communists implemented, and the text we explore today provides an interesting angle through which to explore gender, propaganda and ideology in 1950's China. 

 Today's podcast is a solo podcast where Lee interviews China journalist and author, Robert Delaney. Delaney has just published a novel which is semi-autobiographical, in which a film-maker disappears into the maw of the Chinese police.