Chinese Literature Podcast

Last episode, we discussed Jin Yong and his contributions to Kung Fu literature. This episode we take a look at his final work, the "Sword of the Yue Maiden." We encounter some ancient Chinese punks with swords and how their killing of a little girl's goat ends up percipitating their demise.

This podcast, we take a look at the life and times of Jin Yong, along with the genre he came to define, modern kung fu literature. We explore Jin Yong's path to becoming China's best selling writer, putting out more books than JK Rowling. We also look at the January 17th, 1954 kung fu match that inspired him and others to turn kung fu into a phenomenon that would over take the world decades later.

This week is the last in our Sima Qian series, but it is also definitely the best. We look at how Sima Qian lost his testicles while sticking to his principles. We consider the conflict between him and Emperor Wu that percipitated his castration. I also make a big announcement. Here is the Transcript: My name is Lee Moore, and this is the Chinese literature podcast. We are coming to the end of our Summa Chen series. Last week, we looked at Summa Chen's discussion of the capitalists, Summa Chen's defense of free market principles. This week, we are looking at one of the most famous Summa Chen works. And strangely, it might not even have been by Sima Qian himself. This week we are talking about the famous Bao Ren An Shu, the letter replying to Ren An, the letter to Ren An as it's sometimes translated. First we're going to discuss the controversy surrounding the letter and the context in which it was produced, and then we're going to dive into the letter itself. So what's the controversy? There's actually a debate as to whether or not Sima Qian wrote the letter. The letter to Renan, despite the fact that This is the work that Sima Qian is most known for. It doesn't appear in the shi ji, the records of the historian. The records of the historian is Sima Qian's main work. Why doesn't the letter of Ren'an appear in that work? We don't really know. Instead, it appears in the Han shu, the history of the Han, the book of the Han. The Han shu, is a work that appears almost two centuries after Sima Qian's death. Now, the letter to Renan appears in that work and it purports to be by Sima Qian. Did Sima Qian actually write this letter? It's hard to say. There's a book written by Li Weiyi, Michael Nylan, Han Venice, and Stephen Durant. They're all stunningly good. Scholars, professor Durant's a friend of the podcast has appeared on the podcast way back in April 17. They argue that this letter might actually be written by someone else, but they think it's pretty much true to Sima Qian. I don't understand what that means if The letter is written by someone else, but true to him, I don't, I don't know. That's a circle that I can't square, but that's fine. I just wanted to talk a little bit about that controversy. Is this letter by Sima Qian? We don't know. Does it matter? Probably not, because for two millennia, it's Chinese readers have been reading this letter and whether or not it was truly written by the real historical Sima Qian, it has become associated with the character of Sima Qian in the minds of so many Chinese readers. Okay. Enough on the controversy. Let's dive in to the circumstances surrounding this letter. Renan was supposedly a friend of Sima Qian. Renan is involved in a rebellion in 91 BC called the Liuzhou Rebellion. Renan is facing execution because he supposedly did not. display sufficient loyalty to the emperor during this rebellion. Ren An writes a letter to Sima Qian explaining what happened. Ren An doesn't think his execution is justifiable. Sima Qian replies to Ren An's letter. Sima Qian essentially tells Ren An to suck it up, deal with it. And then he, it is this long disquisition. By so much in explaining what happened to so much in himself and how he dealt with the prospect of almost being executed by the emperor and how in the end so much in lost his testicles though not his life. Let's jump back in time a bit. So much in served Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, Han Mu Di. Emperor Wu is very controversial. He institutes this new economic policy, something that we talked about in the last podcast. Emperor Wu also breaks with other traditions. So for about quite the past century, the Han dynasty largely kept the northern barbarians, that is the Xiongnu, in check. And they had done this with a pretty simple diplomatic formula. They paid them and they married the, uh, Han Dynasty princesses off to the Xiongnu as a way to make sure the Xiongnu had skin in the game and knew that if they...

Today, we take a look at Sima Qian's Biography of the Capitalists, chapter 129 in the Records of the Historian. This chapter is Sima Qian's two-millennia old defense of free market capitalism. The chapter is one of the most interesting his oeuvre because Sima Qian was condemned for it by later historians.

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.

The third in the series on the Book of Poems, this episode looks at the mythological poem on the birth of the god of agriculture, Lord Millet.

Can Xue is the odds on favorite for winning the Nobel Prize in Literature tomorrow. Rob and I did a podcast on her way back in 2018, and I am rereleasing it in honor of her consideration. Whatever the choice of the Swedish Academy, Can Xue has already won in my heart.

Today is part two of the podcast series on the 詩經, the Book of Poems. This episode looks at Those Tender Peaches, a highly sexualized poem talking about more than peaches.

Today, we are taking a look at a poem from the oldest extant work of Chinese literature, the Shijing (Book of Poem) Today's poem is a poem about rats, but also a poem about government, and it is the first in our series on the Shijing.

Today's episode is a joke. No really, we are looking at a joke that is making the rounds on Weibo. This is a joke that is very opaque, but that opacity points to how autocracy in China works today.

One of the world's great philosophers meditates on the value of being useless with a parable about an old, ugly tree.