Show Notes
Today, we finish up the 3 part series on Tang Poetry Masters with a look at Du Fu, China's poet historian. The An Lushan Rebellion tore the Tang Dynasty in half and is one of the defining events of Chinese history. Du Fu is pivotal for our memory of that event, as his poems are often how the war is discussed, even today. In today's podcast, we look at two-ish poems that Du Fu wrote about the An Lushan Rebellion and try to better understand Du Fu's life.
More from Chinese Literature Podcast
Ghosts, fox spirits, seductive women, and terrifying monsters populate Liaozhai Zhiyi, one of China's greatest collections of supernatural tales. Just in time for Halloween, translator Susan Wan Dolling joins the Chinese Literature Podcast to discuss her new book, Mr. Historian of the Strange, featuring stories by the 17th-century writer Pu Songling. We explore the chilling tale of "Painted Skin," the surprisingly powerful women in these stories, and the personal family history that inspired Susan's translation. You can get a copy here (https://earnshawbooks.com/product/mr-historian-of-the-strange/) at Earnshaw Books, or from Seattle's least loved bookseller here (https://a.co/d/019p91Lq).
In May, I did a podcast on Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuangzi. I screwed something up. In this episode, I explain what I got wrong and why.
In today's episode, I got the chance to speak with Salih Hudayar, the Foreign Minister of the East Turkestan Government-in-Exile. We talked about Uyghur literature, Uyghur history and even American history.
In this podcast, we look at the novel that was, a little more than a week ago, awarded the International Booker Prize. Taiwan Travelogue is a novel that pretends to be a travelogue, where a Japanese woman from Nagasaki, an important writer in the Japanese empire. She travels to Taiwan to travel and talk about her writing, but she comes to have a sort of friendship with a Taiwanese woman. This novel is an interrogation of Japanese and KMT colonialism in Taiwan. It may also be a romance, though that is never clear. An overall great novel that deserved the Booker.
I am sad to report that Stephen Owen, a professor at Harvard University who wrote about Chinese poetry, just passed away at the age of 79 in Massachusetts. This short podcast talks a bit about one of the giants of the field.