Stories from a Chinese studio: Recent Episodes
Tianqi Luo
I am super grateful to have my friend Jon on my podcast to chat about Sino-Vietnam relations in this ever changing world.
Happy Women’s Day! In celebration of women all around the world, today I have invited my friend Zifeng onto the podcast to share his research and experience on Black Feminism, Africana Studies, Sino-Africa relations with us. In this conversation, we talk about black feminist leader #ClaudiaJones and her creation of "an anti-imperialist coalition, managed by working-class leadership, fueled by the involvement of women", interesting literature by Black feminist, Black feminism movement and communism in China, Chinese business in Africa, BLM movement and how it’s seen in China, etc...
I feel extremely fortunate to have my fellow Chinese lit podcasters join me for a party where we celebrate our favorite stories from dynastic China!
The opening sentence of The Woman Warrior, “You must not tell anyone,” unveils the central theme Kingston tries to reveal in her memoir: the shifting meaning and attitudes of control, power, and agency behind what can be said, and what must be silenced, left unsaid. The opening line exemplifies the prevalent attitude of silence and obedience with which Kingston feels women characters she depicts in her memoir, as well as she herself feels, are pressured to behave. But the opening line also encourages the author to create narratives that both accentuate and manipulate instances of silence or silencing, where characters are denied the opportunity to speak or cannot speak. By addressing her family story in No Name Woman, the protagonist struggles to become stronger and able to articulate what she feels is unspoken. From the very beginning Kingston has successfully broken the silence and given women such as her aunt a redemption through a narrative, one she weaves into part of her own life. The Woman Warrior, in part, acts as a vessel for many stories—true or not—that draw upon the experiences of women whose stories shaped her life; by shaping and retelling these stories Kingston not only uses their stories to find her own voice but also allows stories of people who might otherwise have been forgotten or languished in obscurity a new kind of life by redeeming them in her retelling of those stories.
Today we are going to talk about a famous poet in Chinese history. His name is Lu You(陆游). Lu You is not only famous for being a prominent and prolific poet from his time: Southern Song Dynasty (960 - 1279) but also for writing about the greatest love story ever: one between he himself and his cousin Tang Wan(唐琬), who is also a famous literary figure at the time.
Today we look at one of the most beloved Chinese fictional/historical characters in the world: Mulan. I know that many are already familiar with Mulan’s story through Disney’s interpretation: while the Mulan princess/warrior is not 100% the same with the historical Mulan depicted in its original historical text/poem, I would say the essential character, plot, point of view, setting and theme are all honest depiction of her. There’s much that’s been written already about Mulan and her story, so today I want to talk about her as a character in the 21st century, as both a character that inspires imagination, but also a character that generates revenue. Today we talk about Mulan, Disney, and their relationship with the Chinese market.
What is love? What is desire? At one point or another in our lives, I am sure we have all asked these questions. We were hoping that one day we’ll find that one true love, the one we are destined to be with. Reality though, often disappoints. So we go to the must-read classics to find the answers. In my life, I have found two texts that somehow taught me how to love. One is from ancient greek, another from ancient China.
M Butterfly is quite a story. The fictional play takes its premise from news of the real life imprisonment of male French diplomat Bernard Boursicot for treason for passing along confidential documents to his lover, after it was revealed that he was unaware that the Chinese woman he had a decades-long affair with was in fact a man, a Chinese spy, also renowned Peking Opera performer named Shi Pei Pu.
So last time we discussed how in Pu Songling’s Liaozhai Zhiyi there are foxes that change into human form, and there are foxes that just stay in their animal form. In fact, the startling “humanness” of a fox appearance is consistent also across many Tang Chuanqi stories too, which are short fictional stories first formed in the Tang dynasty. The Tang dynasty was a long time before the Qing dynasty. In these Tang tales the human traits are indicative of ideas intimately connected to the social exchange of the stories among elite men of the era. However, quite different from the Liaozhai stories where you see a lot of times the fox fairies falls in love with humans and often marries into the household, the fox is either eventually killed off or runs away, with none able to successfully stay close to the human community forever or even during their lifespan. The fox or the “animal demon” generally are without names, and when they are killed, none are still in their human form, when they die they face their end converted back into their fox forms and then leave the human community and/or the temporal world.
This is interesting because the last episode we got to see some foxes who stay in their human form almost throughout the whole story. They embody the characterizations of human desires by being foxes. The stories documented in Taiping Guangji on the other hand, present us with foxes that reach an ontological limit to their being that does not allow them to transform completely from a fox spirit into a human being. They can exhibit human behaviors, yet deep inside the stories suggest they do not have nor do they immutably share the morality and sentiment that belong to humans. In several stories, fox acts as a messenger of death, or quite the opposite, life, but fundamentally they are still animals. I still wonder now what that tells us about how human nature is perceived back then.
Where should we start then? It would be interesting to start with stories from the Qing dynasty, officially the last imperial dynasty of China, which was established in 1636 and lasted all the way until 1912. The author’s name is Pu Songling, born in 1640 and dead around 1715. Pu Songling wrote this very famous collection of short stories called Liaozhai Zhiyi, which has enjoyed quite a literary afterlife following its completion around 1705. It has been adapted into many movies and television shows that I watched over and over again growing up. His stories also lent inspiration to world-renowned writers such as Franz Kafka, Lafcadio Hearn, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mo Yan. Many consider him as the crowning achievement of the Chinese classical tale.