How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast

A Knowledge Transfer Program of

The Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies & The Department of Chinese

Lingnan University of Hong Kong

Introduction

This podcast presents the highlights of the acclaimed book How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology by Columbia University Press to a broad general audience. The podcast consists of 52 episodes, covering the major poetic genres developed from antiquity to the modern era. A team of leading experts guides listeners to explore the rich heritage of Chinese poetry, poem by poem, genre by genre, and dynasty by dynasty. Each episode provides a deep but pleasurable discussion of one or more famous poems and their cultural milieu. Special efforts will be made to demonstrate how the poems work in the original language to create a fascinating yet untranslatable kind of poetic beauty. Poems are read aloud in English and Mandarin, and for Tang and Song poetry in Cantonese as well, to the background of classical Chinese qin music.
Zong-qi Cai, Program Host

Podcast Channels：Spotify, Anchor, Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, and Ximalaya.

Textual Sources:
How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology
How to Read Chinese Poetry Workbook
How to Read Chinese Poetry in Context

All published by Columbia University Press

A video introduction to the How to Read Chinese Literature book series can be found HERE.or Listeners’ Oral Reading For each topic, additional poems from How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology will be provided for oral reading to enhance the listeners’ understanding of the chosen texts and their contexts. We encourage listeners to read these poems aloud (in English, Mandarin, and/or Cantonese), have their readings recorded in the audio or video form, and share the recordings in “Chinese Poetry Podcast Group” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/746715270047937 ) . All audio/video recordings are eligible to be considered for public posting on the website chinesepoetrypodcast.com, with due acknowledgement. To encourage language learning and ensure fair competition for awards, we plan to organize recordings under two separate categories: “Read by Native Speakers” and “Read by Non-Native Speakers.” If we have sufficient audio/video submissions, we will consider giving an award to the most active participants. The award may be a combination of 1) a certificate of recognition, 2) posting of audio and/or video productions on the website for public listening/viewing; 3) a copy of How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology or any other book from the How to Read Chinese Literature series. Have fun with your oral reading and audio/video recording! We hope to hear/watch your performance very soon!

Poems for Listeners’ Oral Reading

For each topic, additional poems from How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology will be provided for oral reading to enhance the listeners’ understanding of the chosen texts and their contexts.

We encourage listeners to read these poems aloud (in English, Mandarin, and/or Cantonese), have their readings recorded in the audio or video form, and share the recordings in “Chinese Poetry Podcast Group” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/746715270047937）

Chinese Poetry Podcast Group This group is established for listeners of “How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast,” with an aim to facilitate their interaction with episode hosts and fellow listeners. Among other things, interested… www.facebook.com

All audio/video recordings are eligible to be considered for public posting on the website chinesepoetrypodcast.com, with due acknowledgement. To encourage language learning and ensure fair competition for awards, we plan to organize recordings under two separate categories: “Read by Native Speakers” and “Read by Non-Native Speakers.”

If we have sufficient audio/video submissions, we will consider giving an award to the most active participants. The award may be a combination of 1) a certificate of recognition, 2) posting of audio and/or video productions on the website for public listening/viewing; 3) a copy of How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology or any other book from the How to Read Chinese Literature series.

Have fun with your oral reading and audio/video recording! We hope to hear/watch your performance very soon!

Program Schedule

Part I Pre-Qin Times

Topic 1 The Book of Poetry
Guest host: William H. Nienhauser (University of Wisconsin at Madison）

Episode 1 Marriage Poems (“The Grove at Zhu”, “The Peach Tree Tender”) [PDF] (Feb.1)

Many of the 160 guofeng or airs of the states are poems depicting lovers both true to their partners and false. “On the mountain is the thorn elm” seems to depict a relationship gone bad. It is followed by one of the most famous marriage poems, “The Peach Tree Tender,” in which a village singer outside the family praises the selection of a new bride.

Episode 2 Courtship Poems (“I Beg You, Zhongzi”, “The Banks of Ru”, “The Retiring Girl”) [PDF] (Feb.8)

The three courtship forms, “I Beg of you, Zhong Zi,” “The Banks of the Ru,” and “The Retiring Girl,” present contrasting depictions of the courtship process in early China. In the first, a village encounter between two lovers or potential lovers is depicted. The man and the woman in “The Banks of the Ru” may be married or simply lovers, but the link to the previous poem is the concern about the girl’s parents. This is the most clearly erotic of the poems presented. “The Retiring Girl” depicts a couple in a relationship with the young woman still reticent to have their love made public.

Episode 3 Zhou Dynastic Building (“Woven and Unbrokens”) [PDF] (Feb.15)

“Woven” like many of the Da ya (Greater Odes) sings of two of the heroes who laid the groundwork for their grandson and son to overcome the Shang and establish the Zhou dynasty. The text lends itself to memorization and may have been part of early court ritual as our own Star-Spangled Banner celebrates an event in the early history of our country.

Topic 2 The Book of Poetry and Diplomacy
Guest host: Wai-yee Li (Harvard University）

Episode 4 Who is the Barbarian? (“Blue Flies”) [PDF] (Feb.22)

This episode discusses how a “barbarian” chief gains diplomatic advantages by reciting an ode now included in Shijing. The recitation both asserts and effaces differences between “Chinese” and “barbarian” states. It seeks to redefine the past and argues for equality and amity between Jin and the Rong.

Episode 5 Who is the Boss? (“Sixth Month”, “Great Brightness”, “Lesser”) [PDF] (Mar.1)

This episode uses two scenes of reciting odes to explore the struggle for hegemony. The first shows how a fugitive Jin Prince declare his ambition despite his precarious and dependent position. The second features a Jin leader pushing back against the hubristic self-aggrandizement of a Chu prince.

Episode 6 What Does it Mean to Say, “I love you”? (“Magpie’s Nest”, “Picking Artemesia.” “There is a Dead Doe in the Wilds”, “Plumtree”) [PDF] (Mar.8)

This episode discusses how the language of love and kinship is used in diplomatic negotiations through the recitation of odes. For example, aLu minister uses a wedding song to compare smaller states to a bride welcomed by her groom (the powerful Jin). A woman picking artemisia with care becomes the analogue for a powerful state cherishing a weak one. A Zheng minister uses an ode about seduction to forestall or resist aggression. A Jin leader affirms an alliance through an ode celebrating brotherhood.

Topic 3 The Book of Poetry: The Han Canonization
Host: Zong-qi Cai (Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Episode 7 A Love Song and A Moral Exemplum (“Osprey”) [PDF] (Mar.15)

This episode discusses how the anonymous author of “Prefaces to the Book of Poetry” turned “Osprey,” the first of the 305 Shijing poems, from a lively love song into a moral exempla by means of gender switching. It also explains that such imaginative gender switching was made possible by classical Chinese grammar, especially its ungendered use of pronouns and its frequent omission of sentence subjects.

Episode 8 Romeo and Juliet-like Rendezvous (“I Beg of You, Zhong Zi”) [PDF] (Mar.22)

This episode features a poem that enacts, through incremental repetition, the unfolding drama of a young woman being torn by longing, hesitancy, love, and fear while a suitor is crushing all physical barriers to have a tryst with her. To sanitize this poem, Han commentators resorted to an allegorizing strategy called “cutting off a section to create a new meaning,” constructing a political allegory on the thinnest of evidence.

Episode 9 Dead Deer Meat as a Gift (“There is a Dead Doe in the Wilds”) [PDF] (Mar.29)

This episode looks at the concerted effort by three prominent Han commentators to allegorize a poem made up of disjointed or rather conflicting parts. It also reflects on the ironic fact that Han commentators’ allegorizing process itself constitutes a beautiful exercise of literary imagination, foreshadowing the fruitful exploitation of semantic, syntactic, and structural ambiguities by Du Fu, Li Shangyin, and other Tang poets.

Topic 4 The Lyrics of Chu: Qu Yuan and His Poetic Allegories
Guest Host: Fusheng Wu (The University of Utah)

Episode 10 A General Introduction to Chuci (“The Lord of the Xiang River”)[PDF]

This episode provides a brief general introduction to Chuci; it also discusses a poem in this repertoire, Xian jun(“The Lord of the Xiang River), and its influence on Li sao (“On Encountering Trouble”) that will be discussed in the next two episodes.

Episode 11 The Poetic Persona in Lisao or “On Encountering Trouble” [PDF]

This episode discusses Li sao or On Encountring Trouble,” the crowning achievement in the Chu ci repertoire. This poem evolves around the life of Qu Yuan, a poetic persona who is the alleged author of the poem. In the first part of the poem, Qu Yuan talks at length about his glorious family history and his own self-cultivation.

Episode 12 Spiritual and Imaginary Journeys in Lisao or “On Encountering Trouble” [PDF]

This episode continues our previous discussion of the Li sao or On Encountering Trouble. It focuses on two failed spiritual/supernatural trips or flights in search of Qu Yuan’s ideal and his final decision to commit suicide as the result of his disillusionment with his ruler and society.

Topic 5 Lisao: The Poem and Its Author As a Composite Text
Guest Host: Martin Kern (Princeton University)

Episode 13 The Meaning of Qu Yuan in the Western Han [PDF]

This episode discusses what the Qu Yuan persona meant to Han dynasty intellectuals. Why was Qu Yuan important to Han thinkers in literary, political, and historical, terms? What did they find in the Qu Yuan persona? How did they identify with that persona of their imagination?

Episode 14 The Fusion of Poetry and Biography [PDF]

This episode discusses how Qu Yuan’s poetry and biography flow seamlessly into each other, and how the figures of poetic hero and heroic poet repeatedly switched places. Likewise, later transmitters, commentators, and poets could appropriate Qu Yuan’s voice with ease.

Episode 15 The Lisao as a Composite Intertext [PDF]

This episode offers a detailed discussion of the structure and diction of the Lisao and describes the text not as a single poem but as a composite text created from different poetic registers, and different voices, that are otherwise known from the poems of Jiu ge, Jiu zhang, and Tian wen.

Topic 6 Yuefu Poetry
Guest Host: Jui-lung Su (National University of Singapore)

Episode 16 War as a Theme in Early Popular Chinese Poetry [PDF]

This episode first discusses the functions of the Han Music Bureau and the yuefu poetry as a poetic genre. It points out the fact that we still don’t know if the Bureau really collected these songs from various regions and matched them with music. Many of the popular poems we now call “Han yuefu” are actually preserved in the History of the Liu Song Dynasty written in the sixth century. The second part focuses on analyzing the yuefu poem entitled, “We Fought South of the Walls” from different angles.

Episode 17 A Bad Breakup in the Han Yuefu [PDF]

This episode analyzes this yuefu piece from different perspectives. As many of the popular songs of the Han, this poem contains dialogue and monologue at the same time. The poem follows a daring woman’s emotional changes from her initial rage against her lover from the south who jilted her to an unsettling feeling of anxiety.

Episode 18 Political Satire or Coquetry? An Ambiguous Song [PDF]

This episode discusses the two opposing interpretations of the poem entitled, “Mulberry Along the Lane,” one of the best-known yuefu songs in classical Chinese literature. Traditionally this poem has been interpreted as a representation of social injustice, depicting the situation of an official harassing a peasant girl. The other perspective is the poem is simply a verbal flirtation between a man and a woman and a popular song about a clever lady who employs an engaging and inoffensive way to turn down her suitor.

Topic 7 Han Ancient-style Poetry: “The Nineteen Old Poems”
Host: Zong-qi Cai (Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Episode 19 The Magic of One Additional Character and the Rise of Reflective Poetry [PDF]

After nearly one millennium since its birth, Chinese poetry achieved an optimal convergence of sound and sense in its pentasyllabic poems developed during the Eastern Han (25-220 CE). Taking full advantage of an explosive rise of two-character compounds, the anonymous Han pentasyllabic poets created a poetic rhythm far more flexible and expressive than all existing rhythms and adapted it for philosophical reflection and emotional brooding on human transience.

Episode 20 Interplay of Images and Emotion: Binary Structure and Multilateral Texture [PDF]

Two distinct formal features, binary structure and multilateral texture, are developed in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” the definitive collection of Hanpentasyllabic poetry. The rise of these two formal features attests to the profound impact of transitions from oral performance to poetic writing, from the dramatic/narrative to the lyrical mode of self-presentation.

Episode 21 Reflection through a Female Persona: a Mosaic of Emotions [PDF]

The first of the “Nineteen Old Poems,” the best-known poem of an abandoned woman in the collection, features a mosaic combination of time, space, and emotion fragments and thereby captures the otherwise inexpressible melancholy of an abandoned woman. Such a mosaic combination is to become a preferred structure for the most intense of lyrical expressions in later poetry.

Topic 8 Pentasyllabic Shi Poetry: Landscape Poetry
Guest Host: Lucas Rambo Bender (Yale University)

Episode 22 Landscapes of the Mind [PDF]

This episode discusses the prehistory of Chinese landscape poetry. In the centuries before poets began to write consistently of their concrete, personal experiences out in nature, landscape appeared in poetry primarily as a foil for the city and the court, where most poets were writing. In this role, the natural landscape could be terrifyingly inhospitable or wondrous and pure. Either way, it was for the most part imagined rather than experienced, a site more often for mental roaming than for extended in-person exploration.

Episode 23 Tao Qian’s “Fields and Gardens” [PDF]

Tao Qian (365–427) is premodern China’s most famous recluse. After relinquishing his official career at around age 40, Tao returned to his rustic hometown to hide away from what he often suggested was a corrupt court and society. In the hermitage he made for himself at the foot of Mt. Lu, Tao wrote poetry that, on the one hand, extolls his enjoyment of life on the rural margin between the human world and the wilderness and, on the other, narrates the difficulties he had making a living there. For the first time in Chinese history, this is a poetry that grapples in a realistic way with both the beauty and the recalcitrance of the natural landscape.

Episode 24 Xie Lingyun’s “Mountains and Waters” [PDF]

Xie Lingyun (385–433) is generally recognized as the progenitor and paradigm of poetry on “mountains and waters” (shanshui 山水). Where Tao Qian had written predominantly of the only-partly wild landscapes near his cottage, Xie made his theme the dramatic wildernesses of the southlands. Much of his poetry concerns the scenery of his massive estate, which he staffed with a small army of servants and retainers. His most powerful verse, however, was written in the rugged, unforgiving landscapes he passed through on journeys into exile.

Episode 25 Xie Tiao: The Integration of Landscape [PDF]

This episode concludes our exploration of Six Dynasties landscape poetry by considering the verse of Xie Tiao (464–499). By Xie Tiao’s time, landscape was becoming an increasingly common topic within the world of courtly verse. Partly for this reason, Xie’s poetry begins to efface the previously definitive distinction between the human world and the natural landscape, and moreover imbues that landscape with the passions of the courtier—in Xie’s case, both his yearning for the court and capital and his well-justified fear of the dangers of court politics.

Topic 9 Dancing with Shackled Feet: Art of Recent-Style Poetry
Host: Zong-qi Cai (Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Episode 26 Dancing with Shackled Feet: Art of Recent-Style Poetry [PDF]

This episode explains the lexical, syntactic, and structural rules of regulated verse and shows how high Tang masters turn these formal rules into a nonpareil vehicle of projecting their visions of the universe and the self, as evidence in Du Fu’s famous poem Spring Scene.

Episode 27 Du Fu: the Poet-Sage o China [PDF]

This episode provides a close reading of Du Fu’s Jiang and Han Rivers and shows how the poet makes a masterful use of topic-and-comment construction to project his Confucian vision of the universe and the self and earns himself the title of poet-sage.

Episode 28 Li Bai: the Poet-Immortal of China [PDF]

This episode examines Li Bai’s self-fashioning as a free spirit or rather the creator of the universe in a poetic form seemingly ill-suited for making glamorous claims. The poem discussed is not among the best known of his works but well attests to his reputation as the poet-immotal.

Episode 29 Wang Wei: the Poet-Buddha of China [PDF]

This episode examines how Wang Wei embodies moments of heightend perceptiong or rather Buddhist enlightenment through his painterly depiction of a mountain climbing trip. His masterful blending of illusive images, perceptual illution, and Buddhist worldview exmplifies his towering achievement as the poet-Buddha.

Topic 10 The Tang Dynasty: Quatrains
Guest Host: Charles Egan (San Fransico State University)

Episode 30 Songs of the Heart, Verses of Nature: Pre-Tang Quatrains [PDF]

The Chinese equivalent term of quatrain, i.e., jueju, literally means “cut-off lines.” It was believed by many critics that this meant the wujue and qijue forms had originated as quatrain segments cut from the eight-line lüshi forms. This episode begins with close readings of representative poems to provide readers a sense of the thematic scope and aesthetic potential of jueju. A detailed examination of common jueju features then follows.

Episode 31 Empty Mountains and Mirror Ponds: High Tang [PDF]

Although Tang poets all used wujue to record concentrated poetic experience and pursued the same fundamental aesthetic goals for the form, differing styles of poems can be discerned. Using representative poems by Wang Wei, Wang Zhihuan, and Li Bai, this episode presents two basic styles of Tang wujue, differentiated primarily by the choice of themes and the type of language employed.

Episode 32 The Boudoir and Frontier: High Tang [PDF]

Although a small number of Six Dynasties heptasyllabic quatrains are extant, and Early Tang poets experimented with the form, stylistically mature qijue poetry was an invention of the High Tang poets, most notably Wang Changling and Li Bai. Qijue developed along with Tang popular music, for which it was the major song form. Thus initially the thematic scope was narrow: qijue lyrics were generally limited to popular yuefu themes and those describing parting from friends and loved ones. Only gradually did the scope of qijue themes expand, until by the Middle and Late Tang, the form had become a flexible tool for personal expression.

Episode 33 Waking from a Yangzhou Dream: Middle and Late Tang [PDF]

This episode discusses the differences in tonal patterns between wujue and qijue, which had a clear impact on poetic practice. After the Tang, wujue became increasingly rare; we can conclude that poets no longer saw creative potential in the form—the great Tang writers had exhausted it. Qijue, on the contrary, remained one of the most popular and expressive poetic forms throughout the classical pe

Topic 11 Women and Poetry in the Tang Dynasty
Guest Host: Maija Bell Samei

Episode 34 Writing Women from the inner quarters to the halls of power: Shangguan Wang’er [PDF]

This episode introduces the problem of writing for women in the Tang in terms of the ritual regulation of women’s behavior and the social nature of poetry writing, then discusses the poetry of Shangguan Wan’er, a palace woman who became secretary to Empress Wu Zetian and also served at the court of her successor Emperor Zhongzong, becoming his consort.

Episode 35 Courtesans, poets, and the courtesan-poet Xue Tao [PDF]

This episode discusses the interactions between courtesans and the literati during the Tang and how this is related to the formation of early ci poetry, and then introduces a few works by the well-known courtesan-poetess Xue Tao.

Episode 36 A traitor and a murderess: the poetic nuns Li Ye and Yu Xuanji [PDF]

This episode tells the stories of two Daoist nuns, Li Ye, who became a palace woman, and Yu Xuanji, who became a courtesan. Both left behind highly regarded poems but lost their lives to execution. The episode explores the perception of literary talent as it intersects with femininity.

Topic 12 The Sounds of the Tang Poetry: Mastering Tonal Patterns of Recent-Style Poetry
Host: Zong-qi Cai

Episode 37 Part I Mastering Tones in Modern and Middle Chinese [Video Link]
Episode 37 Part II How to Construct Tonally Regulated Lines, Couplets, and Quatrains [Video Link]

Taking advantage of ppt charts and animation, this episode shows viewers how to follow the three basic rules of tonal patterning to construct tonally regulated lines, then couplets, and finally quatrains. The episode ends by inviting viewers to write out quatrain tonal patterns on their own.

Episode 38 Part I How to Construct Tonal Patterns of Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse [Video Link]
Episode 38 Part II How to Construct Tonal Patterns of Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse [Video Link]

This episode shows how easily viewers can construct the regulated verse tonal patterns—simply by doubling the quatrain tonal patterns. The episode ends by inviting viewers to write out regulated verse tonal patterns on their own.

Episode 39 Regulated Poetic Forms and Worldviews [Video Link]

Going beyond the technical issues of tonal patterning, this episode discusses how the regulated poetic forms of Shakespearean sonnets and Chinese regulated verse embody the Western dualistic and Chinese yin-yang worldviews, respectively. Shakespeare’s sonnet 18 and Du Fu’s “Spring Scene” are compared, in both form and content, to illustrate the fundamental differences in the Elizabethan and traditional Chinese thinking about nature and humanity.

Topic 13 The Sounds of the Tang Poetry: Transcultural Performance
Host: Jonathan Stalling, Andrew Merritt, John Thompson

Episode 40 From Zhiyin to Yunxue: The Rise of Chinese Rhyme Studies in Chinese and English [Video Link]

In the last few episodes, we have learned about the tonal patterns of regulated verse and some of their cosmological underpinnings. In the next two episodes Professor Jonathan Stalling will delve further into the cultural systems that both gave rise to and later sustained these regulated verse practices for over 1500 years. In the first of these two episodes he will explore the emergence of the 知音 “zhiyin,” a community drawn together by their devotion to create and refine what came to be called 韵学 “yunxue” or “the study of rhymes” leading to the creation of rhyme books and later rhyme tables that allowed poets from across distinct dialects and regional accents the ability to compose regulated according to shared standards. Stalling will take us deep into the phonological rules of Classical Chinese rhyme studies through a unique approach because he has reorganized 8000 monosyllabic English words into “rhyme tables” by following all of the essential phonological rules present in Classical Chinese “yunxue.” This episode will be followed next week by another that build upon our knowledge of the rhyme table tradition so that we can compose and properly recite regulated verse in modern Chinese and English.

Episode 41 From Kuyin to Yinsong: Constructing and Reciting Regulated Verse (in English!) [Video Link]

In Professor Stalling’s second episode, we return to the Tang and Song “rhyme studies” tradition, but this time he invites our listeners to become “zhiyin” (those who study and understand sound) themselves by taking us step by step through the process of not only composing a regulated jueju in English, but also how all of the tonal prosody, semantic rhythm, and parallelism rules discussed in previous episodes come together to inform distinctive ways of reciting and chanting regulated verse both in modern Chinese and English.

Episode 42 Libai in Nashville: Transforming Tang Poems into American Songs [Video Link]

Andrew Merritt writes new songs inspired by Tang poems, adopting the style of American country and folk music. In this episode, the songwriter shares his love for the poems, opens a window to his songwriting process, and plays three songs from his album of “Twang Dynasty” songs.

Episode 43 Qin Poetry and Song: Tang Poetry and Guqin Music [Video Link]

John Thompson, the best-known performer of early music for the Chinese guqin zither, has since 1976 reconstructed over 200 melodies from 15th to 17th century sources and given numerous solo performances worldwide. His website, www.silkqin.com, the most comprehensive source of information on this subject, receives thousands of hits daily. In 2019 a two-hour documentary about his guqin work was released. In this episode, the American guqin artist plays several tunes related to Tang Poetry and shares his reflections upon the Qin Poetry and Song.

Topic 14 Short Song Lyrics (xiaoling) in the Song Dynasty
Host: Dr. Maija Samei

Episode 44 “I’ve no heart to love another”: A pair of anonymous poems in dialog [PDF]

This episode introduces us to the genre of the song lyric using two anonymous poems that present a male and female speaker in dialog. The episode discusses the origins of the genre during the Tang dynasty, its formal characteristics, and its connection to female voice and feminine themes.

Episode 45 Feeling and scene: Early literati song lyrics [PDF]

This episode discusses early efforts of literati poets in the song lyric, showing how their works reflect the genre’s origins in the entertainment quarters and remained largely tied to feminine themes, while they bore evidence of poetic craft. Examples show how Wei Zhuang’s more direct and lyrical expression contrasts with Wen Tingyun’s more implicit presentation.

Episode 46 “I ask you, how much sorrow can there be?”: Later literati song lyrics [PDF]

This episode discusses how the genre begins to broaden thematically in the work of somewhat later literati poets who continued to write in the short xiaoling form. Poems by the Last Emperor of the Southern Tang, Li Yu, and by Northern Song statesman Yan Shu demonstrate how the genre begins to take on themes like nostalgia and friendship.

Topic 15 Long Song Lyrics (Manci) of the Song Dynasty
Host: Prof. Xinda Lian

Episode 47 Liu Yong’s Use of Leading Words (lingzi) [PDF]

Thanks to his innovative use of leading words (lingzi), Liu Yong creates a multilayered structure for his poetic description and narration, which allows him to explore time and space, to involve things both far and near, to relate the parts to the whole, and to weave what is outside with what is inside.

Episode 48 Su Shi: Meditation on the Past [PDF]

Su Shi does not only expand the subject matter of the ci poetry, but also gives his song lyrics a genuine personal voice, an unambiguous autobiographical tone as that found in the shi poetry.

Episode 49 Li Qingzhao: Singing Her Autumn Sorrow [PDF]

A master of tune and sense, Li Qingzhao knows how to bring out her almost unspeakable inner feeling through her skillful employment of the ci form, the music of words.

Topic 16 Song Poems (Sanqu) of the Yuan Dynasty
Host: Prof. Xinda Lian

Episode 50 The Power of Poetic Imagery [PDF]

Using a cluster of carefully chosen images, Ma Zhiyuan’s “Autumn Thoughts” invites readers to identify themselves with a weary traveler, a “heartbroken man at the end of the earth.”

Episode 51 The Art of Tongue-in-Cheek: Two Love Songs by Two Great Dramatists [PDF]

The two love songs—authored by Guan Hanqing and Bai Pu respectively—present humorous dramatic moments in a lively language of everyday speech.

Episode 52 Poetry of Rambunctious Wit and Impudent Humor [PDF]

The carefree playfulness presented in Wang Heqing’s poem “On the Big Butterfly” tells us much about the cultural milieu of the time when the sanqu flourished, and reminds us of the genre’s origins in streets, marketplaces, and entertainment quarters.

Topic 17 Poetic Theory and Practice in the Ming and Qing Dynasties
Host: Prof. Grace Fong

Episode 53 Poetic Theory and Practice in the Ming and Qing [PDF]

The Ming, and especially the Qing, witnessed the unprecedented spread of writing poetry among literate men and women in the history of imperial China. This episode introduces the influential theories of poets, such as Yuan Mei’s “native sensibility” (xingling), which promoted naturalness and personal expression over formal learning and ethical concerns, thus encouraging the common practice of poetry.

Episode 54 Poetry as Autobiography [PDF]

An outstanding development in this period is the practice of writing poetry as autobiography, as the record of a life story. We will discuss the life-long collection of over 1000 poems by an eighteenth-century woman poet to illustrate her poetic self-construction.

Episode 55 Poetry: The Pain of Loss and the Pleasures of Everyday Life [PDF]

In this final episode, we will first listen to the “Song of Suffering Calamity” by the woman poet and scholar Wang Duanshu (1621-ca. 1680), narrating her flight from the invading Qing army during the Ming-Qing transition. We will conclude with two examples by women among the many poems in the Ming and Qing that record quotidian pleasures and reflections on daily life. Whether pain and loss or pleasure and joy, men and women in late imperial China inscribed their emotions and thoughts in poetry.

The Grand Finale of How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast [Video]
Host: Prof. Zong-qi Cai

The grand finale of The How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast Program was successfully held at Boston Time 8:00 PM on February 25 / Hong Kong Time 9:00 AM on February 26, 2023. Thirteen guest hosts from USA, Canada, Singapore and Hong Kong attended this online meeting hosted by Prof. Zong-qi Cai, host and producer of this podcast program.

Prof. Cai began this event by showing a slide that presents a brief bio of each topic host, along with the topic poster. Next, the guest hosts took turns to talk about fun and memorable things about how they fell in love with Chinese poetry, the gratification and pleasures they derive from learning and teaching poetry, and/or from making the podcast. After everyone had spoken, Prof. Cai played an 8-minute demo of the “video-fication” of a podcast episode and discussed the approach to turning these podcast talks into video episodes. This video-fication project arouse great interests of the guest hosts and audiences.

The How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast and Videos presents the highlights of the acclaimed book How to Read Chinese Poetry: A Guided Anthology by Columbia University Press. The podcast/videos consist of 55 episodes, where a team of leading experts guides listeners to explore the rich heritage of Chinese poetry, poem by poem, genre by genre, and dynasty by dynasty. The last episode was released on February 28, 2023.

The primary audience of this podcast/videos is general public in the English-speaking world. As of 12:30 PM on Feb. 28, 2023, the 54 podcast episodes have scored a total of 121708 plays. The audiences come from 81 countries and regions.

Media Coverage

We are delighted to share with you the Hong Kong local news reports about our How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast program. This podcast series is based on this guided anthology of 143 famous poems, which was designed to help students overcome language barriers and engage with Chinese poetical texts in ways that yield as much aesthetic pleasure and intellectual insight as one could glean from the originals.
Hong Kong press interviews of Prof. Zong-qi Cai about How To Read Chinese Poetry Podcast Series

Ming Pao, Sing Tao Daily, Bastille Post,
Wen Wei Po, Lion Rock Dail