How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast

This episode you are listening to is the soundtrack of the Grand Finale of How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/y-ng5CkofkM. 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. Related Links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aigcsln Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aigcsln

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. Guest Host: Prof. Grace Fong

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.  Guest Host: Prof. Grace Fong

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.      Guest Host: Prof. Grace Fong

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. Guest Host: Prof. Lian Xinda

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

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.” Guest Host: Prof. Lian Xinda

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. Guest Host: Prof. Lian Xinda

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. Guest Host: Prof. Lian Xinda

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.   Guest Host: Prof. Lian Xinda

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. Guest Host: Dr. Maija Samei

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. Guest Host: Dr. Maija Samei

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. Guest Host: Dr. Maija Samei

This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the 9th episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/KVb9zeNVFUg. More How to Read Chinese Poetry Videos: Li Bai in Nashville: An American Singing Tang Poems (Chi/Eng Sub!): https://youtu.be/u8Kr5nCZSzE From Kuyin to Yinsong | Jonathan Stalling: https://youtu.be/_fyXujV5mwE From Zhiyin to Yunxue | Jonathan Stalling: https://youtu.be/gqyPMJ3fYaQ Sonnet and Lüshi | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/UFrUhv_w3Rk Constructing Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/ipeCVtad9pI Constructing Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/iWXosSaZFpU Constructing Regulated Quatrains | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/TSoktjvrYok Mastering Tones in Modern and Middle Chinese | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/bxp6Au7JKHE Related Links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aigcsln Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aigcsln

This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the 8th episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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.  Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/u8Kr5nCZSzE. More How to Read Chinese Poetry Videos:   From Kuyin to Yinsong | Jonathan Stalling: https://youtu.be/_fyXujV5mwE  From Zhiyin to Yunxue | Jonathan Stalling: https://youtu.be/gqyPMJ3fYaQ  Sonnet and Lüshi | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/UFrUhv_w3Rk  Constructing Heptasyllabic Regulated Verse | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/ipeCVtad9pI  Constructing Pentasyllabic Regulated Verse | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/iWXosSaZFpU  Constructing Regulated Quatrains | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/TSoktjvrYok  Mastering Tones in Modern and Middle Chinese | Zong-qi Cai: https://youtu.be/bxp6Au7JKHE  Related Links:    YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aigcsln Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?...  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aigcsln

This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the 7th episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/_fyXujV5mwE.

This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the 6th episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/gqyPMJ3fYaQ.

Dear Listeners, This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the 5th episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/UFrUhv_w3Rk. AIGCS

Dear Listeners, This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the 4th episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. This episode shows how easily viewers can construct the heptasyllabic 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/ipeCVtad9pI. AIGCS

Dear Listeners, This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the third episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/iWXosSaZFpU. AIGCS

Dear Listeners, This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the second episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/TSoktjvrYok. AIGCS

Dear Listeners, Please accept our apologies for being late to upload this new episode of How to Read Chinese Poetry Podcast. AIGCS is pleased to launch the HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS (HTRCPV), a companion program of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY PODCAST.  As a matter of fact, its first episodes are cross-listed as special video episodes (eps. 37-39) of the Podcast.  Unlike the Podcast, HTRCPV does not track Chinese poetry’s historical development but presents episodes in thematic clusters.  Due to the much greater technical challenges in producing videos, we will not be able to release episodes at regular intervals. We ask for kind patience from our viewers. This podcast you are listening to is the soundtrack of the first episode of HOW TO READ CHINESE POETRY VIDEOS. 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. Click the link to watch the video and subscribe to our channel: https://youtu.be/bxp6Au7JKHE AIGCS

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. Guest Host: Dr. Maija Bell Samei Notice: Dear listeners, we would like to announce that the next nine HTRCP episodes are special video episodes to be watched on YouTube at this link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bxp6Au7JKHE

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. Guest Host: Dr. Maija Bell Samei

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. Guest Host: Dr. Maija Bell Samei

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 period. Guest Host: Prof. Charles Egan, San Fransico State University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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. Guest Host: Prof. Charles Egan, San Fransico State University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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. Guest Host: Prof. Charles Egan, San Fransico State University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

The Chinese equivalent term of quatrain, i.e., jueju, literally means “cut-off lines.” It was erroneously 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 and formal origins of jueju. A detailed examination of common jueju features then follows. Guest Host: Prof. Charles Egan, San Fransico State University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

This episode examines how Wang Wei embodies moments of heightened perception or rather Buddhist enlightenment through his painterly depiction of a mountain climbing trip. His masterful blending of illusive images, perceptual illusion, and Buddhist worldview exemplifies his towering achievement as the poet-Buddha. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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-immortal. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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+comment construction to project his Confucian vision of the universe and the self and earns himself the title of poet-sage. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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 evidenced in Du Fu’s famous poem “Spring Scene.” Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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. Guest Host: Lucas Rambo Bender, Yale University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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. Guest Host: Lucas Rambo Bender, Yale University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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. Guest Host: Lucas Rambo Bender, Yale University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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. Guest Host: Lucas Rambo Bender, Yale University English poem recital by Andrew Merritt @ Andrew Merritt (divacatrecords.com)

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. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Two distinct formal features, binary structure and multilateral texture, are developed in the “Nineteen Old Poems,” the definitive collection of Han pentasyllabic 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. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

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. Guest host: Jui-lung Su, National University of Singapore

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. Guest host: Jui-lung Su, National University of Singapore

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. Guest host: Jui-lung Su, National University of Singapore

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. Guest host: Martin Kern, Princeton University

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. Guest host: Martin Kern, Princeton University

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? Guest host: Martin Kern, Princeton University

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. Guest host: Fusheng Wu, The University of Utah

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. Guest host: Fusheng Wu, The University of Utah

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. Guest host: Fusheng Wu, The University of Utah

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. Host: Zong-qi Cai, Lingnan University of Hong Kong; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign