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,...
Mar 28, 2023•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 56
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. ...
Feb 27, 2023•22 min•Season 1Ep. 55
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
Feb 20, 2023•28 min•Season 1Ep. 54
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
Feb 13, 2023•18 min•Season 1Ep. 53
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
Feb 06, 2023•13 min•Season 1Ep. 52
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
Jan 30, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 51
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
Jan 23, 2023•10 min•Season 1Ep. 50
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
Jan 16, 2023•11 min•Season 1Ep. 49
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
Jan 09, 2023•11 min•Season 1Ep. 48
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
Jan 02, 2023•16 min•Season 1Ep. 47
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
Dec 26, 2022•25 min•Season 1Ep. 46
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
Dec 19, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 45
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
Dec 12, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 44
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 wor...
Dec 05, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 43
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...
Nov 28, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 42
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...
Nov 21, 2022•47 min•Season 1Ep. 41
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 ...
Nov 14, 2022•26 min•Season 1Ep. 40
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 t...
Nov 07, 2022•19 min•Season 1Ep. 39
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...
Oct 30, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 38
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...
Oct 25, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 38
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.b...
Oct 19, 2022•20 min•Season 1Ep. 37
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...
Oct 10, 2022•14 min•Season 1Ep. 37
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=...
Oct 03, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 36
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
Sep 26, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 35
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
Sep 19, 2022•21 min•Season 1Ep. 34
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 M...
Sep 12, 2022•29 min•Season 1Ep. 33
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 gradu...
Sep 05, 2022•23 min•Season 1Ep. 32
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 Me...
Aug 29, 2022•25 min•Season 1Ep. 31
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 Unive...
Aug 22, 2022•28 min•Season 1Ep. 30
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)...
Aug 15, 2022•12 min•Season 1Ep. 29
