Originally published way back in 1954-55, Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ trilogy was released when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was mostly closed off to the world. In the past few decades, however, the author’s celebrated stories have found their way into the hearts and minds of China’s citizens. In this episode of the podcast, we explore how the literary works of the ‘father of high fantasy’ made their way to China.
On November 14, 1995, a dark and possibly stormy night, a young man boarded the last bus heading to Beijing’s Fragrant Hills in Haidian District. If the stories are true, it was a bus ride he would never forget. This super-short episode of the China Untold podcast is a relatively well-known Beijing ghost story, often called ‘the last bus to Fragrant Hills.’ There are many variations of this story, but I have chosen to stick with the most common incarnation to keep this episode concise.
Certain places on this planet seem to have a personality of their own: Landscapes that can instill a sense of sadness, misery, or horror in anyone who visits them. In this episode of the podcast, I introduce two areas in China that have played host to mysterious events and bizarre disappearances.
If you are from the West, the word ‘cult’ likely brings about thoughts of spiked Kool-Aid and ritualistic suicide, aliens and Tom Cruise. But how much do you know about Chinese cults? In this episode of the podcast, I introduce an ancient Chinese cult from Jiangsu province and a 2014 cult murder that took place in a Shandong McDonald’s.
From Quesnel Forks to Barkerville, Chinese people were significant players in the boom-and-bust resource towns of western Canada in the 1800s and 1900s. In this episode of the China Untold podcast, I introduce the role Chinese migrants played in the early development of British Columbia. I’ll recount stories of lost mines, ghost towns, racist attitudes and more!
From Maludong Cave in Yunnan province, the home of the Red Deer Cave people, to the mysterious human-made Longyou Caves of East China’s Zhejiang province, China is home to an incredible collection of underground geological structures. In this episode of the China Untold podcast, we visit some fascinating caves and meet the people, animals and gods that call them home.
In the PRC, being disabled often comes with stereotypes. For a long time, disabled persons in the country were referred to as canfei, an amalgamation of two characters meaning “incomplete or deficient” and “useless.” Starting in the 1990s, people began using the term canji, shifting the second character to one meaning “disease or sickness.” Unfortunately, this is still the word of choice today to describe disabled people. As you can probably imagine, disabled individuals in China often face discrimination in their communities. I recently came across two powerful stories about disabled individuals in China overcoming the barriers in their lives to attain success and recognition in their communities and help empower other people to succeed. Now, I’d like to share their stories with you.
Mass disappearances conjure up an extreme set of emotions, and they genuinely are terrifying. The most recent and arguably most notorious mass vanishing in Chinese history is the March 2014 disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 – which vanished en route to Beijing with 227 people on board, 153 of which were Chinese citizens. While MH370 may be the first China-related mass disappearance to come to mind, it might not be the earliest or biggest. According to various print and online sources, in 1939, during the horrors of Japanese aggression against the Republic of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), almost 3,000 soldiers stationed in the rolling hills around Nanjing allegedly disappeared without leaving a single clue about their fate… In this episode of China Untold, I explore the legend of WWII’s missing Chinese soldiers and recap another mysterious event from the former Soviet Union.
With the arrival of yet another addition to 'The Legend of Zelda' franchise, I have decided to assemble a quirky episode of the podcast comparing locations from the fictional world of Hyrule to real-life sites in China. This list has been created for fun and in no way am I attempting to suggest that locations in China were the inspiration for regions in the Zelda universe. Instead, this episode is intended to be amusing for Zelda fans and offer folks interested in China some outstanding travel recommendations.
Among the diverse array of organisms that lived in Jiangxi’s Ganzhou region during the Late Cretaceous was a carnivorous beast that has changed the way researchers view the iconic Tyrannosaur family: Qianzhousaurus sinensis, more comically known as ‘Pinocchio rex.’ For this episode of China Untold, I introduce you to this unique dinosaur and the people studying it.
Beijing’s Zhoukoudian cave is commonly referred to as the Peking Man cave, and it was once home to a group of early hominids known as Homo erectus. In the 1920s and ’30s, excavations at the site discovered 200 Homo erectus fossils from 40 individuals, along with stone tools and animal fossils from approximately 200 species. Unfortunately, some of the most important fossils found at Zhoukoudian mysteriously vanished during WWII, and they are still missing to this day...
For this week’s episode, I share two stories of alleged extraterrestrial visitations in China: The first of which is a bizarre tale of a Chinese man from Heilongjiang province who claims to have had sex with an alien.
Xinjiang is one of China’s five autonomous regions and its landscape is a scenic patchwork of rivers, lakes, prairies, forests, deserts and imposing peaks. It’s also the supposed home of lake monsters. For this week’s episode of China Untold, we take a brief look at the legend of the lake beasts of Kanas – a story that has been around for at least 800 years, dating back to when Genghis Khan stationed troops at the lake to guard the creatures.
Since its completion, China’s Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope has been monitoring the heavens, observing pulsars and working to detect interstellar molecules, among other missions. Perhaps most interesting of all, the facility is expected to be a powerful tool in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. On this episode of China Untold, we investigate China’s role in the global quest to discover civilizations among the stars.
For this episode of China Untold, I am going to introduce you to what I have dubbed ‘The Worst Mall in China.’ Located in the heart of Guangzhou, Grandview Mall is by many metrics a fine shopping center. It’s modern and plays host to a myriad of brand-name stores and quality restaurants. Unfortunately for fans of the mall, the shopping facility is also home to an ethical disaster known to city residents as the Grandview Aquarium. Hong Kong-based animal welfare organization Animals Asia has labeled the conditions at the aquarium “horrifying” and described the attraction as a “prison for animals.”
In 1957, American sinologist Homer H. Dubs published a book called 'A Roman City in China.' It detailed the academic’s theory that a group of Roman soldiers worked as border guards for the Western Han Dynasty at the empire’s western edge. In this episode of China Untold, we explore this story and visit Gansu province to investigate whether a rag-tag band of Roman troops founded a city that exists in China to this day.
Almost every region of the world has a mysterious beast that haunts the backwoods of civilization. North America has the hairy and elusive bigfoot, the United Kingdom has the Loch Ness monster and Latin America has the chupacabra. But what about China? For this week’s episode of China Untold, I count down 10 of my favorite cryptids from the Middle Kingdom – from lake monsters to the famous Yeti of the Himalayas.
For the first-ever episode of the China Untold Podcast, I revisit my experiences at the PRC’s borders with two of the five self-proclaimed communist states still in existence: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and Lao People’s Democratic Republic.