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