The Master of Demon Gorge: A Chinese History Podcast

Of all the recent feverish discussions on the prospect of war in the Taiwan Strait, no alleged expert that I've come across has talked about the obvious historical precedent: Emperor Kangxi's invasion and conquest of Taiwan in 1683.Let's remedy that.Support the show

The late-Ming and early-Qing literary critic Jin Shengtan was quite a character. He never advanced beyond the rank of xiucai, the lowest-level degree in the imperial civil service exam system, but his legacy became far greater than most men who achieved more conventional success.That legacy was in teaching the Chinese how to read and why, in showing them why the great works of Chinese fiction and drama were great. His influence continues to this day.Support the show

Chinese culture is stereotypically perceived as authoritarian. Although there is obviously a lot of truth to the cliche, it is by no means the full picture. Indeed, ancient Chinese philosophy already introduced certain ideas that might been called democratic, through the figure of Mencius, the second most important personality in Confucianism...Support the show

It's come to my attention in recent years that a certain portion of Westerners, including people who ought to know better such as academics, believe that the concept of "China" is a modern invention dating only to the early 20th century. Their argument is that the Chinese historically never referred to their country by its modern name, "Zhongguo," in ancient times.For avoidance of doubt, here's an episode setting forth the voluminous evidence as to why they're wrong: the Chinese have been using the term "Zhongguo" since at least around 1,000 B.C.Support the show

By tradition, a man named Cangjie invented the Chinese system of writing that is the bane of so many foreign students trying to acquire the language.Trouble is, Cangjie is supposed to have lived some 26 centuries ago, in the time of the Yellow Emperor, but the earliest texts attesting to his creation of Chinese writing date to the Warring States period over 2,000 years later...Support the show

Though largely forgotten in the West, during the First World War, some 140,000 Chinese went to the Western Front to support Britain, France, and the United States. They were not meant to play a combat role but instead to help with logistics and support so that the Allies could free up more soldiers for fighting. Nonetheless, some 2,000 of them ended up buried in northern France and Belgium.This is the story of how they went and why, and how their story and its aftermath indirectly but crucially shaped the course of modern Chinese history.Support the show

Bucephalus, the beloved horse belonging to Alexander the Great, brings to mind two famous horses from Chinese history: the Chitu or "Crimson Hare" Horse of Guan Yu from the Three Kingdoms era and the Wuzhui Horse of Xiang Yu from the time of the founding of the Han Dynasty.Support the show

The Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi led a largely disappointing political career, but he left us with some of the most memorable expressions of individualism and humanism in Chinese literature. Even today, his most famous work remains required reading and is often quoted even by average people.Support the show

A few weeks ago, then out-going Taiwanese Premier Su Tseng-chang (or Su Zhenchang in standard Pinyin) said something that caused quite a stir: "Had Yuan Chonghuan not died, how could the Manchu army have breached the Great Wall?"To understand why this rather curious rhetorical question caused the controversy it did, you obviously have to know who Yuan Chonghuan was.Here, then, is the story of the Cantonese man who, in the waning years of the Ming Dynasty, did perhaps more than anyone else to defend his country against northern invaders.Support the show

Completing our series on the other, lesser-known regimes that coexisted with the Song Dynasty, we look at the Kingdom of Dali located in picturesque Yunnan in China's southwest.Led by the Duan family for most of its history, Dali was a minor player in East Asian international relations at the time, and the Song was happy to have a harmless and peaceful kingdom to its rear so that it could focus on threats coming from the north.In the Chinese imagination, though, and for a literary reason, the Duan family of Dali looms larger than you'd expect.Support the show