The Master of Demon Gorge: A Chinese History Podcast

Of all the uncertainties and mysterious surrounding China's mythical founder, the Yellow Emperor, one is the name of his father's tribe. Ancient sources tell us it was called "youxiong," literally "have bears."Bears? What bears? What does it mean?Support the show

In 1728, Emperor Yongzheng complained that he couldn't understand officials hailing from the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, where they spoke, respectively, Cantonese and Hokkien.Three hundred years later, we continue to struggle with the question of how dominant the lingua franca of Mandarin should be over more local languages. In the PRC, the current conflict is between Mandarin and Cantonese, and in Taiwan, Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien are spoken side by side.So what is Mandarin? How did it come about? How much does it actually resemble the language of ancient China? To what extent was the modern standardization process artificial? Would it matter if it was?And, finally, can the southern dialects actually claim greater antiquity and prestige?Support the show

How did Taiwan, a small island off the Chinese coast, become by far the most dominant player in the global semiconductor industry? How did a place that as of the mid-20th century was emphatically an economic backwater gain such a position?Much has been written about Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, the largest of Taiwan's semiconductor manufacturers. But Chang had moved from China to the US in 1949 and enjoyed a life as a high-flying American businessman. How was it that he was persuaded to go to Taiwan to set up TSMC? And who convinced him?The answer is Sun Yunxuan, one of the key architects of Taiwan's economic miracle. This is his story.Support the show

Deterrence theory is well known in political science and particularly popular during the Cold War.In the annals of Chinese history, we find examples of a specific type of deterrence: making your enemy refrain from attacking by being clever and displaying your intellect for your enemy to see.Let's look at the famous cases of the Su Brothers, Li Bai, and Lin Xiangru.Support the show

During the Warring States era, when the genius inventor Lu Ban designs a new siege weapon for the Kingdom of Chu, the king decides to attack the much weaker Kingdom of Song. Hearing this, the pacifist philosopher Mozi rushes to the scene to try to persuade the king otherwise. What follows is possibly the earliest recorded table-top wargame in history...Support the show

Everyone has heard of Sunzi's "The Art of War." But did you know that it is only one of many treatises on warfare from ancient China?In fact, Sunzi's book has long been considered only the first of a list of seven texts considered required reading for students of warfare...Support the show

In the middle of the 20th century, one Chinese writer began publishing books in English.It was a truly unusual thing, given that proportionally a lot fewer Chinese at the time even could speak English with much competence. But Lin Yutang was no ordinary man. Through his bestselling books that often sought to explain Chinese history and culture to Westerners, in many ways he became the voice of all that was Chinese in the Western world.Support the show

Ban Chao, "the Marquis Who Pacified Faraway Lands," remains a household name today among the Chinese. And he endowed the Chinese language with more than one common expression.What made him into a legend was his military and diplomatic career in the late-first century A.D. dealing with the many states of the "Western Lands" (modern Xinjiang) and the fearsome Xiongnu or Hun people behind them.Support the show

In 751 A.D., the forces of Tang China, led by a Korean general, met a distant foe on a battlefield in what is now Kyrgyzstan: the Muslims of the Abbasid Caliphate.What resulted was a key turning point in human history, though one seldom appreciated in the Western world.Support the show

The first Chinese national to graduate from a U.S. university lived a life that was full of disappointments. At the time, Yung Wing was perhaps simply too much of a rarity. As the Chinese proverb says: "It is difficult to clap with only one palm."But he was a kind of Forrest Gump of Chinese history, turning up at many of the key moments in the second half of the 19th century and into the first years of the 20th.Support the show