Little Red Podcast

Tibet: ‘Colonialism with Chinese Characteristics’?

Trouble on the plateau – an episode of the Little Red Podcast

With the world’s attention on industrial-scale oppression in Xinjiang, developments in Tibet are passing beneath the radar. But activists are warning of a full-spectrum assault on the Tibetan way of life, as Tibetan language teaching is outlawed and urbanisation campaigns relocate nomads from their ancestral pastures. The CCP has underlined its determination to choose the next Dalai Lama, and Tibetans were recently urged by their Party Secretary to "reduce religious consumption" to build a "new modern socialist Tibet." To hear about the sophisticated "rolling repression" that characterises Chinese rule in Tibet, Louisa Lim and Graeme Smith are joined by Barbara Demick, author of Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town, Benno Weiner, Associate Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University who has just published The Chinese Revolution on Tibetan Frontier, and Tendor Dorjee, a Senior Researcher at the Tibet Action Institute:

 

Translated Chinese Fiction

San Mao’s translator on Stories of the Sahara

An episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast

"Don't ask from where I have come. My home is far, far away."

In this episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, host Angus Stewart talks to Mike Fu about Mike’s translation of Sanmao's Stories of the Sahara (撒哈拉的故事 Sǎhālā de Gùshì). Sanmao (三毛), the pen name of Echo Chan, is a literary hero in China and Taiwan, best known for the time she spent in the Sahara, writing in a lucid, arresting and playful style about her life there. She passed away in 1991 but she is very much alive on the page, and has recently become better known in the rest of the world. This post is the last of our syndication run of the podcast – which has included episodes on Nobel-winning novelist Mo Yan, martial arts maestro Jin Yong and sci-fi fantabulist Chen Qiufan.

 

Barbarians at the Gate

China’s New Youth

An episode of Barbarians at the Gate

In this episode, hosts Jeremiah Jenne and David Moser catch up with writer and editor Alec Ash, to discuss the new US edition of his book Wish Lanterns: Young Lives in New China. Alec’s book is an intimate portrait of six diverse members of China’s “post-80s” generation, tracing their lives’ trajectory in the context of China’s turbulent and unpredictable economic modernization process. Orville Schell called the book “a fascinating mosaic that gives us a wonderfully vivid sense of what it’s like to grow up today in the People’s Republic of China.” With the themes of the book as a jumping-off point, the topic broadens in historical scope, exploring communalities and contrasts in earlier youth movements such as the May 4th movement, the Tiananmen Square movement, the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution, and the current resurgence of nationalism among the “post-2000s” generation. Alec is China correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books, and his articles have appeared elsewhere including The New York Review of Books, The Economist, the Guardian, and The Sunday Times.

 

Podcasts

China’s New Silk Road Comes To Kazakhstan

Ed: We’re pleased to bring you this podcast and accompanying essay by Mary Kay Magistad, part of her new podcast series for the Global Reporting Centre, "On China's New Silk Road." In the series, Magistad, a former China correspondent for NPR and PRI, explores the impacts of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, reporting from different corners of the world where the project reaches to uncover where it came from, why it is being pursued and how it is viewed on the ground. In this, the second episode of the series, she travels to Kazakhstan.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital, in 2013, seemed like another boring meeting worth skipping, according to Dulat Yesnazar, then a college student studying international relations. Xi had come to announce the launch of one of the most sweeping global infrastructure initiatives in history.

 

Translated Chinese Fiction

Reading Mo Yan’s novella ‘Radish’

An episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast

“As the boy's thoughts wandered, the purple and green leaves turned into autumn well water, and then the jute became water, while sparrows skimming the tips of the jute plants were transformed into green kingfishers snapping up tiny shrimp from the water's surface.”

In this episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, Angus Stewart is joined by translator Lehyla Heward to discuss Mo Yan's novella Radish (透明的红萝卜 Tòumíngde Hóngluóbo). Mo Yan is, of course, a Nobel-winning novelist, author of The Garlic Ballads and Red Sorghum. Read more about his background and career in the long translated essay we published at the China Channel last year. Radish, like much of Mo’s work, is set in Cultural Revolution-era rural China, where a countryside work team is joined by the strange, silent protagonist Hei-hai, who seems indifferent to pain and has an affinity for the titular root.