‘The scholar suddenly glimpsed a movement in the darkness. Something dived towards him like a swift bird. The shadowy outline of a person neared him, reaching out with a hand.’
In the thirty seventh episode of The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast, we are looking at The Woman in the Carriage (车中女子 / Chē Zhōng Nǚzǐ), a chuanqi story dating back to the Tang Dynasty. Our guest is its translator, Yilin Wang.
The Woman in the Carriage is a short tale, but the more you look at it, the more you see. Moral lessons, subtle humour, inexplicable strangeness, the roots of modern wuxia…it’s all there!
A condensed transcript of the interview in this episode is available on Yilin’s website.
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// NEWS ITEMS //
- Shen Shixi’s children’s lit controversy
- New guidelines for Chinese scifi films from the China Film Administration
- The MCLC Modern Chinese Literature Video Lecture Series
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// WORD OF THE DAY //
(盗贼 / dào zéi / thief)
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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 