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Cover of From Avant-Garde to Watchkeepers: Chinese Fiction in the 21st Century
From Avant-Garde to Watchkeepers: Chinese Fiction in the 21st Century
Read Two Decades of Fiction and Observe a New-Century China
Completed · 60 episodes
Buy for ¥128.00
Audio in Chinese
Xu Zidong: Times Have Changed—but Has Chinese Literature? 1. A Rare Study of Female Sexuality in Contemporary Chinese Fiction | Tie Ning's The Bathing Women 1 2. Why Do Women Always Lose Out in Sex outside Marriage? | Tie Ning's The Bathing Women 2 3. Why Treat the Wolf as Both Enemy and God? | Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem 1 4. Does Worshiping Wolf Nature Turn Us into Wolves—or Sheep? | Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem 2 5. The “Baoyu Dream” and “Imperial Dream” Sparked by a Foolish Prince | Alai's Red Poppies 6. Sex and Power in an Isolated Yet All-Pervading Rural World | Bi Feiyu's Corn and Plain 1 New Book Forum | Xu Zidong, Xia Xiaohong, Chen Pingyuan, Ge Zhaoguang, and Dai Yan: Many Ways to Read Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction 7. Perfect Collapse: A Female Cadre Both Educated Youth and Peasant | Bi Feiyu's Plain 2 8. An Extraordinary History of Sex: A Sexual Journey of Body and Soul | Shi Tiesheng's My Journey as Ding Yi 1 9. A Man's Subconscious Dream, a Utopia of Love and Sex | Shi Tiesheng's My Journey as Ding Yi 2 10. Rural China's Development through a Donkey's Eyes | Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out 1 11. A Chinese Metamorphosis: Magical Animals Experience Fifty Years of Rural Change | Mo Yan's Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out 2 12. A New-Century “Revolutionary Historical Novel” as Escape-Room Game | Mai Jia's The Message 1 13. When Detective Reasoning Enters Rashomon | Mai Jia's The Message 2 14. Raise the Red Lantern: Palace Intrigue in a Grand Compound | Su Tong's Wives and Concubines and The Boat to Redemption 1 15. A Lifetime of Honor and Disgrace from a Birthmark on the Buttocks | Su Tong's The Boat to Redemption 2 16. “How Interesting If Bloodlines Could Be Changed!” | Su Tong's The Boat to Redemption 3 17. Can People Truly Talk to One Another? | Liu Zhenyun's Someone to Talk To 1 18. Amid Cycles at Society's Bottom, Which Sentence Is Worth Ten Thousand? | Liu Zhenyun's Someone to Talk To 2 19. Hard Science Fiction of Postmodern Technologism | Han Song's Subway 1 20. From the Daily Subway to the Train of Human Destiny | Han Song's Subway 2 21. Is There Bing Xin–Like Tenderness in Austere Science Fiction? | Liu Cixin's Death's End 1 22. Save Earth or Slaughter One Another? Fairy-Tale Elements in Sci-Fi Catastrophe | Liu Cixin's Death's End 2 23. “The Totalitarianism of Love”: The Three-Body Problem's Warning against Autocracy | Liu Cixin's Death's End 3 24. A Ming-Dynasty Feminist Story Paying Tribute to Red Chamber | Wang Anyi's Celestial Fragrance 1 25. Sisterhood in Fine Needlework and the Search for a Female Utopia | Wang Anyi's Celestial Fragrance 2 26. Life and Death in a Labor Camp—a Chinese Story from Overseas | Geling Yan's The Criminal Lu Yanshi 1 27. Is the Intellectual's Tragedy Accidental or Inevitable? | Geling Yan's The Criminal Lu Yanshi 2 28. A Sex Scene: Contemporary Fiction's Most Harrowing Moment | Li Rui's The Eighth Day of Zhang Martin 1 29. A Fantastic Allegory of Western Christianity and Chinese Folk Belief | Li Rui's The Eighth Day of Zhang Martin 2 30. Shanghai Dialect Captures the Ecology of Human Relations | Jin Yucheng's Blossoms 1 31. Women as Flowers Blooming on Men's Branches | Jin Yucheng's Blossoms 2 32. Different Fates behind Real Shanghai Place Names | Jin Yucheng's Blossoms 3 33. How Blossoms Is Written: Dialogue, Silence, Accumulation… | Jin Yucheng's Blossoms 4 34. Review: Three Literary Phenomena in Twenty-First-Century Chinese Fiction 35. What Grassroots Ecology Became Tinder Ready to Ignite? | Jia Pingwa's The Ancient Kiln 1 36. Two Factions Where Good and Evil Are Hard to Tell Apart | Jia Pingwa's The Ancient Kiln 2 37. An Explosion of Evil in Blood and Flesh | Jia Pingwa's The Ancient Kiln 3 38. Looking Back on the Educated-Youth Years: Laughing at and Flaunting Suffering | Han Shaogong's Day and Night Book 1 39. To Understand Contemporary China, We Must Understand the Educated-Youth Generation | Han Shaogong's Day and Night Book 2 40. An Alternative Funeral Economy: Rural Burial vs. Cremation | Yan Lianke's The Day the Sun Died 1 41. A Town Sleepwalks Together: Truly Asleep or Pretending? | Yan Lianke's The Day the Sun Died 2 42. An Academic Novel That Strikes Late | Ge Fei's The Spring Breeze 1 43. Does Urbanization Begin a Happy Life for the Countryside? | Ge Fei's The Spring Breeze 2 44. Loyal or Treacherous? A New Breakthrough in a Century of Bureaucratic Fiction | Zhou Meisen's In the Name of the People 1 45. Who Craves Money, Sex, or Power? | Zhou Meisen's In the Name of the People 2 46. An Along the River During the Qingming Festival for Contemporary Intellectuals | Li Er's Brother Yingwu 1 47. A Society and Life Juxtaposing “Dogs” and “Confucians” | Li Er's Brother Yingwu 2 48. Beginning with a Rural “Utopia” of Clear Good and Evil | Yu Hua's The Lost City 1 49. For Love or Profit? Desolation beneath One Woman and Two Men | Yu Hua's The Lost City 2 50. China's Working Class, Insulted and Injured | Lu Nei's Mercy 1 51. Were Workers the Leading Class Before? Are They Masters of the Nation Now? | Lu Nei's Mercy 2 52. Shuang Xuetao's Northeast Stories Work Even without “Northeast” | Moses on the Plain 1 53. The Dandong Police-Attack Case Was Foretold by This Novel Seven Years Earlier | Shuang Xuetao's Moses on the Plain 2 54. Clearing a Father's Name: From Political Question to Economic Predicament | Shuang Xuetao's Moses on the Plain 3 55. One Burst of Firecrackers, Six Reactions | Wang Zhanhei's Blank Shot Finale 56. How Does Shen Congwen's Style Survive in the New Century? | Chen Chuncheng's Submarines at Night