multimedia
Chinese Lore Podcasts
Date: 2014-present
Imagine if half the world knew nothing about the works of William Shakespeare or Homer. Now imagine you are in that half. There are novels and stories in China that have been read, told, retold, and cherished by billions of people for centuries. Their influence on Chinese culture rivals that of Shakespearean plays and Homeric epics in the West, yet most Westerners don't even know that these amazing works exist.
In 2014, I launched a podcasting project to help change that. These stories owe much of their continuing popularity to the art of oral storytelling, whether it was in the teahouses of bygone centuries or on the Chinese radio stations of my childhood. Podcasting is a logical next step in that long tradition.
From 2014 to 2018, I produced a podcast on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the four greatest classical Chinese novels (think Game of Thrones meets The Illiad meets Shakespearean history plays). Over 175 episodes, I retold the novel in English. Instead of just reading an English translation of the book, I relayed the story in a conversational style, injecting my own personality into the experience. I also paused frequently to add relevant context and historical background to help listeners understand the numerous cultural and historical references in the novel.
During the four-plus years I spent on that work, an online community coalesced around the show. Some had known about the novel previously but could never make it through the book, while others had never heard of it before. Many expressed their excitment and gratitude for having a resource that helped them better understand this amazing work.
I enjoyed my experience so much that I launched another podcast in 2019, providing a similar treatment for another of the four great Chinese classics, the Water Margin. When I finished that effort in 2022, I moved on to cover other works of classic Chinese literature, and I pulled all my podcasting work under one banner: the Chinese Lore Podcast.
Combined, my podcasts had received more than 3 million downloads as of December 2023.
