Oct 9, 2026 · 1 hr 8 min · 16 segments
Teaching and Transformation in Popular Confucian Literature of the Late Qing (U Michigan Press, 2025) by…
Thank you so much for having me and for such a wonderful summary of my book.
Um, so how did you come to work on late imperial, early modern China, and Chinese literature in particular?
Um, well, it started with the Jin Ping Mei, the Plum in the Golden Vase, and we're gonna giggle about that for a moment.
Um, so for those who might not know, that is, uh, a novel that in China, and now that it's better known outside of China, has a reputation for h- um, being essentially pornographic because of some rather explicitly written sex scenes, which do not make up the entire percentage of the book.
There's a lot else going on there, but that's all anybody really knows.
And so I'm 19 years old, the Jin Ping Mei, the U- the English translation has two of the five volumes, and I get to the end of the semester, uh, and I tell my advisor, "I wanna read more." Um, I also, while reading those, you know, two volumes, the first 40 chapters, and writing my term paper for the class, I'm in my dorm room bunk bed reading Andrew Plaks' Masterworks of Chinese Literature and about the intricacies of Xunzi and Confucian moral philosophy in this dirty book, and I remember saying to my roommates, "People can do this? I wanna do this." And so I go to my-- who would become my future advisor, and I say, "I, I wanna read more." And this is where I essentially talked my way into a Chinese major, because we have to go backwards for a moment before I start reading the dirty book.
My parents were, um, missionaries in Taiwan, and so there's another parallel because David Roy, the translator of the Jin Ping Mei, was himself a missionary kid who was born and raised in China and ended up translating this incredibly dirty book.
You can't major in Chinese." And I said, "But, um, but I want to." And so I talked my way into a Chinese major by saying, "Can I read this in the original?" And my wonderful advisor, Daniel Yude at Beloit College, said, "All right." And we did independent studies every semester for the rest of my undergrad where we read, you know, line by line the same way you would in a grad seminar, and just spot translations through the Jin Ping Mei, obviously with just, like, one chapter a week, so not a crazy amount.
Or let's see, Story of the Western Wing, Shi San Ji, and a couple other things like that.
And so that really got me into early modern China, was through the classics of literature, um, that allowed me to then go on and figure out what I wanted to research in graduate school, more fine-tuned in that era.
I will say, you know, you started by saying, um, you know, it was because of this book, um, [laughs] that got you into it.
Um, I will admit that reading that book, not in, not in, not in the Chinese but in the Manchu translation, was how I, I came to focus on what I focus on.
Um, [laughs] it was a very determined line-by-line reading of the same book that I [laughs] got into what I do.
Um, so I know full well the, uh, the, uh, the allure, the attraction, the fascination, and also the drudgery of reading [laughs] the Jin Ping Mei.
Um, so you're-- I, I feel you're in good-- you might be in good company there, um, with that.
Thank you so much for having me and for such a wonderful summary of my book.
Um, so how did you come to work on late imperial, early modern China, and Chinese literature in particular?
Um, well, it started with the Jin Ping Mei, the Plum in the Golden Vase, and we're gonna giggle about that for a moment.
Um, so for those who might not know, that is, uh, a novel that in China, and now that it's better known outside of China, has a reputation for h- um, being essentially pornographic because of some rather explicitly written sex scenes, which do not make up the entire percentage of the book.
There's a lot else going on there, but that's all anybody really knows.
And so I'm 19 years old, the Jin Ping Mei, the U- the English translation has two of the five volumes, and I get to the end of the semester, uh, and I tell my advisor, "I wanna read more." Um, I also, while reading those, you know, two volumes, the first 40 chapters, and writing my term paper for the class, I'm in my dorm room bunk bed reading Andrew Plaks' Masterworks of Chinese Literature and about the intricacies of Xunzi and Confucian moral philosophy in this dirty book, and I remember saying to my roommates, "People can do this? I wanna do this." And so I go to my-- who would become my future advisor, and I say, "I, I wanna read more." And this is where I essentially talked my way into a Chinese major, because we have to go backwards for a moment before I start reading the dirty book.
My parents were, um, missionaries in Taiwan, and so there's another parallel because David Roy, the translator of the Jin Ping Mei, was himself a missionary kid who was born and raised in China and ended up translating this incredibly dirty book.
You can't major in Chinese." And I said, "But, um, but I want to." And so I talked my way into a Chinese major by saying, "Can I read this in the original?" And my wonderful advisor, Daniel Yude at Beloit College, said, "All right." And we did independent studies every semester for the rest of my undergrad where we read, you know, line by line the same way you would in a grad seminar, and just spot translations through the Jin Ping Mei, obviously with just, like, one chapter a week, so not a crazy amount.
Or let's see, Story of the Western Wing, Shi San Ji, and a couple other things like that.
And so that really got me into early modern China, was through the classics of literature, um, that allowed me to then go on and figure out what I wanted to research in graduate school, more fine-tuned in that era.
I will say, you know, you started by saying, um, you know, it was because of this book, um, [laughs] that got you into it.
Um, I will admit that reading that book, not in, not in, not in the Chinese but in the Manchu translation, was how I, I came to focus on what I focus on.
Um, [laughs] it was a very determined line-by-line reading of the same book that I [laughs] got into what I do.
Um, so I know full well the, uh, the, uh, the allure, the attraction, the fascination, and also the drudgery of reading [laughs] the Jin Ping Mei.
Um, so you're-- I, I feel you're in good-- you might be in good company there, um, with that.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.