Wang Anshi - 1052 Tomb Sweeping Season Poem

10/01/22 • 16 min

Today's podcast is Rob-less, and it looks at the 1052 poem by Wang Anshi, China's controversial economic thinker. This poem (probably) has little to do with Wang's economic policies, but is rather all about his love for his father and elder brothers and his meditation on his own mortality.

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Zhuangzi - Autumn Floods

The last episode in our mini-series on Zhuangzi, we look at one of the most elequent passages in all of the Zhuangzi, even if it almost certainly was not written by Zhuangzi himself. Autumn Floods focuses on understanding how tiny we are in the universe.

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Anonymous - We Don't Want Nucleic Acid Tests

This week, we are looking at a poem in the news. We are airing on Saturday, October 15th, 2022. On Thursday October 13th, 2022, just three days before Chairman Xi Jinping is supposed to be anointed for his third term, someone mounted the Sitong Bridge in Beijing and unfurled two banners. One had a poem which read:

We don’t want nucleic acid [tests], we want to eat

We don’t want the Cultural Revolution, we want reform

We don’t want lockdowns, we want freedom

We don’t want a leader, we want voting

We don’t want lies, we want respect

We don’t want to be slaves, we want to be citizens

不要核酸1要吃饭3,不要文革要改革

不要封城要自由,不要领袖4要选票

不要谎言要尊严,不做奴才2做公民