Ep 95 - Shi Tiesheng and My Travels in Ding Yi with Chloë Starr

Trembling hands seem to check for the forgotten secret language. Withered bodies, like finding some long-forgotten receipt. Where have you been all these years? The mountains echo again, spring’s call is finally answered: I am the secret language you forgot. You are my lost credentials.

In the ninety fifth episode of the Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast we are embarking on My Travels in Ding Yi(我的丁一之旅 - wǒ de dīng yī zhīlǚ).This is one of the later works in the life of Shi Tiesheng, an idiosyncratic writer best remembered as being a ‘disabled writer’ but better remembered as something far more multifaceted. Peer in from another mind, another world, as academic Chloë Starr and I confer with Christ and become embodied with Budda. Perhaps, somehow, we’ll puzzle out our brief roles on the stage play of existence.

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// NEWS ITEMS //

• New short Chen Qiufan interview on AI
• Chi Ta-wei’s The Membranes optioned for film adaptation(!)
• Intriguing academic book: Strange Tales from Edo by William D. Fleming

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// WORD OF THE DAY //

(心识不死 – xīn shì bùsǐ – the spirit never dies)

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// MENTIONED IN THE EPISODE //

• Chloë’s paper: Shi Tiesheng and the Nature of the Human
• The Cultural Christian movement in China
• What We Owe the Future by Willam McAskill
• Life on a String (1991, Chen Kaige) - an adaptation of Shi Tiesheng’s 命若琴弦

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// Handy TrChFic Links //

Help Support TrChFic // Episode Transcripts

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