6 articles
Discover how Fan Zhongyan's "Yueyang Tower" essay and the tower itself became symbols of selfless leadership and public duty that still resonate with Americans today.
Read More →
Discover how a 26-year-old poet named Wang Bo wrote the most famous preface in Chinese literary history at Tengwang Pavilion, and why it still influences how Chinese people think about beauty and loss.
Read More →
The Qing Dynasty poet, official, and obsessive home cook who retired to his garden in Nanjing, kept forty mistresses, and wrote a cookbook so precise it is still in print.
Read More →
The Eastern Jin poet who quit his post rather than bow to a corrupt official, retreated to his farm, and wrote the most influential short story in Chinese literature — a 425-word utopia that still gets quoted two millennia on.
Read More →
The kunpeng of Zhuangzi's Daoist parable transforms from the largest fish into the largest bird, with 1,000-mile wingspan. A cosmic metaphor for transformation, ambition, and the relativity of scale.
Read More →
Meet Su Shi, the Song dynasty poet, calligrapher, statesman, exile, and food lover behind Dongpo pork.
Read More →