What is a Zawen? It is complicated. In this episode, we try to tackle what zawen are and what they meant to Lu Xun's career. Guiding us on our journey is Professor Andrew Jones of UC Berkeley, one of the most well-regarded scholars of Lu Xun in American academia. Professor Jones is the author of Developmental Fairy Tales, and is a contributing translator to the new collection of Lu Xun's zawen in a book titled Jottings Under Lamplight.

On Today's podcast, we have one of the best writers on contemporary Chinese youth, Alec Ash. Alec wrote an excellent book on Chinese young adults called Wish Lanterns. It was renamed China's New Youth for the American book market. Alec joins us today on the podcast to talk about one of Lu Xun's shortest stories. We debate how close Lu Xun is to the narrator of the story and what it says about the China of the early 20th and early 21st Century. 

One of Lu Xun's most trenchant stories, in this episode, part of our series on Lu Xun, we tackle a story about gender, rape and class. The story is brutal, one of Lu Xun's masterpieces. 

Blood and Bread.  A national reckoning between two mourning mothers. Today, Rob and Lee interview Professor James Carter, Dean of the History Department at Saint Joseph's University. The story that the three discuss is Lu Xun's story "Medicine." 

Professor Carter's most recent book is Champions Day, a book about the last gasp of old Shanghai.