Transcript: Anthony Tao — The Poetry and Soul of Beijing

Below is a complete transcript of the Sinica Podcast taped on July 9. Transcript by the great folks at CadreScripts, reviewed by Lili Shoup of the University of Freiburg. You can listen to the show on the embedded player above, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts!

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we’ll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from the city I called home for over 20 years, and in which I hope to be spending much, much more time in the coming years — Beijing. 

Sinica is supported this year by the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Sinica Podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I’m doing with the podcast, please consider lending your support. You can get me at sinicapod@gmail.com. 

And listeners, please support my work on Substack at sinica.substack.com. There you will find, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, a weekly essay from me, though not this week as I’m still in China, and we’ll have a long series of my observations from China in the coming weeks, and now a wide range of offerings from some of your favorite China-focused columnists and commentators, as well as some of your favorite podcasts, like the China Global South Podcast and You Can Learn Chinese.

I have had the great pleasure of knowing Anthony Tao now for about, I’m going to say, 18 years, when he was a young Northwestern grad and ultimate frisbee fanatic who was writing and publishing some marvelously transgressive stuff at a funny little website called Beijing Cream. He was always a builder of community, convening just amazing events. For example, at the storied Bookworm, may it rest in peace, including the Beijing Literary Festival, where we actually ran a couple of really fun literature quizzes together — then was the good old days. Head on over to the Golden Weasel on pub quiz night, and you will see that he is still an outstanding quizmaster.

Anthony was editor over at RADII before joining us in 2017 due to my machinations. He was at The China Project, née SupChina, with me for about six years. He was our managing editor there, as well as commissioning editor, and all the people who wrote and had their work done by Anthony always reported that it was just a real joy to work with him, and I know that that’s certainly the case. 

Above all, he is a poet, and a very gifted one as you’ll soon see, who captures in verse the soul of Beijing better than anyone I’ve come across. His collection, We Met in Beijing, came out a few months ago. I’ve read and reread it now many times, and it always just gets me right there. He also publishes on a Substack, but we will let him tell you about that. Anthony Tao, welcome back to Sinica.

Anthony Tao: Thank you, Kaiser. And it’s so great to see you. It’s been too long for you to be back in Beijing.