The China History Podcast

At last, the early years of Russia-China relations can see the light of day. As you can see, this is another one of those hour-plus episodes that were not long enough for two episodes and a bit overly...

3 Apr 20171h 6min

Many people don't know that the first preaching of Christianity in China pre-dated the Jesuits by more than nine centuries. We'll take a second cursory look at the Jesuits as part of a bigger story th...

20 Feb 201749min

Thanks to Carole in Virginia for giving me enough of a push to get this episode finally produced. This might have been one of the first ten topics I came up with when I began writing the original list...

29 Jan 201739min

In part two of this series examining the forgotten life of William Mesny, we hear the second half of his story in China. We're mostly using author David Leffman's 2016 book "The Mercenary Mandarin". L...

10 Jan 201743min

In this first part of a two-part series, we examine the forgotten life of William Mesny. Drawing from author David Leffman's 2016 book "The Mercenary Mandarin," Laszlo discusses an unknown character f...

10 Jan 201737min

In this episode, Laszlo explains a little about the "Gagi Nang", the 自己人 or 家己弄, known the world over as the Teochew (Chiu Chow or Chaozhou) people. Their language and culture are unique. Their food a...

30 Nov 201637min

In America, we have Washington Irving, Mark Twain, Hemingway, and so on. In China, Su Dongpo, (also known referred to as Su Shi) would be mentioned when rattling off their best of the best. He was def...

28 Okt 201645min

In this latest episode, Laszlo finally gets around to the oft-requested subject of piracy in early 19th century China. Pirates had been a fact of life going back to the most olden days. Mid to late Qi...

13 Okt 201633min