Archive - Stories from a Burning House

New

The Five Virtues of the Cat

17th-c. listicle clickbait or cute Feng Menglong anecdote? (#3 made us FORGET about MEAT for 3 MONTHS!)

Nov 7

October 2023

Some last-minute tales of the altogether ooky

Oct 31

September 2023

Susu Does the Dozens

What’s poetry good for? Have you ever owned someone so hard you changed the language?

Sep 11

July 2023

The Naming of Cats, and an Offering

"Ferocious beasts." "Creatures of the baleful category." "Cicada-nommers." If you can read Classical Chinese, you can have a moderately good time…

Jul 18

April 2023

Tao Yuanming - “Home Again”

Monday Motivation from medieval China's best-loved proponent of loud-quitting. How do we know what we know? And: Did history dudes hate Mondays?

Apr 17

February 2023

Unidentified Flying Object Seen Over Yangzhou

My eleventh-century glowing orb is a million times cooler than your stupid balloons or whatever.

Feb 14

August 2022

Friday Doggerel: "The Grubber"

Sometimes you see something so perfect in its irredeemability that you just have to commemorate it somehow.

Aug 5, 2022

Everything is awful, the dynasty is collapsing, and the vibes are fucked. Other people have been here before. Here's a few of Jin Shengtan's favorite…

Aug 3, 2022

#nojs-banner { position: fixed; bottom: 0; left: 0; padding: 16px 16px 16px 32px; width: 100%; box-sizing: border-box; background: red; color: white; font-family: -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol"; font-size: 13px; line-height: 13px; } #nojs-banner a { color: inherit; text-decoration: underline; } This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please turn on JavaScript or unblock scripts