BBC Radio Podcasts from Chinese Characters

Deng Xiaoping: Black Cat, Yellow Cat

The paramount leader who enabled China's economic miracle.

The fastest pair of fists in East Asia and the first global Chinese film star.

The Communist leader who changed his country forever.

The hard-working, hard-living factory girls behind China's industrial revolution.

The empress dowager who tried - and failed - to reform.

The rebel leader of the Taiping and his nemesis.

The man who saw himself as a patriot, but is remembered as one of China's worst traitors.

A writer still read by every Chinese pupil and considered China's greatest modern author.

The influential Ulsterman who became a servant of the Chinese emperors.

The Muslim sailor whose epic maritime voyages created new routes for trade and influence.

River Elegy was a pioneering TV documentary series, one of the most watched in history.

The woman remembered today as one of the great poets of Chinese history.

The smiling philosopher who is perhaps the most famous Chinese person in history.

The Mongol head of a dynasty that both occupied China and connected it to a wider world.

The historian who spoke the truth to the emperor and suffered for it.

Rana Mitter on the life of one of China's most important feminist authors.

The Jesuit who brought together Renaissance Europe and Ming China through geometry.

The translator and Buddhist monk whose words are chanted daily by millions of Chinese.

The power couple who reunited China and nearly lost it to Japan.

Rana Mitter tells the story of China's first and only female emperor.