If there is a distinctive genre we can define as Chinese animal literature in English translation, no one has made a greater contribution than Wilt L. Idema. In less than a decade, Idema has published three books on Chinese animal literature and made numerous Chinese texts available to English-speaking readers, including Insects in Chinese Literature: A Study and Anthology (2022), Mouse vs. Cat in Chinese Literature: Tales and Commentary (2019), and A Historical Taxonomy of Talking Birds in Chinese Literature (2025). These works manifest Idema’s mastery of various genres of late imperial Chinese vernacular literature and demonstrate his vast knowledge of secondary sources in Chinese literature.

Given that animal studies in literature is a rapidly growing field, Idema’s three works appear less engaged with contemporary scholarship on literatures in languages other than Chinese. Instead, they offer very rich sources for more nuanced future analysis while comparing and connecting with literary studies in other fields, such as American, European, Middle Eastern, and South Asian literature. Idema’s A Historical Taxonomy of Talking Birds in Chinese Literature is less concerned with theoretical issues in animal studies than is, for example, Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman (eds), Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (Columbia University Press, 2005). Regarding literary representations of talking animals, Karla Armbruster’s “What do we want from talking animals? Reflections on literary representations of animal voices and minds” (in Margo DeMello (ed.), Speaking Animals: Animal Autobiographical Writing, London: Routledge, 2013, 17–34) addresses human–animal relationships. Reiko Ohnuma’s Unfortunate Destiny: Animals in the Indian Buddhist Imagination (Oxford University Press, 2017), however, focuses on early Buddhist Jataka tales in Indian literature, while Idema’s book surveys talking birds in Chinese literature over two millennia, covering every major genre of Chinese literature, from poems to rhapsodies, from lyrics to drama, as well as various forms of popular literature such as precious volumes, morality books, novels, and even modern martial arts novels.

Unlike many monographs that introduce the main theme, research approaches, review contemporary scholarship, and outline primary sources, this book’s brief introduction (pp. 1–5) directly presents the book’s structure with chapter outlines. A short epilogue (pp. 255–8) explains that Chinese literature in the Republican era relegated the parrot to a minor role in marginal genres, and that many famed modern writers preferred to ignore parrots in their works. A three-page appendix notes the difference between “Bird Call poems” and “Bird Voice poems”. The bulk of A Historical Taxonomy of Talking Birds in Chinese Literature consists of six chronologically arranged chapters, each highlighting features of literary works on parrots in their respective historical period.

Chapter 1, “Captured birds and frustrated talent: from earliest times to the third century”, notes that the name of the parrot first appeared in the Records of the Rites, but that the Huainanzi was the first to note the parrot’s ability to talk, and the Classic of Mountains and Seas was the first to mention the parrot’s colour. It also observes that ancient Chinese literature, particularly rhapsodies, portrayed parrots as captured birds from Western Long, or the borderland separating modern Shaanxi and modern Gansu, offering new translations of two famous rhapsodies on parrots by Mi Heng and Cao Zhi.

Chapter 2, “Exotic cockatoos and foreign tales: third to sixth centuries”, introduces the new development of literary works on white and red parrots brought to China from Southeast and South Asia due to the differing diplomatic ties between the northern and southern regimes with neighbouring states and regions. During this period, Buddhist animal narratives translated into Chinese played a crucial role in introducing parrots into Chinese literature as intelligent and virtuous birds. This chapter translates a set of Buddhist tales selected from scriptures and Vinaya texts in Chinese translations of Buddhist canon into English, depicting various images and roles of parrots: the grateful parrot, the parrot that escapes by fasting, the parrot that feigns death, the parrot as a previous life of the Buddha, the parrot as a king, the filial parrot, and the preaching parrot.

Chapter 3, “At the palace and in the boudoir; at the bordello and in religion: seventh to tenth centuries”, addresses how parrots were favoured by emperors, princes, empresses, and court officials. They composed poems to praise the parrots’ beauty, virtue, and intelligence, portraying parrots as tributes from neighbouring states and as household pets. This chapter then translates two pieces by literati Wang Wei and Niu Sengru, as well as an excerpt from the Buddhist canon.

Chapter 4, “Abiding loyalty and filial piety: eleventh to fifteenth centuries”, translates various poems and reference works portraying parrots’ desire for freedom, their filial piety, and their depiction in literati observations. Additionally, noting the flourishing of print culture, this chapter explains that vernacular entertainment literature, such as transformation texts (bianwen) and ballad-stories (cihua), promoted narratives on parrots’ filial piety, including a story about Guanyin’s parrot.

Chapter 5, “Parrots as desire, as allegory, and as prop: seventeenth to nineteenth centuries”, traces the impact of early modern globalization, particularly the rise of maritime trade, on representations of parrots in Chinese literature. This chapter explores the roles and images of parrots not only in celebrated literary works by Li Yu, Zhang Dai, Cao Xueqin, Pu Songling, and Nalan Xingde, but also in precious scrolls and vernacular plays.

The final chapter turns to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, examining parrots in locally produced texts such as Cantonese “wooden fish books” (muyushu), drum ballads (guci), and Minnanese ballads (gezaici). In these genres, parrots appear in diverse roles as matchmakers, entertainers, loyal servants, and effective statesmen.

Overall, Idema’s eloquent and mostly accurate translations help this book lay an important textual foundation for further research on birds in Chinese literature from a transnational perspective.