The Thief Who Became a Celebrity
When Zhou Liqi went viral for stealing scooters to protest lack of opportunity, he sparked a debate between the popular movement of “lying flat” and...
Workers of the World, Rewrite!
A Chinese non-fiction writer finds himself in the same straits as the migrant laborer-artists of Picun village whom he profiles.
Socialism with Socratic Characteristics
In attempting to justify Communist Party rule, Chinese academics have turned to an unlikely intellectual ally — classical Greek philosophy.
Ian Johnson on China Correspondence, from 1984 to Now
The Pulitzer-winning journalist tells the story of his first trip to China in 1984, and how it changed his views on foreign reporting.
Liao Yiwu: The Storyteller
Since the 1990s, Liao Yiwu has been gathering oral histories of Chinese experience, from the everyday to the extraordinary. Then in 2011, harangued by the...
Dancing To Prison
1983’s Strike Hard Against Crime Campaign led to the arrests of many innocent victims, caught up in a culture of fear. One of them was...
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn on China from 1988 to Now
The Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalists reflect back on their time in Beijing three decades ago, and what has changed since.
Ep. 13: Peter Hessler on ‘Other Rivers’
The bestselling author first taught in China in the late 1990s. In 2019, he went back. We caught up with him to ask what had...
How a Chinese Student Turned Marxist
Intellectual young Chinese — once the socialist vanguard, now struggling to get by in a capitalist economy — are turning left once more. But when...
Edward Wong on the Edge of Empire
The New York Times journalist tells us how his father followed Mao's star in the 1950s — and how the frontiers he reported on in...
The Martyrdom of Liu Xiaobo
China’s dissident writer was an exemplar of iconoclastic intellectual spirit, pursuing a more humane society despite state repression. A new biography draws the arc of...
Yiyun Li: ‘You’re Always Chinese’
The Chinese-born writer of fiction and memoir left in 1996 and has moved on to other settings in her work. But can a writer ever...