Tag: Writing and Writers

A Writer’s To-Do List: Learn History. Learn Chinese. Learn to Draw Comics.

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When Tessa Hulls set out to write a book about three generations of women in her family, she had few illusions about how hard the task would be. The tale was geographically sprawling, and spanned a century: Her grandmother Sun Yi, a journalist in Shanghai, fled China for Hong Kong in 1957, then slowly went mad; her mother, Rose, attended an elite boarding school in Hong Kong founded in part for the mixed-race children of European expatriates, then moved to the United States in 1970. Much of her family’s story…

Murder and Magic Realism: A Rising Literary Star Mines China’s Rust Belt

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For a long time during Shuang Xuetao’s early teenage years, he wondered what hidden disaster had befallen his family. His parents, proud workers at a tractor factory in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang, stopped going to work, and the family moved into an empty factory storage room to save money on rent. But they rarely talked about what had happened, and Mr. Shuang worried that some special shame had struck his family alone. It was not until later that he learned about the mass layoffs that swept northeastern China…

Some Authors Were Left Out of Awards Held in China. Leaked Emails Show Why.

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The Hugo Awards, a major literary prize for science fiction, have been engulfed in controversy over revelations that some writers may have been excluded based on their perceived criticism of China or the Chinese government. Suspicions in the science fiction community have been building for weeks that something was amiss with last year’s awards, which rotate to a different city each year, and in 2023 were hosted in Chengdu, China. Now, newly released emails show that the awards were likely manipulated because of political concerns. Here’s what we know. What…

Merle Goldman, a Leading Expert on Communist China, Dies at 92

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In November 1974, a small group of American college presidents spent three weeks traveling through China, visiting universities, communes, factories and even the office of Vice Premier Deng Xiaoping, who was still four years away from taking over as Communist Party leader. Though the United States had recently re-established relations with China, it was an insular, even forbidding place, utterly foreign to these Western visitors. Fortunately, the delegation had a famed Sinologist as a guide: Merle Goldman. A historian at Boston University, Dr. Goldman was still relatively early in her…

Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen Criticized for Comments on Reporter’s Chinese Nationality

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Gov. Jim Pillen of Nebraska is facing criticism after he dismissed a news article about environmental concerns at his hog farms, saying that the reporter who wrote it was from “Communist China.” The reporter, Yanqi Xu, 27, revealed her findings in an article published Sep. 7 by The Flatwater Free Press that detailed nitrate levels “far above” the legal drinking water limit at more than a dozen farms owned by Mr. Pillen, a Republican. While the farms had brought prosperity to Platte Center, a village about 60 miles northwest of…

Ed Young Dies at 91; Infused His Illustrations With Chinese Tradition

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Ed Young, whose illustrations in some 100 children’s books, many of which he also wrote, mesmerized young and not-so-young readers with intricate depictions of fairy tales, poetry and his own life story as a Chinese immigrant, died on Sept. 29 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. He was 91. His daughter Antonia Young confirmed the death. Mr. Young trained as an architect and worked as a graphic designer; he never intended to become an illustrator of children’s books. But a chance opportunity to work on the book “The Mean Mouse…

An Exiled Publisher Creates a ‘Brotherhood Across Tibetans’

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In the winter of 1982, Bhuchung Sonam left his home in Central Tibet. For five days, he trekked with his father across the Himalayas to the Nepali border. Only around 11 years old then, he knew little about what they were fleeing — China’s decades-long colonization of his homeland — and why. He also didn’t realize that he would never again see his homeland, his mother or his six siblings. After arriving in Nepal, Sonam and his father made a pilgrimage to Buddhist sites in neighboring India, the home of the…

China Detains Taiwan-Based Publisher in National Security Investigation

Chin@Strategy

TAIPEI, Taiwan — A Taiwan-based publisher who disappeared while in China has been detained for suspected violations of security laws, Chinese authorities confirmed on Wednesday, fanning concerns in Taiwan that Beijing is sending a warning to the island’s vibrant publishing sector. The publisher, Li Yanhe, widely known by his pen name, Fu Cha, is a Chinese citizen who has been living in Taiwan since 2009. His company, Gusa Publishing, is well known in Taiwan for books that cast a critical eye on China’s ruling Communist Party. Mr. Li had returned…

China Accuses Liberal Columnist of Espionage After a Lunch With Diplomat

Chin@Strategy

BEIJING — A high-ranking editor at a Chinese Communist Party newspaper who often wrote liberal-leaning commentaries is expected to stand trial for espionage in Beijing, after he was arrested while eating lunch with a Japanese diplomat. The editor, Dong Yuyu, was a columnist and deputy editor of the editorial section at Guangming Daily, one of the party’s major newspapers. For decades, he had routinely met with foreigners, including diplomats and journalists, in part to inform his own prolific writing. But now the authorities are eyeing those interactions as proof that…