NüVoices

Note: As current events regarding Covid are rapidly changing, we want to acknowledge that this episode was recorded in early January 2023. In this first episode of our 2023 season, Dr. Jennifer Bouey, an expert on global health equity and security, is here to make sense of zero-Covid's sudden end in China.  Following the 20th Party Congress last fall, the signal from the top seemed to suggest...

This episode was originally released May 29, 2021 * Stay tuned for our new season starting on January 25, 2023! * Learn more about Yilin's new upcoming book, The Lantern and the Nightmoths   Yilin Wang (she/they) is a Vancouver-based writer, editor, Chinese-English translator, educator, and cultural consultant who was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Far Horizon...

As 2022 draws to a close, so must this season of the NüVoices podcast. But fear not! Before we sign off for a winter hiatus, we wanted to bring together our team to reflect on the past year. Joanna Chiu, Rui Zhong, Solarina Ho, Megan Cattel, and Saga Ringmar come together to discuss our podcast's highlights, our favorite episodes, and what we hope to achieve next year. We also delve into the...

This week, journalist Angela Hui joins the NüVoices podcast with board member (and occasional pod host) Lijia Zhang! Angela discusses the major inspirations behind her memoir, Takeaway: Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter . She writes that growing up in a Chinese takeaway — helmed by her parents — in the Welsh countryside was anything but peaceful.  Angela was responsible for translating t...

"Hello everyone, my name is He. It's spelled as H-E. Yes, it is my name, not my pronoun." Last month, Sydney-based comedian He Huang went viral with her 4-minute Australia's Got Talent audition. She joked about xenophobia, racism, and the pressure from family to settle down and get married. While these aren't unusual topics in the stand-up world, He's dead pan deliver...

This week, Sue-Lin Wong of The Economist discusses her new podcast 'The Prince: Searching for Xi Jinping' . This eight-part series details the life of Xi Jinping — from his tumultuous youth during the Cultural Revolution, his early political career in Fuzhou, to his ascent as the leader of China. Sue-Lin talks about the challenges of creating a podcast about China from abroad, and findin...

"I think a lot of the ways that Chinese people are talked about are as these passive receptors of historical events, people that things happen to, rather than people who have agency in their own lives and who make decisions in their own lives... So I wanted to write a book that was about characters living through momentous, historical times, but I didn't want their entire personhoods to...

In this episode of the NüVoices podcast, historians Arlene Chan and Melanie Ng chat with us about the first Chinese migrants who made their way to Canada in the 19th century. From there, Arlene and Melanie retrace the throughline of Chinese Canadian migration, from exclusionary anti-Chinese immigration laws to present-day sinophobia found in many Western countries today.  We also learn about Arlen...

This week, veteran food journalist Clarissa Wei joins us on the NüVoices podcast! Clarissa was previously a senior reporter for Goldthread - a publication incubated by the South China Morning Post - where she created over 100 videos about Chinese food, culture, and cuisine. Now based in Taipei as a freelancer, Clarissa has recently reported on cross-strait relations between Taiwan and China for VI...

We're kicking off our fall 2022 season with a special conversation between Emily Feng of NPR and Joanna Chiu, NüVoices chair and co-founder.  In this episode, Emily walks us through her hard-hitting reporting from the frontlines in Ukraine to a viral controversy surrounding her radio report on 螺螄粉 luósīfěn, snail noodles .  Emily also discusses the beginning of her journalism career in Chi...

We're proud to present our last summer cross post with NPR's Rough Translation! In this episode , host Gregory Warner talks to reporter Emily Feng about the rise of anti-work culture in China. While you may have heard about the term 躺平 or "lying flat", Emily delves into 丧文化, or the sang subculture , which embodies cynicism and defeatism in response to China's particul...

This week we’re interrupting our summer hiatus to bring you insight into US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan the most senior elected US official to visit Taiwan in a quarter of a century. In retaliation, China has engaged its military in days of drills that escalated tensions to their highest in years.  What did Nancy Pelosi hope to achieve by going to Taiwan and can we say that the tri...

Hello from our summer hiatus! While we're away, the pod squad is thrilled to share episodes from podcasts we love and admire. This week, we have an episode from Self-Evident, a podcast for  reported stories, personal histories, and participatory local events — all by and about Asian Americans. Co-host and NüVoices board member Cindy Gao introduces today's episode. Thank you Cindy!   (Des...

Hello from our summer hiatus! While we're away, the pod squad is thrilled to share episodes from podcasts we love and admire. This week, we have an episode from Time to Say Goodbye, a podcast about Asia, the Asian diaspora, politics, and international solidarity. Thank you to hosts E. Tammy Kim, Jay Caspian Kang, and (formerly) Andy Liu for letting us cross post this episode. Kudos to our pod...

Professor Lynette Ong joins us on the podcast this week to discuss her new book Outsourcing Repression: Everyday State Power in Contemporary China . While in conversation with Joanna Chiu, Lynette discusses China's use of nonstate actors who minimize resistance during government land grabs, housing demolitions, and (perhaps most notably) tracking foreign journalists while conducting sensitive...

Nancy Wu, a masterful voice actress and audiobook narrator, joins the NüVoices podcast this week to talk about her storied career. She has narrated the “Avatar the Last Airbender” prequels by F.C. Yee and Michael Dante Di Martino, the "X-Men Mutant Empire" series for Marvel, and books by Amy Tan, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu and Sayaka Murata. You may also recognize Nancy's voice in the audio...

TIME STAMP, SPOILERS FOR DISORIENTATION BEGIN AT: 33:20   We welcome Elaine Hsieh Chou (pronounced "Shay-Chow") to the podcast to talk about her debut novel, Disorientation.  Her book is a hilarious satire on modern day college campus free speech wars, orientalism in academia, "yellow fever", the phenomenon of white scholars and translators devoting their entire lives to East A...

As we gear up for the summer season, the NüVoices podcast is revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the archives. This week, we have a conversation with board member Anne Henochowicz,  who works at the intersection of literature and human rights. She has translated leaked propaganda directives and subversive Weibo posts, investigative journalism and poetry. She is currently the translations...

This week, journalist and former foreign correspondent Katie Stallard joins the NüVoices podcast in a special, live stream recording to celebrate the launch of her new book Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea. Katie discusses her writing and research process, the significance and perspectives of WWII within these three authoritarian countries, and her analysis of R...

Today's podcast episode is a conversation with Axios' business reporter Hope King, where she covers everything from the markets, consumer trends, and big companies such as Tesla, Apple, and Google. Joined by NüVoices board member Sophia Yan, Hope talks through her recent stories on China's lockdowns impacting global supply chains and the surprising number of China's female self...

China's perspective on the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been what experts call a "checkered response". While Chinese authorities maintain they are neutral in the war and encourage peace negotiations, state media remains sympathetic to Russia, a significant ally for China.  Why is Russia an important partnership China? Why have Chinese officials declined calling the conflict a war...

Graphic novelist and cartoonist Laura Gao joins the podcast this week to discuss her new memoir, Messy Roots: The Graphic Memoir of a Wuhanese-American.  When Wuhan, China captured the world's attention as the first epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Laura penned the comic strip "The Wuhan I Know" in reaction to the disgust and racism directed toward her hometown. The co...

This week’s episode is a conversation with Hong Konger Karen Cheung about her memoir The Impossible City which was released in February 2022. Skillfully blending reportage and personal writing, Karen takes readers through the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China and the city’s massive protest movements in 2014 and 2019. But The Impossible City is not just an account of Hong Kong’s harr...

Happy Year of the Tiger to our listeners! Our first podcast of the year is with journalist and business trends researcher Crystal Tai. She talks about her work across East Asia, the challenges of working as a non-visible "foreign correspondent" in South Korea, and how culture can reveal geopolitical tensions between countries around the world.  The conversation is hosted by Joanna Chiu,...

Our last podcast episode of 2021 features Shazeda Ahmed on Chinese cybersecurity, technology, and internet policy. Shazeda is a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley's School of Information and is joined by guest host (and DC board member) Rui Zhong. How are Chinese courtrooms utilizing AI? What is algorithmic discrimination and how are Chinese companies reacting? Rui also asks Shazeda her perspective...