NüVoices

Scriptwriter Shen Yang is the author of More Than One Child: Memoirs of an Illegal Daughter , which was just translated into English by Nicky Harman earlier this year in August. She joins this installment of the NüVoices Podcast with host Sophia Yan, where they discuss her turbulent childhood being shuttled between relatives and living in hiding as an "excess child" during China's o...

The second half of Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant's discussion about translating Jin Yong's legendary wuxia series Legends of the Condor Heroes from Chinese to English is here! Guest host and NüVoices member Cathy Tai moderates the conversation. First, Cathy brings listeners up to speed on the Condor Heroes and Jin Yong's significance to the contemporary wuxia genre and Chinese pop cu...

In a special two-part podcast, Gigi Chang and Shelly Bryant discuss their work translating Jin Yong's legendary wuxia series Legends of the Condor Heroes from Chinese to English, a revered martial-arts and fantasy odyssey among Chinese language readers around the world. Guest host and NüVoices member Cathy Tai moderates the conversation. In this episode, Gigi and Shelly talk about the challen...

Sophie Richardson is the China Director at Human Rights Watch, a position she’s held since 2006. She frequently testifies to parliaments around the world and is the author of China, Cambodia and the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence , which examines Chinese foreign policy since the 1954 Geneva Conference. She speaks Mandarin, earned a doctorate from the University of Virginia and a BA from O...

Joanna Chiu's new book, China Unbound , details China's rapid international rise, and the ways Western nations have contributed to a state of global disorder. The book weaves historical and political context with Chiu's reporting across four continents. Guest host Madeleine O'Dea, award-winning author of The Phoenix Years , speaks with Chiu, who chairs NüVoices, about how Weste...

Clare Fearnley became New Zealand’s ambassador to China in 2018, cross-accredited to Mongolia. She was previously ambassador in Seoul, where she also oversaw Pyongyang, consul-general in Shanghai and head of the New Zealand Commerce and Industry Office in Taipei. She has also been posted to the New Zealand Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva. While working in the Ministry of Foreign...

Barbara Demick is the author of Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town (2020), Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009), and Logavina Street: Life and Death in a Sarajevo neighborhood (1996). She spent 12 years as bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times in Beijing and Seoul and previously reported from the Middle East and Balkans for the Philadelphia Inquirer .  Barbara has w...

Lotus Ruan conducts research and writes at The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. Her work focuses on the roles of government and private actors in shaping internet governance agendas and digital rights. Her writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, and Tech in Asia. On this episode, Lotus joins DC chapter member Rui Zhong to t...

Shunan Teng is the founder and owner of Tea Drunk in New York City, which specializes in heritage, wild, historical, and other famous teas. Every spring, she travels to the renowned tea regions in China and works alongside the heritage farmers to produce the most coveted teas. In this episode, Shunan shares her tremendous knowledge of tea with Cindy and talks about the teas and regions they come f...

Kathleen McLaughlin is a science and labor reporter based in Butte, Montana, whose work has been regularly featured in the Washington Post and The Guardian; she was also the Beijing correspondent for Science Magazine. Her work has spanned fashion, pharmaceuticals, electronics manufacturers, and medicine. She’s also an alumni of the MIT Knight Science journalism fellowship. Her forthcoming book is...

Sophia Yan is the China correspondent for the Telegraph, has covered the region for a decade, and is based in Beijing. Previously, she reported for CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg, while based in Hong Kong and Washington, D.C., and has had stints in Tokyo and Honolulu. She received the 2020 Marie Colvin Award for her coverage of China, with judges noting Sophia's determination to "get to the tr...

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 Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Her work engages with topics such as Chinese folklore, martial arts literature (wuxia), diaspora identities, gender expectations, migration, and cultural reclamation. So...

Sophie Beach is the executive editor of China Digital Times (CDT), an independent, bilingual media organization that brings uncensored news and online voices from China to the world. In this conversation, Sophie talks to Cindy about the genesis of CDT and its vision, the ever-evolving (and opaque) state censorship rules and tactics, and the necessity to amplify persistent voices of resistance of C...

“China is angry. If you make China the enemy, China will be the enemy," a Chinese Embassy official told Australian reporter Jonathan Kearsley at a meeting in late 2020. Kearsley wrote that the comment seemed like the strongest public indication from the embassy of how “toxic” the relationship had become between China and Australia. In the last year, the Chinese government has suspended beef a...

Dolly Li is an award-winning independent video journalist, filmmaker, and correspondent. She is the former host of an award-winning AJ+ (Al Jazeera) show, Untold America , as well as a co-founder of the digital publication Goldthread , which was a part of the South China Morning Post. ​In this wide-ranging conversation with Cindy Gao, Dolly talks about video journalism and the power of visual stor...

Throughout the 10 stories in Land of Big Numbers , Te-Ping Chen — a founding member of NüVoices — sketches the interior lives of her protagonists, who live in (or are connected to) China: a man determined to strike it rich in the stock market, a migrant worker employed at a flower shop who is infatuated with a customer, and a government employee being stalked by her ex-boyfriend.  Inspired by her...

Jiāyán "Jenny" Shī (施佳妍) is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and video journalist based in Chicago. Her first feature-length documentary, Finding Yingying , was the winner of the 2020 SXSW Special Jury Recognition for Breakthrough Voice, among numerous other awards during a virtual distribution season. The film was produced by Kartemquin Films and distributed by MTV Documentary...

Dr. Pamela Logan's latest book, Compassion Mandala: The Odyssey of an American Charity in Contemporary Tibet , chronicles her experience founding and running Kham Aid Foundation in the eastern Tibetan Plateau from 1997 to 2011. After the foundation shut down, she returned to the U.S. and now works as an aeronautical engineer. In this conversation, Pamela and Cindy talk about the elements of t...

On January 9, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would eliminate self-imposed restrictions on exchanges between American and Taiwanese officials. Reactions have been mixed, with some saying a change in policy on Taiwan was overdue, while others warning that the timing of the announcement in the last days of the Trump administration means Taiwan will bear the bru...

Rita Liu is a seasoned fintech executive who started her career at American Express, then spent nearly a decade at Alipay building its international business. During her time there, she formed partnerships across Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Canada. She joined Mode Bank as chief commercial officer in London in March 2020. In this conversation, Rita and NüVoices board member Chenni...

Tiffany Ap is currently the China bureau chief for Women’s Wear Daily. In this episode for the NüVoices podcast, Tiffany and Cindy discuss the revival of the fashion and retail industries as China emerges from COVID-19 lockdowns, the meteoric rises of China’s ecommerce livestreaming and platforms, Hong Kong's retail domination collapse, and a sexual harassment incident hashtag that went very...

Tensions between the U.S. and China have ratcheted upward in the last four years of the Trump administration. Groundbreaking research from independent Washington, D.C.–based researcher Ashley Feng have shown that acts of "economic coercion" go both ways. Policymakers on both sides of the Pacific have increasingly used measures such as tariffs and investment restrictions against one anoth...

Today’s guest, Anne Henochowicz , 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 coordinator at China Digital Times and a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books China Channel. She also leads the NüVoices chapter in Washington,...

Beijing’s enactment of sweeping national security legislation in Hong Kong spurred fresh fear for the territory’s cherished freedoms as authorities sought to quash months of citywide protests. How have journalists, faced with a new reality, confronted this political shift? To help explore this question, Jennifer Creery , the managing editor of Hong Kong Free Press, stepped in as the guest host of...

Yunnan Chen is a senior research officer for the Overseas Development Institute, a London think tank focused on international development and humanitarian issues. She joins Cindy for a conversation on China-Africa development finance, her own fieldwork in Africa, and Chinese identity while reflecting on being a member of the Asian diaspora growing up in the United Kingdom. Recommendations: Yunnan:...