Keeping My Promise to Popo
Anne Liu Kellor | Longreads | September 2019 | #of minutes (2,604 words) No one can agree on how old my grandmother is. Because she was born in wartime China, because they use the lunar calendar,...
View ArticleUnearthing the Story: An Interview with Peter Hessler
In the fall of 2011, Peter Hessler arrived in Egypt, with his family — twin toddlers, and his wife, the writer Leslie Chang. The two had met in China, where Hessler first landed as a Peace Corps...
View ArticleThe Traffic Jam on Mount Everest that Cost 11 Lives
Despite bitterly cold and harsh conditions, the prestige associated with summiting the tallest mountain in the world continues to make Mount Everest a dangerous lure for many, regardless of their...
View ArticleChina’s Communist Government Has a Strong Hold on Chinese Corporations
JD.com is the largest e-commerce company in China. In Communist China, it’s not enough for large companies like JD.com to be profitable — they must serve the goals of the Communist Party and benefit...
View ArticleHow China Censored Citizens and the Press on COVID-19
As Shawn Yuan reports at Wired, the Chinese government knew that a new SARS-like pneumonia had appeared in late 2019, yet they worked hard to keep this deadly virus a secret from their population and...
View ArticleFour Stories from Wuhan
In Wuhan, China, nine million people were in quarantine for 76 days between January and March as COVID-19 went through the city. At the California Sunday Magazine, a student, a noodle shop owner, a...
View ArticleReturning the Gaze
“Uighurs in exile are fighting back against China’s techno-authoritarianism to locate their relatives who have been disappeared.” Read The Story
View ArticleThe Factories in the Camps
Forced labor on a vast scale is taking place inside Xinjiang’s detention centers. Read The Story
View ArticleMeet the Mystery Woman Who Mastered IBM’s 5,400-Character Chinese Typewriter
“Lois Lew operated the improbable, ill-fated machine with aplomb in presentations from Manhattan to Shanghai. 70-plus years later, she’s telling her story.” Read The Story
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Going into Starbucks to Order Butter Tea
Short fiction? Yes! We’re trying an experiment. Toronto in winter is the backdrop for Sharon Bala‘s riveting short story “Butter Tea at Starbucks,” published at The New Quarterly. This piece, layered...
View ArticleFast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise
Online fast-fashion giant Shein has grown dramatically and sells a massive volume of super-cheap, disposable clothing for budget-conscious teenagers. But the Chinese company has disclosed very little...
View ArticleThe Dismantling of Hong Kong
“When I say I miss Hong Kong, what I mean is the city as I remember it between the years of 2014 and 2019.” Karen Cheung reflects on the transformation of her home city. It wasn’t only that we could...
View ArticleToxic Tiles
House renovations surged during the pandemic, when work-from-home policies took effect and people were looking for easy, inexpensive ways to upgrade their homes. Enter “luxury vinyl tile,” of which...
View ArticleI Spent 10 Days in a Secret Chinese Covid Detention Centre
Thomas Hale’s account of his experience in a COVID-19 quarantine facility, inside China’s zero-Covid regime, offers a glimpse into an eerie, dystopian parallel world. The daily rhythm went as follows....
View Article‘iPhones Are Made in Hell’
It’s been more than a decade since Foxconn made international headlines after several workers committed suicide at the manufacturer’s iPhone factory in Shenzhen, China, which prompted revelations...
View ArticleAmerica Doesn’t Know Tofu
This essay does not deviate from its one topic: tofu. And I loved it for that. It is a pure homage to soybean curds — cooked the right way. With a smattering of history and copious mouthwatering...
View ArticleEscaping China with a Spoon and a Rusty Nail
In his own words, Hashim Mohammed, 26, tells the story of his escape from the Uyghur region of China via a Thai detention center. His goal was to navigate “the smugglers’ way” through Cambodia,...
View ArticleA Mother’s Exchange for Her Daughter’s Future
This essay defies easy description. It is about love. It is about perseverance. It is also about many cruelties—the cruelty of poverty, of terminal illness, of grief, of generational trauma: What you...
View ArticleHeavily Persecuted, Highly Influential: China’s Online Feminist Revolution
Reporting from China—at least the sort that appears in Western publications—tends to ignore the nation’s residents in favor of invisible-hand macro forces. Economy. Technology. Geopolitics. But Rest...
View ArticleThe Crimes Behind the Seafood You Eat
Each year, China catches more than five billion pounds of seafood, much of it squid, through its distant-water fishing fleet. These vessels roam all over the world, often in unauthorized areas, and...
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