Wall Street Journal reporter, debut short story collection LAND OF BIG NUMBERS @marinerbooks out now: bit.ly/3lL9s96
Philadelphia
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my husband just walked in and told me the news. what even???
so deeply honored & thankful to see Land of Big Numbers on @BarackObama's list of favorite summer reads:
While we were still in the White House, I began sharing my summer favorites—and now, it’s become a little tradition that I look forward to sharing with you all. So here's this year's offering. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.
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How the news Trump won't label China a currency manipulator plays here:
"Eating his words!"
"Trump slaps self in face, again"
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1/ I wanted to share a story about something kind of wonderful that happened yesterday. Backstory: I grew up in Oakland, Calif., not knowing really anything about my mother's family -- she was an only child (born in NYC) & my grandparents died before I was born.
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“She said, 'Mommy, I’m going to work because no one else is going to help the senior citizens get their groceries.” RIP Leilani Jordan, a 27-year-old Giant worker who passed away of the coronavirus last week wapo.st/2JLLN73
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Big fan of this young guy on the Beijing subway, whose T-shirt front reads “I love money” in large English letters. Then, in discreet print on the back: 更爱自由. (“I love freedom more.”)
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No one stands up like Hong Kong stands up.
The smartest, most resourceful teenagers you could ever hope to meet. 佩服.
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It's actually 25%. Also, companies here pay more when all business taxes factored in: 68% vs. 44% in the U.S. on.wsj.com/2pE0OgC
China has a business tax rate of 15%. We should do everything possible to match them in order to win with our economy. Jobs and wages!
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What does it mean to love a culture, & take pride in it, but not the government that serves as its most prominent booster? on.wsj.com/2YpUM5a
A personal essay from me in this weekend's @wsj:
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So glad someone wrote this piece. Masks can save lives, & the strident anti-mask tone in the U.S — especially when cases spread asymptomatically — is deeply unhelpful. nyti.ms/2vrTjAy
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8/ As it turns out, my great-grandfather Liang Chiu-shui was one of China's earliest newspapermen, a journalist w/the English-language 北京导报, or Peking Leader. He wrote poems including 冀东兄弟行, about brothers on opposite sides of the civil war who meet on the battlefield.
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“I guess it took them awhile to get back to me.” Companies struggling to hire are finally getting back to applicants they ghosted years ago. Our a-hed on mystery calls from the Cheesecake Factory & how job ads are the new spam: on.wsj.com/2W6AzUp
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1/ Last year, I found some long-forgotten family letters stashed in a trunk in my parents' garage. They were postmarked 57 Shih-Chia Hutong, Peking.
I spent my last months in Beijing trying to trace their authors. What I found is in this weekend’s @wsj: on.wsj.com/2SOZR1Y
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11/ PS: the letters mention two books of my great-grandfather's poetry were being safeguarded by neighbors for family in America, one by "Miss Tsui's No. 2 Sister" and a "Miss Yu." Not surprisingly, so far no luck trying to track them down, but am continuing to ask around...
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1/Today's the day LAND OF BIG NUMBERS publishes. It's a book that evokes so much of what I love about China -- its surprises, its humor, its beauty, & above all, its extraordinary people.
I poured so much of myself into it, & hope very much that you will read it!
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10/ Still so many questions. I'd like to know where they're buried and learn more about their lives (& read Liang's poetry!). And I would love to meet any relatives. But for the moment, in a city where so much history has been obliterated, very grateful for what's been preserved.
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just tried to interview a Chinese gov't scholar, was told your own president slanders U.S media, why should we trust you?
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A quick note: today is my last day in our Beijing bureau. Am moving back to the U.S., where I’ll be writing about work & work culture for @wsj. Thank you so much to my big-hearted colleagues & everyone I’ve met these past four years. Really going to miss this place.
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7/ The museum is small & didn't yield much, but one of the staffers had a book she shared. It had an address-by-address breakdown, including a section on my great-grandparents, whose Chinese names I'd literally never known. They are 梁秋水 and 罗红庄.
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A lot of heartbreak in this profile of how one Brooklyn street's businesses have been shattered by Covid19 on.wsj.com/2KjKg8F
This photo is particularly wrenching:
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Deeply sad. It’s hard to think of any fixtures that were more indelibly Hong Kong than the vigil, which was about Tiananmen, yes—but even more so an extraordinary symbol of the city’s freedom & its values on.wsj.com/3clvQjV
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Feeling a little bashful to share amid all the Covid-19 news. But...my book has a cover! 🎉🎉 bit.ly/2zhN2cx
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6/ I went yesterday for the first time. It's just over a mile from where I live now, have biked by many times without knowing. There's a museum there that catalogues the lives of past residents, including artists and writers such as Ling Shuhua.
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The march towards facial recognition hits @wsj's China bureau. Starting today, three of these turnstiles will only let you enter using your face. Used to all take swipe cards.
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Took this photo of Agnes Chow during the Umbrella Movement, around 4am in LegCo. I couldn’t believe how young she was, just 17. She turns 24 today, in jail.
Thinking of how Joshua Wong & Agnes Chow's paths tell a bigger story about their generation in Hong Kong. Weeks ago they both proudly announced having finally graduated from college/attended their ceremony (after years of juggling activism w. their studies). Today they go to jail
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5/ The envelopes had an address, 57 Shijia Hutong. Astonishingly, given the vast majority of Beijing hutongs have been destroyed, not only does it still exist, but it's one of the city's best-preserved.
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can't believe this story isn't getting more attention. Hong Kong activists tried to escape the city by boat & seek refuge in Taiwan, but were intercepted by the Chinese Coast Guard: on.wsj.com/2YFCD40 via @xinwenfan @joyuwang
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Beyond thrilled to share the news that @hmhbooks has just agreed to publish my first short story collection, LAND OF BIG NUMBERS, and novel, THE CELESTIALS. Still in shock, more to come, meanwhile very, very happy, & grateful. 🎉🎉
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some personal news! So happy to share a short story I wrote, LULU, is out in the @NewYorker & on newsstands today: bit.ly/2WAJKHz
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4/ The letters are delightful, containing details about ice-skating in Beihai, the price of cabbage and electricity & changing fashions. Also talks about her husband's obsession with poetry -- he'd written hundreds of verses, she says.
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9/ According to the book, Woon Kyau Lo studied in Honolulu (which explains the English letters). Based on the tone of her writing, she was warm, critical & funny in the way so many Beijingers are -- the voice sounds very familiar today, even nearly a century later.
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Houses razed, promises of jobs & development dangled. But now villagers are feeling duped, and the land still sits empty.
A familiar China story -- but this one's in Wisconsin on.wsj.com/2GT1SXU
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whoa. Chinese police literally broke into a professor's home while he was doing a live interview w/VOA & demanded he stop talking. "I am entitled to express my opinion. This is my freedom of speech," he said, before the line went dead bit.ly/2n2TD0L
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Even before the pandemic, Americans were working harder & longer. Now it's reached a tipping point: on.wsj.com/3efKGfo "I can’t get all this done. There’s no point in even trying.” w/@rayalexsmith
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Note to China's public security bureau: The plainclothesman effect kind of spoiled when you have them march in arm-swinging formation
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Meanwhile, Taiwan just announced its first coronavirus case today. Total # of confirmed cases up to nearly 300 now, ahead of peak lunar new year travel season: on.wsj.com/2Rccq9Y by @chaodeng
Reminder: Taiwan's exclusion from the World Health Organization due to Chinese pressure poses an unnecessary global health risk, especially when mystery viruses start spreading beyond China's borders. For Beijing, politics trumps lives.
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3/ This Feb., I was back home helping my parents clean out the garage. In one corner, piled with old boxes and other detritus, was a trunk full of old clothes, furs & a cache of letters written by my great-grandmother (L) to my grandmother (R) from the 1930s to the 1950s.
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tfw the book you wrote is almost grown up and is now a galley (!!)
Pre-orders for my debut short story collection, LAND OF BIG NUMBERS, now available here bit.ly/3hPuEsi & through your local bookstore bit.ly/2XyFsU7 🎉🎉
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Note to stylish NYC restaurants: maybe don’t install a large Mao bust and write Communist Party slogans on the wall if your name is Hong Kong Station
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12/ !! And here's that poem of his I mentioned about two ill-fated brothers, 冀东兄弟行, which Josh Stenberg in Sydney kindly helped find. "Woe the evil omen in which the violet tree in the yard / suddenly collapsed from the blow of strong wind." Evidently based on a true story?
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“I’m holding on to it for dear life.” Our piece on the families & businesses facing a July 31 cliff, when the $600/weekly federal unemployment aid is set to expire on.wsj.com/2WCf76T w/@EricMorath
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So many horrible stories. In California, one 16-year-old boy attacked in school & accused of having the coronavirus wound up in the ER. Others have been spit on or verbally abused in the checkout line or while using public transport.
Asian Americans are getting yelled at & attacked by people accusing them of spreading the new coronavirus. It’s the new “yellow peril,” fueled by Trump’s use of the racist term “Chinese virus.” Xenophobia rising. @nytimes interviewed dozens for this story. nytimes.com/2020/03/23/us/co…
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This illuminating piece on how the world may have misinterpreted what helped turn the tide in Wuhan, by @JNBPage.
Lockdowns aren't enough -- you need systematic testing and mass quarantines: on.wsj.com/2Uk1Dw5
What're the most informative things you've read, seen, or listened to on COVID-19 over the past day?
Links only, please!
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Favorite reaction of a delegate today when asked about China scrapping term limits: "Don't know anything about it."
"But they just read out the amendment. Weren't you paying attention?"
(Silence.) "It was very hot in that room."
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As China ushers in potentially lifelong rule for Xi, one of Weibo's top hashtags right now is whether it's okay to eat cup noodles on high-speed trains.
The blithe quality of China's censor-scrubbed internet is often jarring, but never more so than on a day like this:
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"Have all the children gotten home yet?" A truly moving piece on how Hong Kong's elders are sustaining young protesters
One woman gave out $25K in McDonald's & metro cards. So many are offering protesters rides that they've caused traffic jams on.wsj.com/2m8bWnZ @lyonsnotes
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1/ Last month, my editor suggested I look into a piece on loneliness at work. The story is out today, and I hope you’ll read. After dozens of conversations with workers, companies & social scientists, here’s what I found:
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Just got this in the mail & can’t stop staring at the cover. There’s a murakami short story, and a few pages over, one of mine....!! thank you @GrantaMag!
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Now you Xi him, Mao you don't.
Two magazine covers this week on fears re Xi Jinping's creeping personality cult:
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2/ I moved to Beijing in 2014 to work as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. At the time all I knew dimly was that my great-grandmother was supposedly from here & had apparently lived in a traditional courtyard home. Not much to go on.
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I wrote about why names matter, & the story of mine.
Recorded before the Atlanta shootings, aired tonight on @NewsHour:
What's in a name? In this essay, @tepingchen says that "for so many years, my name has felt like a flag that's stuck out, bristling, from any form or name tag."
"But that's okay," she says. "It's a name that's made me think hard about identity."
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It’s been a rough week, but one bright thing: finished copies of the book have arrived! 🎉🎉
And they’re so pretty.
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Why are there still so few Black CEOs? our @wsj deep dive, w/data + voices from top executives who've seen it firsthand: on.wsj.com/2G0db3c “We don’t get a presumption of competence.”
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Meanwhile, China's foreign minister is gladhanding his way through a 4-nation African tour. Calls Beijing the "most reliable friend & partner of its African brothers" bit.ly/2mwAnYX
White House official told me tonight there is debate internally on whether Trump said "shithole" or "shithouse." Perdue and Cotton seem to have heard latter, this person said, and are using to deny.
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.@WSJ's editorial board on China's decision to expel 3 of our colleagues: "Beijing’s rulers are punishing our reporters so they can change the subject from the Chinese public’s anger about the government’s management of the coronavirus scourge." on.wsj.com/2uZa6uB
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Please someone make a movie out of this bonkers, fantastic @RachelFeintzeig story on the remote employees who are working 2 full-time jobs -- in secret: on.wsj.com/3yKsh2X
"Why be good at one job, they thought, when they could be mediocre at two?"
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94% of China's population lives on one side, 6% on the other. A visually rich look at the Hu Line by @sixthtone bit.ly/2wGljwI
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The world we live in now: Roy Jones, 49, used to work for Marriott in Omaha, making $14/hr. Until he liked a post on Twitter, and China got mad.
"This job was all I had...I'm at the age now where I don't have many opportunities." on.wsj.com/2oGTD7U
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Genuinely sorry to see this. The ability to walk around in China in your pajamas was always—to me anyway—a compelling form of soft power. (No pun intended.) 万岁.
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For the busy reporter on the go, China’s NPC press center has thoughtfully curated a selection of identical newspapers so it’s easy to pick.
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wow. More than 64 million Weibo views for #UnitedForcesPassengerOffPlane. Nothing goes viral like China viral
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Chinese abroad are facing "No entry for Chinese" signs, protests & more as the # of infected patients mounts.
“I’m not sitting next to the coronavirus,” one London commuter was told: on.wsj.com/36YZ2uB via @JonathanEmont @NiharikaSM
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China's internet collectively stumped by the provenance of Ivanka's mysterious Chinese proverb bit.ly/2sVONGf (Sina News tried crowd-sourcing it, to no avail. "Our editor really can't think of exactly which proverb this is. Please help!")
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So much joy in these photos after Taiwan's same-sex marriage verdict today: on.wsj.com/2ryVtus
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🥳LAND OF BIG NUMBERS is out next week! grab a copy bit.ly/3pldmYh, tell your book-minded friends, & join me on the virtual tour!
Free, rsvp's below (& in true China style, you can attend in your pj's):
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After Trump's call, can't stop thinking of these photos from 1971, when the UN voted to admit China & expel Taiwan. The sheer joy and sorrow
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“We will kill you and chop you into pieces and throw you in the trash,” she was told.
She leaked them anyway: “I had to do it. It was my responsibility.”
Meet Asiye Abdulahat, dissident who leaked explosive documents depicting China’s brutal treatment of Uighurs.
She lives in The Netherlands and just did her first tv interview, with @pbsnewshour's @MalcolmBrabant
pbs.org/newshour/show/this-d…
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More disturbing reports from Xinjiang: orphanages filling up w/children of detained parents; overcrowding so bad some are being sent elsewhere in China bit.ly/2Nj7tIp
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The secret lives of small Beijing eateries: was just finishing up a late lunch in an empty restaurant when the proprietress pulled out a gold mic & started singing.
She sang awhile, then went back to chopping leeks
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ha. Just noticed that during the epic eye-roll briefing, a different reporter was also wearing this gem of a T-shirt:
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“Our meat rocks are the country’s finest." In China, rocks that resemble pork have been collected for centuries, & collectors are throwing stones over which are best on.wsj.com/2rG7mgE thoroughly enjoyed reporting this one
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You know it’s college test season when you get a text warning about poor call quality & web speed. “After the gaokao, normalcy will return. Thanks for understanding.” signal blockers, facial recognition etc. all being deployed to try & stop cheats.
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Woke up to this 🤩 review in @nytimesbooks! "Chen’s dazzling debut roams China and its diaspora, following its strivers and dreamers...riveting...poignant."
Such a treat to see this! nyti.ms/30EOQGV
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wow. 153 coronavirus studies already published, mostly out of China, 92 of them not peer-reviewed.
One (now retracted) tied it to HIV. Another said it was a pathogen from outer space.
“To be first with a scientific finding is good for profile and for future funding.”
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With Beijing denying @meghara a visa, no better time to read her essential, eye-opening reporting on Xinjiang. Start here: bit.ly/2o0qJic & bit.ly/2Mumydc big loss, many 加油's...
It is bittersweet to leave Beijing after spending six wonderful and eye-opening years as a journalist there. In May, China's Foreign Ministry declined to issue me a new journalist visa. They say this is a process thing, we are not totally clear why.
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“If you keep being stubborn & continue this illegal activity, you will be brought to justice — is that understood?” police threatened him. A month later, he’s been diagnosed with the #coronavirus he tried to warn people about. just awful
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If not for the Fulbright program, I wouldn’t have moved to Chengdu in 2011, wouldn’t have joined @wsj the year following in HK. Don’t know how good of a citizen ambassador I ultimately was, but it utterly changed my life & how I understand the world.
“We live in a world in which everyone is yelling, and no one is being persuaded … What does help is when a cultural outsider can say, I see what you have and I love it too. That’s what brings people together, and that’s how minds are changed.” scmp.com/news/china/diplomac…
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Lots of great detail here on Trump's Taiwan call: it was arranged by Bob Dole, & explicitly about regional stability on.wsj.com/2ge4jXO
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One more reason Beijing shouldn’t send thugs to harass foreign journalists. Like Matt Pottinger, former @wsj, they might end up shaping China policy one day.
"His experiences as a foreign correspondent under siege shaped Pottinger’s views toward China’s authoritarian government." POLITICO profile of Matt Pottinger, top official for Asia on Trump's national security council. sc.mp/2IU1lYl
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Beijing pastoral, 5am: birdsong in the air, pale dawn glow — & a new roost of security cameras being installed in the sky.
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New personality cult gauge: the amount of time CCTV devotes to clips of people clapping for Xi Jinping.
Friday's nightly news broadcast literally started with 4 minutes, 14 seconds of applause bit.ly/2itqlqu
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Beijing menu poetry:
A small town with copper & oil /
The cold stir in the ear /
Water town lover / the one with the other
Spring city is the first spice /
Save your car
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huh. Knew nearsightedness was bad in China but didn't realize it had become a national security issue? High myopia rates (around 80%) now making it hard for Beijing to recruit air force pilots: bit.ly/2mwYSFG
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8/ Social scientists say all these frictions add up, fueling a deep sense of alienation at the workplace, once a wellspring of connection for many.
Read more & would love if you shared your experience here: wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/…
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Thanks to everyone who's read & shared my family's story, out in today's @wsj! Also wanted to share some assorted curios that I encountered while writing the piece. In no particular order: on.wsj.com/2SOZR1Y
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Limiting visas to Chinese students could gravely harm one of America's most successful exports: education (which in $ terms rivals U.S. exports of passenger cars, civilian aircraft & more) on.wsj.com/2GzRen6 via @jmitchellwsj @melissakorn
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Questions you'll hear at Chinese job interviews: "Do you have a boyfriend?” & “When do you plan to have children?”
Now that the one-child policy has been scrapped, 75% of companies say they're more reluctant to hire women: econ.st/2LGWbzR
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