Trigger warning: This episode briefly mentions suicide at 01:15 and 15:45. This week host Lijia Zhang speaks to Tania Branigan, current Foreign Leader Writer and former China Correspondent at The Guardian. In this episode, they discuss her new book Red Memory, about the Cultural Revolution, and more importantly about the suppression of memories, and how a society comes to terms with a tragedy deeply rooted in its psyche. In the course of writing the book, Tania spoke to people who were affected by this tumultuous decade in various ways. People like Zhang Hongbin, a man who denounced his own m ..read more

A Ming Dynasty courtesan who transforms into a zombie. A family of ghosts wreaking havoc on a local hot spring. Elite Hong Kong bankers who are secretly serial killers.  Welcome to the world of Lindsay Wong's new short story collection Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality, a pleasantly grotesque series of "immigrant horror stories." Lindsay joins Joanna Chiu and Megan Cattel to discuss  all things writing, publishing, and why the horror genre attracted Lindsay while writing about Chinese women. She also shares details about why her memoir The Woo-Woo  was deemed "unmarketa ..read more

This week we speak to Liza Lin, an award-winning journalist and technology reporter at The Wall Street Journal who has covered China for over a decade on topics ranging from digital surveillance to venture capital. Liza has reported on the acceleration of digital tools like facial recognition in China, tracing the initial large investments in this sector to its implementation by the Chinese government to oppress Uighurs in Xinjiang. This reporting is the basis of her book Surveillance State which Liza co-wrote with colleague Josh Chin.  In this episode, Liza also helps us understand how C ..read more

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 that China would continue to stay the course on zero-Covid. Few could have imagined the sudden dismantling of the policy. Days before the Lunar New Year, China reported nearly 60,000 Covid-related ..read more

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 chapbook, 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 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 reclamat ..read more

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 anti-COVID lockdown protests that swept China late last month in response to the apartment fire in Urumqi that claimed the lives of ten people. Lastly, co-host Sophia Yan gives a recap of 2022's major eve ..read more

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 the menu, dealing with outrageous customers, and preparing orders for the usual weekend rush. Violent, racially motivated attacks were also not unusual, with some incidents ending in a physical con ..read more

"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 delivery and charisma won over viewers from just about every social media platform around the globe. We had the chance to talk to He about her career as a stand-up comic, her former life as a grad student in America studying public polic ..read more

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 finding sources to talk about sensitive topics such as internet censorship, surveillance, and more.  Sue-Lin and Joanna also recap the highlights from China's 20th Party Congress — including Hu Jintao's unusual ..read more

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 VICE, the end of Zero-Covid in Taiwan for The New Yorker, and the sustainability of food systems for her Whetstone Magazine podcast entitled "Climate Cuisine". Clarissa's forthcoming book, Made in Taiwa ..read more