This week, NüVoices co-founder and host Joanna Chiu spoke to returning guest Emily Feng about her new book, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China.
In her new book, Emily probes into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping’s definition of “Chinese”. It includes her previous travel to Xinjiang and her coverage on education in Inner Mongolia.
In this episode, Emily also discusses recent reporting trip to Syria, how her waiting at the Beijing Airport inspired her to write a book about identity in China, and how important the idea of being Chinese is to non-Chinese people and government policies. Emily also talks about her approach to journalism and why she insists on revealing the soft sides of Chinese people who went through some most challenging and difficult events in the wake of censorship and government control.
About the book:
Let Only Red Flowers Bloom by Emily Feng is an intimate, deeply reported investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping’s definition of being Chinese in China, and how Chinese diaspora could respond in the wake of Beijing longing to claim them, regardless their complicated Chinese identity.
About our guest:
Emily Feng is an international correspondent for NPR. For most of the last decade, she’s covered China, Taiwan, and beyond, a job that has allowed her to crisscross the Asia Pacific, telling the story of China’s rise and its impact on the region.
In 2024, she was chosen by Boston University for their Hugo Shong Reporting Asia Award for exhibiting “the highest standards of international journalism in a series of reports on matters of importance specific to Asia.”
About our host:
Joanna Chiu is the vice-chair and co-founder of NüVoices. She is the China Editor at Rest of World based in Vancouver, Canada. She has more than 15 years of reporting and editing experience. Before joining Rest of World, she covered national and international news for the Toronto Star, and worked at Agence France-Presse, The Economist, Associated Press, and South China Morning Post prior to that. She is the author of China Unbound. She won the Kathy Gannon Legacy Award for Distinguished Reporting on China, and speaks English, Mandarin, and Cantonese. She holds a masters degree in journalism from Columbia University.