An essay by Sam Gaskin – with GIFs! – about his old friend and now superstar author Jenny Zhang, who we can exclusively reveal will appear at the 2018 Auckland Readers and Writers Festival. In the summer of 2016 Jenny Zhang and I went to Coney Island for a swim. It was overcast, too windy … More The Spinoff’s Book of the Week: Sour Heart by the ‘astounding’ Jenny Zhang
In early February, Apple, Facebook, Google, Levi Strauss and 123 other companies signed a legal brief opposing a US ban on travelers from seven muslim-majority countries. They complained that the ban would increase costs and make hiring and competing internationally more difficult, arguing that “immigrants make many of the Nation’s greatest discoveries, and create some … More Hyeonseo Lee lived illegally in China for 10 years, felt “like trash”
Despite its crowded streets, cramped housing, and depleted environment, the world’s most populous nation wants more people. As China quickly ages, it faces a calamitous shortage of workers to support the older generation. … More ‘One Child’ author Mei Fong on China’s older people problem
Half a million people attended last week’s literary festival in Jaipur, India. Half a million! There was anti-Muslim debate, a famous author described Trump as America’s “dick pic”, and police roamed around in camel-coloured berets. Sam Gaskin reports. In Jaipur’s historic pink city, people pick their way through narrow lanes littered with Nestea paper cups … More Jaipur’s giant, defiant literature festival turns 10
Sam Gaskin is the author of the arts and culture chapters of the Louis Vuitton Guides to Shanghai and Taipei. He also wrote the books’ Featured Guest profiles of Michelin starred chef Paul Pairet (Shanghai) and contemporary artist Michael Lin (Taipei). … More The Louis Vuitton Guides to Shanghai and Taipei
I was working at Timeout Shanghai when I first interviewed Katrien Jacobs following the completion of her book, People’s Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet (2012). In laying out the article with images from Jacobs’ book, after much internal debate, a small white censor bar — more of a pastie, really — was … More Researcher Katrien Jacobs on the ‘treachery’ of not marrying in China
Artist, author and cultural clairvoyant Douglas Coupland is in Shanghai for a group show at Art Labor. He talked to Sam Gaskin about decoding and recoding the post-everything milieu. Portrait Yang Xiaozhe ‘If a UFO landed on Earth and it had one of these on its roof you wouldn’t know what it meant, but you’d know it meant … More Douglas Coupland on the ancient power of QR codes
In the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people in Henan, one of China’s poorest provinces, sold their blood as part of a government sponsored programme. It was bought not just by clinics but also unregulated agents to sell to pharmaceutical manufacturers. Unsterilized equipment was often used and, in some instances, blood was pooled together, … More ‘Dream of Ding Village’, by Yan Lianke
Writing about the transformations that China’s migrant workers undergo when they set out for the cities was also a transformative experience for Leslie T. Chang, the author of “Factory Girls.” “I learned how to write in a different way [than business writing] and realized that I liked it much better,” she says. “I could pour … More Leslie T. Chang: ‘Learn to make your identity work for you’
What should you do if someone leaves something in your car? The Chinese driver’s license test offers multiple choices. According to author Peter Hessler, “One of the answers is ‘keep it for yourself,’ and another is ‘call the person and demand a reward.’ It’s really stupid stuff.” When Hessler applied for his own Chinese driver’s … More Peter Hessler’s ‘Country Driving’
At the start of 2010 I interviewed Junot Diaz for an article in Talk Magazine. Dude is eminently quotable and he was so generous with his time — he kept talking until the PA system on the plane he was taking announced that the doors were closing. You’re reading in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing … More Q and Eh? Junot Diaz
A recent film adaptation of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, Yiyun Li’s acclaimed book of short stories, can be found in Shanghai DVD stores for about $1.50. The plot synopsis on the packaging, presumably taken from a casual internet review, reads, “This movie felt like it lasted over 1,000 years. … There is not one genuine … More ‘The Vagrants’, by Yiyun Li and ‘UFO in Her Eyes’, by Xiaolu Guo
Englishman Louis de Bernière is the Commonwealth Prize winning author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, and Dominican-American Junot Diaz is the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Apart from their success, and the fact that they’re coming to the Literary Festival, what do the authors have in common? We … More Comparative Lit: Junot Diaz and Louis de Bernière