碎篇 // Suipian // Fragments
Welcome to the 4th edition of Suipian, my personal newsletter in which I share thoughts and resources that help me make sense of Chinese society and its relationship to the rest of the world. See here for more information on Suipian.
I’m happy to send you this dispatch from Beijing. Ahead of the New Year holidays, the city – never too loud these days, what with all the EVs and population control – is getting downright quiet. But it’s been a lovely (worryingly mild) winter here so far, with lots of blue skies. Since I last wrote, I’ve spent time reporting here, in Holland, and in Taiwan, working on some stories I’d long wanted to do. I’ll save you a blow-by-blow account, but see below for a few links and thoughts. 新年快乐.
随笔 // Suibi // Notes
Sharing thoughts or resources related to my work as a correspondent
1. Reporting politics. When CNN’s Clarissa Ward recently interviewed a Syrian man who pretended to be someone he was not, the journalistic error was corrected within days. I’ve been wondering what it says about China reporting that it has taken years for some of the media that cited controversial, Holland-based dissident Wang Jingyu on topics including Chinese overseas police stations and influencing practices to retract those stories, following mounting evidence of his unreliability. NPR, which has led the way in uncovering that evidence, has cited journalism experts who think it is one of the largest cases ever of a single unreliable source influencing media coverage. Assisting two colleagues on a related investigation in recent months, I learned a lot from diaspora interviewees, some of whom had long been documenting and warning about Wang’s misconduct, exchanging information across big political divides (from dissident to United Front-adjacent) in search of the truth.
Linguistic and political barriers between mainstream media and Chinese diaspora groups go some way in explaining why diaspora knowledge went unheeded. 23-year-old, English-speaking Wang exploited those barriers. What factchecks might have prevented that? We tend, understandably, to focus on the barriers and smoke screens put up by the Chinese state, but this was arguably more about networks and knowing more people to cross-check things with. “If anything, the case shows what the much-discussed China capacity gap is about,” an interviewee on another story noted.
We still do not have an overview of this case, both in terms of damage done to victims and the impact on China policy debate in several European countries. (See here for the story I worked on, in which we tell some previously unreported victim stories and document the Dutch authorities’ lack of action.)
2. 同温层. I also got to write a much more uplifting story on the Chinese diaspora in Europe, one that I had long hoped to do. As several European countries like Holland and Germany, due to factors like lower tuition fees and relatively open immigration systems, have attracted a new generation of Chinese migrants, this has also led to “totally new” types of grassroots diaspora community formation, as China migration scholar Pál Nyíri put it to me, in which Chinese migrants build like-minded communities that can be more socially or politically oriented, or both. In Holland, the trend has led to multiple Chinese-language stand-up comedy groups, but also to new NGOs, galleries, and bookstores, including a Dutch affiliate of 飞地 called Nu Hier (‘now here’/ ‘nowhere’). At the bookstore’s opening event, founder Michael Liu said he wanted to love his new home city of the Hague even more; 有风 comedy club Ma Weina told me that, while she plans to stay in the Netherlands long-term, she does not want to do without the joy of communally laughing at untranslatable Chinese puns. “It just makes me so happy.”
How to be ‘diasporic’ and handle the challenges of life abroad and how to maintain ties with China has been a big and often heavy theme among recent Chinese emigrants. Seeing how these groups, many of which have formed in the last five years, are creating the European societies they want is really inspiring.
3. Offline life. A wave of independent bookstores in Chengdu that opened during and after the lockdown years has attracted attention in China because of how 活跃 the stores have been, organizing lots of events when that level of public life has become quite rare in first-tier cities. It’s been hailed as “a return to offline life” and an opportunity for “citizen education”. I had one of the most enjoyable reporting experiences of the past year trying to understand what was happening. See here for the Dutch story I wrote on the trend, and if interested please stay tuned for a related piece that should still come out in English.
点赞 // Dianzan // Likes
Recommendations in and out of the news-cycle
Two years after China suddenly lifted its virus control measures, 端传媒 has a special story on a Wechat group of bereaved who lost loved ones during that first massive Covid-19 wave. The group is monitored, with self-censorship leading to lighter moments in the piece (“弱弱问一句，郭嘉是谁?”). It speaks to the specific grief of a collective trauma giving way to unacknowledged individual suffering – as well as to a wider cognitive dissonance, recognizable beyond China’s borders, that divides those who could more or less move on from those who cannot: “时间在流逝，星星感觉到，新冠把今天的人们隔绝在两个世界：新冠丧亲者和后遗症患者在一个世界，其他人在另一个世界。她很难再在现实生活中去讲新冠放开的事，周围人只是困惑于, “她为什么还在纠结这件事?”
In Taipei I had the chance to watch Lou Ye’s 不完成的电影, on a film crew getting stuck in Wuhan during the 2020 lockdown. The film, which won the Golden Horse awards for best feature film and director last November, might not be the “first brick” in the wall of Chinese Covid-commemoration, as one review put it (several came before). But it is a smart and moving piece of docufiction with excellent acting. Go see it at a film festival if you have the chance.
每日人物 talks to 千千律师事务所’s Lin Lixia on two decades of legal activism to improve rural women’s access to their land rights. A new law that comes into force this May has taken a lot of their suggestions into account, but she knows loopholes like “respecting history” will continue to pit women against entrenched local interests: “我看很多专家学者写文章都说，中国很大，农村很复杂，关于成员资格问题，不适合做详细规定，应该交给村民自治去决定。但这20年，我们接触了这么多具体案例，我觉得，尽管全国很大，农村很复杂，但根本问题是一样的——那就是对婚嫁女性的歧视和排斥。单纯依靠村民自治的基层民主形式，就是现实中并不能有效解决侵害妇女土地权益的问题”.
In 三联周刊 a case in point in this story on how improved rights protection can lead to new problems, as workers who have participated in litigation cases against previous employers report being discriminated against in today’s tight labor market.
“在北京，四个单亲妈妈和她们的「好东西」”. And see here for a good review of the popular and “非常当下” feminist film referenced in the story
“反向春运” — interesting news story on the seniors traveling to the city to spend New Year with children or family there.
A 2023 documentary on iQiyi about 于小龙, a lively man with severe cerebral palsy, who takes his electric tricycle on a trip around China. Strongly recommend.
With most disaster reporting just about impossible, 端 still went to Zhuhai, after the mass-killing there. The story provides a lot of detail on what victims and family members, who each had 7-8 people from their 街道办 following them around to help and surveil, have to consider before taking an interview.
Longreads by journalists, such as this compelling 正面链接 story by veteran reporter Wu Qin, going viral was an unexpected outcome of the recent debate on the scamming crisis in Myanmar and Cambodia.
Multiple Liminalities of Lay Buddhism in Contemporary China, a new book on the diversity of China’s lay Buddhist communities by religion researcher Kai Shmushko.
“1985vs2024:两版《明天会更好》对比”
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading :)