Lijia Zhang's Blog, page 16
April 15, 2023
my short story
I had a story in the latest issue of Index Censorship magazine, a heartbreaking tale of a left-behind child.
March 14, 2023
Chinese and British panel discussion
Last night, I took part in a panel titled “Chinese and British”, discussing personal identity – being both Chinese and British, in conjunction with the exhibition of the same title at the British Library.
The UK has the oldest Chinese community in Europe and there are plenty of Chinese (just under 1% of the total British population) living here, yet people hardly feel their presence and there’s very limited political representation.
In our panel, we talked about our life stories, our bi-lingual experiences and our thoughts on our personal identities. I found it fascinating how language shapes our identity and even personality.
It was well-attended and I even sold all the copies I brought along. Thank you to my friends who attended the event in person or online.
March 8, 2023
my interview with Tania Branigan on her book Red Memory
The Latest Podcast I hosted, interviewing Tania Branigan on her book Red Memory
I co-host NoVoices, a global network of people who are interested in China and gender issues. In this episode, I interviewed Tania Branigan, who served as the Guardian’s China Correspondent for seven years. Now she writes foreign policy editorials for the Guardian. I particularly enjoyed this episode, because I am immensely interested in the Cultural Revolution, a monumental movement that touched millions of people’s lives, my own family included. Tania is also extremely articulate. Take a listen when you have a moment.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/n%C3%BCvoices/id1413970298?i=1000603272397
February 21, 2023
China’s supposed most notorious serial killer
I claim to be on ‘workcation’ – on holiday abroad while working. Here’s one result. My oped on the lawyer who defends China’s supposed most notorious female serial killer Lao Rongzhi, a case that has fascinated China. Back in the 90s, Lao worked at a seedy bar where she lured rich men to her rented flat. Her lover would then appear and demand ransom. The point is that she deserves a fair trial. And it is a big question if her death penalty is justified.
February 9, 2023
The Spy Balloon Drama
The Spy Balloon Drama
Last Saturday, Sky TV interviewed me about the spy balloon drama. I said I was almost certain that it was a spy balloon, instead of a civilian aircraft collecting weather data. Well, there is an airbase in Montana where the balloon was spotted, but I also made the point that all major countries spy on each other. For example, the Americans sent spy balloons to China in the 70s and in 1974, Zhou Enlai, the premier, ordered to shoot them down. (https://gaodawei.wordpress.com/…/1974%EF%BC%9Au-s…/)
I don’t think China deliberately arranged the incident to blow off Blinken’s scheduled visit to China. It is in China’s own interest to talk with the US. As China is experiencing serious challenges domestically and internationally, it has shown a willingness to soften its stand. For example, they’ve given up the so-called ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy.
Most likely, the balloon incident was a case of lack of coordination somewhere. The left hand didn’t know what the right was doing. But the timing was terrible – Blinken was going to China to talk with the Chinese, to ease the tension and to stabilize the relationship. Instead, it further strained the relationship, especially after the US shot down the balloon.
The cancellation of the trip (well, it may be rescheduled in the future) shows the deeply-rooted mistrust between the two countries. The fact that the bilateral relationship reached a new low is not good for China, or the US or the rest of the world. The world needs China’s involvement in many issues from climate change to nuclear proliferation.
I didn’t have time to mention the U-2 spy plane incident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident In 1960, an American U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviets inside Soviet territory. Interestingly, the American also claimed it was a plane gathering weather information but was forced to admit it was a spy plane after bits from the plane contradicted the claim.
What do you think? Was the US overreacting by blowing the balloon off? What will happen now?
February 3, 2023
My talk to a Japanese bank
Yesterday I gave a talk to a Mizhuho, one of the megabanks of Japan, talking about my life, the Chinese New Year and the social transformation of China – all fitting into a 30 minutes talk. It was followed by 30 minutes Q&A, and a yummy dim sum lunch.
All went well, I am pleased to say, with a good-turn up and lots of questions, and positive feedback. The bank’s culture diversity team had actually invited me to similar talk two years ago and now invited me back this year.
I’ve given talks to other organizations as part of the cultural diversity drive. The world is filled with people who have different values, religions and traditions. In this modern world, it has become increasingly important that we appreciate others and other cultures, instead of believing that our own way of life is ‘normal’.
January 28, 2023
December 30, 2022
Wanderlust
2022: The Year of Travelling Not So Dangerously
I am sitting on the roof terrace of my co-working and co-living hostel in southern Morocco, sipping mint tea. The joyful sounds of children playing football on the narrow streets drift in, and the haunting Adhan – the Islamic call to pubic prayer – is floating in the air. In the distance, the sea sparkles like millions of little diamonds in the brilliant sunshine.
My heart is filled with contentment, joy and gratitude. How lucky I am to be in this wonderful and warm place while London, where I am usually based, is freezing. How lucky I am to be able to travel freely and frequently.
As 2022 comes to the end, I look back to the year and have to congratulate myself. In terms of travel, I have done particularly well: I had 10 trips abroad this year, covering six new countries: Malta, Georgia, Armenia, Gibraltar, Israel and Helsinki!
I started the year in Malta: I took my daughters there for Christmas and the New Year.
At the end of February, I headed to Morocco for a surfing and yoga retreat in a village called Taghazout, where I am currently staying. After everyone left, I travelled around the country on my own and enjoyed the experience immensely.
In April, I travelled to Italy for a week, at first attending a film festival in Pordenone, a small quaint town outside Venice, as a panellist, and then participating in a Sky TV debate about the Ukraine war in front of a large audience in Bari, in southern Italy.
My second trip to Italy, three weeks later, was also a mixture of work and fun. I started in Parma, in the north, then Milan, then Udine for another film festival! After that, I made my way to Tuscany to join a ‘working party’ at an eco wine yard, organized by my Italian journalist friend Pio. I didn’t realize that I was the main speaker at the party/gathering until the day before. All excellent fun!
In June, my twice-delayed trip to Georgia (the country) finally materialized. Like the Moroccan trip, it started off as an organized trip – a hiking trip to the Upper Caucasus Mountains. It was tough: rain, challenging terrain and long hikes, but I loved it.
After that, I travelled around the country on my own, meeting all sorts of fascinating people I have been introduced to. I also hopped over by train to Armenia.
I would say this Georgia and Armenia trip was the highlight of my travel this year. Both countries are fascinating, culturally rich and off-the-beaten-track; people from both countries are very hospitable, and things were not always easy when travelling in those parts of the world. Interestingly, challenges always make the travel more rewarding.
In the summer, I went to Munich for an old friend’s wedding and travelled around southern Germany for a bit, taking advantage of the cheap train deal.
Soon after that, I spent three pleasant weeks in southern Spain, mostly staying with a friend. I did carry on working while away.
I would have content with the amount of travel for the year. However, when an American friend who is based in Amman told me that he might have to move to Africa for another project, I decided to visit him before his move. I also fit in Israel, a country I had long intended to visit.
Then, I realized I still got some airline credit. So I squeezed in a long weekend in Helsinki.
Now, as planned, I am back in Morocco for three weeks. I love to spend the festive season somewhere sunny and warm.
I did travel more than usual in 2022, partly because I am in between book projects.
Where did I get my travel bug? I guess I was beaten by it when I was still stuck at my rocket factory, unable to see the great world beyond. Now I am out of my confinement, I just want to make the most of my freedom.
There is an old Chinese saying: Read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles. I love both reading and travelling with equal passion since both are great ways to broaden one’s mind and enrich one’s life. When you travel, you encounter other cultures, which allow you to look at your own with a fresh perspective. And you meet all sorts of interesting people, which is always a source of immense joy for me. Of course, you try new foods when you are abroad, another attraction for a foodie like me. So I guess I’ve become a wanderlust. I love this word – you wander with lust.
The sun is sliding behind the western hills and the air cooler. I am going to join the others to play volleyball on the beach, while watching sunset. I look forward to the New Year and many more new travels!
December 21, 2022
Co working hostel
SunDesk – The Best Hostel in the World
SunDesk, the name says it all: a desk in the warm sunshine. A co-working and co-living place, catering to the needs of modern nomads. I didn’t know such a thing existed until this spring when I met a Spanish friend who stayed at SunDesk in Taghazout, Morocco. She was finishing her Ph.D. dissertation.
One evening, she invited me to join her at SunDesk’s weekly BBQ party. I was wowed. What a great place and a great idea. Being a digital nomad is a romantic idea, but if you stay at an ordinary hotel, you may not meet another soul for weeks on end. At SunDesk, you’ll have an instant community. It functions like a normal hostel, but there’s an office where you can use the facilities or use the space to work. You can’t chat here. If you’d like to chat, you can go to the roof or the terrace. (there are two levels up there.)
And there are plenty of opportunities to do so. Apart from the fabulous breakfast, the hostel also offers optional lunch and dinner. The food here is the best in Morocco. In Taghazout, the dining options are limited. You’ll find similar dishes in most of the restaurants in the village: Tajine, couscous, bean soup and Moroccan salad, as if there’s a law demanding them to do so. Here, different dishes, rarely seen in ordinary restaurants, are provided every day, such as runner beans salad or cooked eggplants.
Over lunch or dinner, you can’t help but chat and socialize. It’s a great joy to talk to people from all over the world, each got her/his own story.
Upon arrival at SunDesk, you are invited to join a WhatsApp group – your instant nomad family. Someone may invite you to an outing or dinner. On my first day here, I went along to a drink at a fancy bar on the seafront to watch sunset. I wouldn’t have known there was such a perfect spot to watch the orange sun slowly sliding into the sea.
People are invited to share their skills. One night, a trained yoga teacher led a yoga session on the roof top; another time, an Italian artist cooked hand-made pasta for us all – the best pasta I ever tasted.
Already, I am looking forward to returning to SunDesk. When I do, I’d like to offer a life-writing workshop. In such a place, you feel like making a contribution.
My heart-felt thanks to SunDesk.
December 13, 2022
review of The Madness
The Madness
By Fergal Keane
Fergal Keane is blessed with a magical pen, under which flowers can blossom, as the Chinese would say. I think he is one of the few journalists who write like a poet. In fact, I think Keane does write poetry. The limpid prose and his unflinching honesty made this book, dealing with difficult subjects of trauma and addiction, so compelling.
The book, part memoir and part war reporting, explores his own demons and the ethics of war reporting. Some war correspondents, himself included, are addicted to the dark glamour of war reporting for its thrill and heroism.
Keane, a veteran journalist with the BBC, is renowned for his dispatches from war-torn zones in South Africa, Rwanda, the Middle East, Iraq and Ukraine. He is particularly good at bringing out the human aspects of the conflicts with novelist attention to detail. He reported the downing of MH 17, noticing the bodies from the Malaysian jet scattered in the sunflower field in Ukraine and a toddler on the roadside, covered by a flimsy sheet.
“I felt guilty that I was acclaimed. But not enough to reject the awards. I needed them. They were my substitute for self-worth,” he confesses.
Among the war-torn regions, one has to mention Rwanda where the author was shocked by the scale and brutality of the genocide: more than half a million Tutsis were killed, often hacked to death, by Hutus.
In 2008, twenty years after first witnessing the horror, he agreed to testify at a Rwanda genocide trial. The ghost from the past caught up with him and pushed him over the edge. He sought help and was diagnosed as a sufferer of PDST – post-trauma stress disorder.
He dives into his family history for the roots of his twin addiction – to alcohol and war reporting. His father was a talented actor, but alcoholic and sometimes violent. His father cast a long shadow in his childhood.
Unlike his father, Keane did manage to stay away from the booze. A few years ago, when he came over for dinner with his adopted Chinese daughter, he brought a pack of non-alcoholic beer. (A couple of bottles are still gathering dust in my kitchen.)
The other addiction proved to be harder to quit. “If I feel self-loathing I start to need to escape to war, the ultimate land of forgetting.”
I had the pleasure of meeting Keane in China some twenty years ago: I served as his fixer while he came to Beijing for a reporting trip. But this was not the case he gave me a free copy and I returned the fabour by promoting the book. I bought my own audio edition. I decided to write this little review because it touched me.
If I had read the book, I am sure it would have been a rewarding experience, but listening to it was very special. Keane read the book himself. Listening to his silvery voice, with an Irish touch, I felt like he was telling me the story from the bottom of his heart. An intimate experience.
Hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
