Journalist Te-Ping Chen on her short fiction collection, Land of Big Numbers

This week on Sinica, Kaiser is joined by Wall Street Journal correspondent Te-Ping Chen to talk about her just-released collection of short fiction, Land of Big Numbers: Stories. Featuring 10 short stories all set in China or featuring Chinese characters, it showcases both the author’s keen eye for detailed observation and her imaginative powers and offers an unfailingly empathetic look at China from a wide range of disparate angles. Te-Ping even reads a passage from one short story, “Lulu,” which was previously published in The New Yorker.

10:51: A real-life inspiration for her fiction

28:30: A reading from “Lulu”

37:10: The cultural disconnect between China and the U.S.

43:16: Te-Ping’s writing and publishing process

Recommendations:

Te-Ping: A short story collection titled What It Means When a Man Falls From the Sky, by Lesley Nneka Arimah, and My Country and My People, from a collection of essays from the 1930s by Lín Yǔtáng 林语堂.

Kaiser: The Index of Self-Destructive Acts, by Christopher Beha.