This week on Sinica, Kaiser speaks with Michael Berry, the translator of the Wuhan-based writer Fang Fang’s controversial Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City. Michael discusses Fang Fang’s body of work and how her daily online posts on WeChat (which were compiled to become her book) drew the ire of critics who have denounced the diary as an act of national betrayal and have even leveled threats against both the author and the translator. Michael Berry is a professor of contemporary Chinese cultural studies and the director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UCLA.
5:21: Reflections on Fang Fang’s Soft Burial
10:42: Fang Fang’s diary, and its backlash
21:08: An excerpt from Wuhan Diary
31:07: COVID-19: The common enemy of humankind
Recommendations:
Michael: The album Free Spirit, by the band Chandresh Kudwa. For a taste, you can listen to the title track here.
Kaiser: The mockumentary TV show called What We Do in the Shadows.
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China's COVID-19 response and the virus's origins, with Deborah Seligsohn
Ryan Hass on his new book, ‘Stronger’
The parallel world of Chinese tech, with Lillian Li
Cheng Lei: The detention and arrest of an Australian CGTN reporter
Getting Chinese politics wrong, with Jude Blanchette
Julie Klinger on China's rare earth frontiers
Journalist Te-Ping Chen on her short fiction collection, Land of Big Numbers
The Xinjiang camps on Clubhouse
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