ARTICLES
BEST IN-DEPTH WRITING ON RELIGION
Thanks so much to the American Academy of Religion for honoring me with their prize for best in-depth newswriting on religion.
THE SLOW-MOTION REVOLUTION
In this daily article for the New York Times, I explain how one of China's Internet pioneers, the blogger Huang Qi, received a 12-year sentence for leaking state secrets--a dubious claim that is mainly about shutting down citizen activists in China.
MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION?
The Rubin Museum of Art recently held a groundbreaking exhibition on something of a taboo, or at least a surprising, topic in the West: the link between politics and Tibetan Buddhism.
SOMEONE ALWAYS REMEMBERS
How do Chinse people keep the memory of the June 4 massacre alive?
“BLACK WEEK-END”
"How the Party Decided to Shoot Its People:" In this essay for The New York Review of Books, we get exclusive access to a new book of secret documents showing how the Party reacted to the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Massacre: by forcing everyone to swear fealty to Deng and his decision to send in armed
ONE SEED CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
Chen Hongguo might be China's most famous ex-professor. In this Q&A for the NYR Daily, I ask him why he left academia to start a lecture space in the western Chinese metropolis of Xi'an.
SHELTER FROM THE STORM
In this essay for The New York Review of Books I look at a arts and culture space in Xi'an that is managing to keep the spirit of debate alive in China.
A SPECTER IS HAUNTING CHINA
Why the case of a Chinese law professor matters: In this piece for the NYR Daily, I tell the story of Xu Zhangrun, a Chinese law professor who has published a series of remarkable essays criticizing the government.
“AN INDISPENSABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENT”
I'm honored to have written the introduction to Liao Yiwu's new book, which chronicles the "Tiananmen thugs"--the working-class people who tried to stop the tanks from entering the square 30 years ago and died.
TALKING SOULS OF CHINA IN CHINESE
It's one thing to write and talk about Chinese people's spiritual life in English; it's something else to address them directly in their own language.
HE RESEARCHED HISTORY, AND MADE IT TOO
In 2016 I published a long article in The New York Review of Books on a team at Tsinghua University that had made revolutionary discovery about ancient Chinese texts.
“I WANT TO EXPRESS WHAT’S IN MY HEART”
In another in my NYRB “Talking About China” Q&As, I speak with the devout Buddhist journalist Jiang Xue about her persistance in writing about her country’s dark corners. This is part of a larger series I’ve done from Xi’an, the western metropolis with a s