Shen Lu is a writer and journalist with more than a decade of experience covering China from both inside and outside the country. She has worked for major news organizations including The Wall Street Journal and CNN, based in China and New York. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and other publications. She has received fellowships and awards from the Overseas Press Club of America, the Society of Publishers in Asia, the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing, the Society of Professional Journalists, Asia Society, and others. She hosts a monthly dinner club at her home in New York.

Last Updated: June 10, 2026

Postcard

06.11.26

My Grandmother’s Hens

Shen Lu
When I visited home in January, my grandmother showed love the way she always has, by offering to cook for me. I didn’t fully understand the amount of work that went into preparing and cooking eight dishes at once until I started my monthly supper...

Features

12.21.20

Pretty Lady Cadres

Shen Lu
In early February, at the beginning of the outbreak of the deadly COVID-19 virus in China, Wang Fang, a local Communist Party secretary, was working around the clock. As an official responsible for 19,000 residents of a neighborhood in the city of...

Postcard

06.05.20

Scallion Dutch Baby

Shen Lu
The dishes I make myself flavor my moods, and season my experience of the news. As my birth country and my host country cast blame on one another, I eat four-cheese pizza with a side dish of blanched cauliflower seasoned with soy sauce, vinegar, and...

Postcard

08.28.19

Thwarted at Home, Can China’s Feminists Rebuild a Movement Abroad?

Shen Lu & Mengwen Cao
A small number of China’s feminist movement’s influential thinkers and organizers have relocated overseas, in search of an environment more hospitable to their activism. Today, though their numbers are relatively small, they have succeeded in...

Viewpoint

04.06.18

I Thought Studying Journalism outside of China Would Open Doors. Now I’m Not So Sure.

Shen Lu
Six years ago as I was about to begin my undergraduate career at The University of Iowa majoring in journalism, a fellow Chinese student who’d switched her major from communications studies to business ruthlessly doubted my choice. “How on earth...