Sinica Podcast

This week on Sinica, Jeremy Goldkorn is pleased to be joined by two people navigating the English-language publishing industry as it involves China: Alice Xin Liu, Editor of Pathlight magazine, and Karen Ma, first-time author of the well-received...

Anyone living in China doubtless has a sense of the unholy number of people who seem to be involved in the trash trade here, and who will ferret away everything from your cardboard boxes to plastic bottles faster than you can unpack them or consume...

This week we’re delighted to be joined by Christopher Beam, author of the passage quoted above, which we unceremoniously filched from his fantastic New Republic essay about his year with the Chongqing Dockers, one of the many new amateur football...

This week, Sinica presents a special live recording from the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) which convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Regular listeners, please note that the audio quality here isn’t up to our usual...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are pleased to host a conversation with Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of History at Oxford University and recent participant in the Capital M Literary Festival in Beijing. As one the world's...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and David Moser are delighted to host Mark O’Neill, author of The Chinese Labour Corps, for a discussion of the Chinese contribution to World War One. As a comprehensive look into China’s role in The Great War, O’...

Forget our complaints about the pollution, China has an even more intractable public relations problem that has everything to do with the country’s favorite hard liquor. And yes, we are talking about baijiu. In 1854, French Catholic missionary Régis...

This week on Sinica, we are pleased to present a live show recorded earlier this week at The Bookworm in Beijing, where Kaiser Kuo interviewed Jonathan Fenby, author of the book Will China Dominate the 21st Century?If you haven’t heard of Jonathan...

This week, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by David Moser and Orville Schell. While long-time listeners will of course know of David Moser as one of our favorite resident sinologists, if you haven’t also heard of Orville Schell we think you should have...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by Damien Ma, author of In Line Behind a Billion People, a new book for China-watchers looking at how China’s lack of affordable housing, its food and air pollution, and the country’s poor education...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy are joined by James Palmer and John Giszczack for a discussion of the disabled in China. Join us as we discuss how the Chinese language defines the concept of disability, what public attitudes are prevalent...

A casual survey suggests that ninety-eight percent of Sinica listeners have at some point joined Chinese friends or family in watching the annual television spectacular known as the “Spring Festival Gala.” Sadly, whether from excessive pork...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo is joined by David Moser and Paul Mozur for an in-depth discussion about everyone’s favorite renegade province. This is a lively conversation that stretches from questions of Taiwanese personal identity to its media...

This week, Sinica responds to the fevered requests of the Azure-Winged Magpie society with a show all about birding in Beijing. And why not? Because despite the air pollution that wracks our fair city, Beijing remains one of the best places in the...

As much as expats in China like to complain about the state of Chinese film and television, this week Kaiser and Jeremy remind us that there is a lot of great art out there, too, in a show that asks the critical question of: what is worth our...

Living in a community of China watchers, we are unceasingly assaulted by words and phrases for which definitions are unclear, or ambiguous, or over which there is controversy or disagreement. And so, bearing Confucius’ admonition that the most...

In the late 1990s, the visual arts in China operated on the fringes of society, and those who dared to flirt with public prominence risked finding themselves on the disapproving end of a government clampdown. And yet how different things seem today...

On the weekend of November 23, Beijing announced the establishment of a new Air Defense Identification Zone. Covering a large swath of the East China Sea, the move was intended to assert China’s control over disputed islands in the region, and...

This week, Kaiser and Jeremy are pleased to be joined by Isabel Hilton, a longstanding British journalist whose youthful interest in China got her blacklisted by the British security services and the British Broadcasting Corporation and redirected...

{vertical_photo_right}It’s an all-American (and all-star) lineup of guests this week, as Bill Bishop, Gady Epstein, and James Fallows join Kaiser for an in-depth discussion of the Third Plenary Session, the outcome of which has produced a rare...

Few will dispute that the Sino-American relationship constitutes the most important bilateral relationship of our time, shedding a sort of lunar influence on international politics which helps shape not only the dynamic of global tensions, but also...

{vertical_photo_right}What Would Confucius Do? What for that matter would Laozi not do? This week on Sinica, Kaiser and Jeremy ask these and other questions of Sam Crane, Professor of Contemporary Chinese Politics at Williams College and author of...

This week on Sinica, we return to our China roots with a show covering recent developments in the news including the recent terrorist attack in Beijing and political hiring-and-firing at Peking University. Joining Kaiser and Jeremy to talk about...

This week, Sinica is delighted to be joined by Linda Jaivin and Alice Liu for a discussion on Chinese literature in translation. As many listeners will know, Linda is a long-standing force in the Chinese literary community and the author of many...

In China, innovation has become one of those political buzzwords which—like harmony—seems to mean anything and everything to the Central Propaganda Department. So much so that we find it difficult to walk down the streets in Beijing now without...

When the HMS Poseidon struck a Chinese freighter in the Gulf of Bohai in 1931, the collision sparked a devastating accident that would see the British submarine plunge to the ocean floor in mere minutes, claiming the lives of nearly half the crew,...

The broken chopstick fell to our studio floor, its shaft splintered beyond repair where Laszlo had snapped it between his fingers. “Alone we are weak,” he looked Jeremy and Kaiser in the eyes while those of us outside the studio wondered faintly who...

Joining Kaiser and Jeremy this week are David Wertime and Rachel Lu from Tea Leaf Nation, along with Paul Mozur from The Wall Street Journal. And our topic? None other than the firestorm that has engulfed Sina Weibo following China’s effective...

The Beijing rumor-mill is back on overdrive. With the trial of Bo Xilai only barely concluded and the country now openly speculating on the length of the disgraced politician’s likely sentence, factional battles targeting Bo’s remaining supporters...

Can it have been merely a few weeks ago that we sequestered Evan “The Turncoat” Osnos in our studio and grilled the celebrated writer on his decision to leave China for what must have myopically seemed like greener pastures? At the time, we intended...

The spectacular trial of Bo Xilai seized the media’s attention last week as the fallen politburo member—still widely admired in Chongqing and Dalian and heavily connected among the Party elite—defended himself with unexpected vigor against charges...

This week sets a new record for introspective profanity as we reverse our usual format, in a show that features David Moser and Mary Kay Magistad turning the tables on Jeremy Goldkorn and Kaiser Kuo with an interview that explores how both view...

If you are a long-timer in China, this is a show that needs no introduction. One of the most famous foreigners in China, Mark Rowswell (a.k.a. Dashan), shot to fame in the early 1990s after a fortuitous break on Chinese television. In this live...

The last ten years have seen a genuine transformation in China’s arts world, as a large sector that used to be dependent almost exclusively on government funding has been downsized into the maelstrom of the market, leaving survivors to navigate not...

Feeling crowded out by all the laowai speaking putonghua these days? Fortunately for the more adventurous among us, China has no shortage of other dialects, which is why we are delighted to host the creators of Phonemica, a crowd-sourced project to...

After almost three years of podcasting, this week on Sinica we bow to the inevitable with a show about Chinese cuisine, and in particular the strange history of pasta in China. Joining us for this journey is Jen Lin-Liu, author of On the Noodle Road...

In Egypt in 2011, what was by all accounts a free and fair democratic election resulted in the victory of Mohammed Morsi, a controversial figure whose brief rule ended last week after being overthrown by the Egyptian military. With Western media...

Buddhist terrorists, military juntas, resource clashes, and pro-Western democracy movements? If China has lulled you into thinking that Southeast Asia is predictable and boring, join us for this week’s discussion of Myanmar, the former client state...

Bill Bishop swears by part of it. Jeremy Goldkorn swears regularly at it. Chances are you’ve got strong opinions on Traditional Chinese Medicine (T.C.M.) yourself, which is why we’re delighted to be joined by James Palmer this week, author of The...

In a summer when many reporters and their families are departing Beijing (including many people who have appeared on this podcast), perhaps the biggest loss to the foreign correspondents’ pool in the Chinese capital is the departure of Evan Osnos,...

This week on Sinica, Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to host Matthew Niederhauser. A photographer focusing on urban development in China, Matthew has been published in various journals including The New Yorker, National Geographic, The...

Complain as we might about life in China, the last thirty-four years or so haven’t been all bad: we have seen three decades of roughly ten percent GDP growth, a whole lot of people eating a whole lot better than they did, and impressive progress...

{vertical_photo_right} After a few weeks grousing about the state of Chinese humor, sex, and Bill Bishop, we turn our gaze to the plight of the nation’s children, and the stories of child abuse and maltreatment which have filled the mainland...

This week, Kaiser and Jeremy welcome back Bill Bishop, the force behind the invaluable Sinocism newsletter and the man Evan Osnos once referred to as “the China watcher’s China watcher.” Starting with a look at Bill’s past and how he ended up in...

Feel that your jokes have been falling flat lately? Enough that you’ve even started wondering whether China is a grand experiment in irony and deadpan humor? This week on Sinica, hosts Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn are delighted to invite guests...

This week on Sinica, we deliver a salacious podcast that covers everything you always wanted to know about sex in China, but have been afraid to ask. And with a discussion that stretches from Daoist sex manuals and imperial sex customs to getting...

The state of healthcare in China is in many ways better than it was in the era of the barefoot doctors, with average life expectancy in the country now trailing the United States by only three years and morbidity rates far lower too. But while even...

The Internet was expected to help democratize China, but has instead enabled the authoritarian state to get a firmer grip. So begins The Economist’s special fourteen-page report on the state of the Internet in China, a survey that paints the country...

While foreign media coverage these last two weeks has focused on environmental disasters, over-fishing, and emerging forms of the avian flu, the Chinese state media has turned its gaze towards the transgressions of Apple Computer, which found itself...

Xi Jinping’s trip to Moscow earlier this week, his first journey abroad as China’s new Head of State, has raised interesting questions about China’s ambitions in Asia, and coupled with Washington’s “pivot to Asia” is resurrecting the specter of a...

No, this week’s Sinica isn’t an attack on Element Fresh. Rather, it’s a discussion hosted by Kaiser Kuo about the new book Unsavory Elements, an anthology of stories and essays about the experiences of expats in China. And joining us for this...

On March 8, Kaiser Kuo hosted a conversation at Capital M in Beijing with Geremie R. Barmé, the well-known Sinologist and now Director of the Australian Centre for China in the World, as part of the Capital Literary Festival. This week on Sinica, we...

When Chinese author Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature last year, many critics were fast to pounce on his selection, accusing the committee of making a political choice that glossed over what many consider to be pervasive self-censorship in...

This week on Sinica, we talk shop about Caterpillar’s discovery of massive accounting fraud and subsequent $580 million write-down from a Chinese company the American equipment manufacturer acquired. We also look at the mysterious death of an...

Curious what happened to Sinica last week? Well ... as it turns out, our call-in show from two weeks ago wasn’t exactly pleased with how quickly we managed to replace it, and took out its anger on the laptop we use to record new shows, smashing the...

So our show this week isn’t technically a call-in show, given the lack of phones in our studio, but it is as close as we can get it, so thanks to everyone who sent us a pre-recorded question. We had a lot more responses than we expected, and the...

Lurking silently behind practically every story on Chinese economic growth over the last thirty years has been the country’s unprecedented shift from being an overwhelmingly rural society to what is now a largely urban one, with almost 700 million...

Mere months after China’s handling of the Eighteenth Party Congress suggested the country would undergo a peaceful leadership transition, the issue of freedom of the press surged to attention this week after a censored editorial in Southern Weekly (...

All of you Sinica old-timers might remember a show we ran two years ago on the death of the China blog, in which Jeremy, Kaiser, and Will Moss mused about whether the combined forces of Twitter, Facebook, and Bill Bishop would manage to drive a...