NOTE: If you haven’t read the book and are allergic to spoilers, please be aware that the interesting surprises of Scott’s story are discussed in this podcast.
Scott Tong is a reporter for American Public Media’s Marketplace, and from 2006 to 2010, he helped found and run the radio program’s Shanghai bureau. During that time, he also experienced a lot of culture shock — his Chinese-American upbringing in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Taiwan didn’t prepare him for mainland China as much as he had expected, and while in Shanghai, he uncovered some surprising truths about his family, which has roots in nearby Jiangsu Province.
A Village With My Name: A Family History of China's Opening to the World is Scott’s deeply personal reporting and reflection on what he learned about his family, and China’s history, by visiting distant relatives in a forlorn part of Jiangsu Province. It is a highly engaging, eye-opening story that sheds light on how Chinese people engage with their past — and their present.
Recommendations:
Jeremy: McKay Books, a huge used books store in Nashville, Tennessee. And Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa—From Eisenhower to Kennedy, by Madeleine Kalb.
Scott: Resigned Activism: Living With Pollution in Rural China, by Anna Lora-Wainwright. And Rough Translation, an NPR podcast about how foreigners see America.
Kaiser: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, by Kurt Andersen.
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Huawei and the tech cold war
Meng Wanzhou’s arrest: The legal dimension
40 years of reform and opening up, with Jude Blanchette
Blaming China
The Nature Conservancy in China
‘Shaken Authority’: Party-speak, propaganda, and the Sichuan earthquake of 2008
Mythbusting China’s social credit system
Shadow banking, P2P lending, and pyramid schemes: Lucy Hornby on China's gray economy
Introducing the Ta for Ta Podcast
Kevin Rudd on Xi Jinping’s worldview
Danny Russel on the rebalancing and decoupling
Kai-Fu Lee and the U.S.-China AI rivalry
Nury Turkel and the Uyghur plight
Introducing the ChinaEconTalk podcast
Xi Jinping's long, hot summer
Paul Haenle on North Korea, Taiwan, U.S.-China relations, and more
China's 'reliable friendship' with Pakistan, explained by Andrew Small
The strange tale of a kung-fu master in Madagascar
Legendary diplomat Chas W. Freeman, Jr., on U.S.-China strategy and history: Part 3
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