Reporting on Trump as a member of Chinese media

ChiaChieh Tang 唐家婕, who also goes by Jane, is a Taiwanese reporter who works as the U.S. bureau chief for Sina News (新浪新闻 xīnlàng xīnwén) in Washington, D.C. She is one of a few members of the mainland Chinese media who regularly attend the White House’s daily press briefings.

In this podcast, Jeremy and Kaiser ask about her experiences attending the infamous Sean Spicer press sessions, being a Taiwanese person working for a mainland media company, and her observations of Chinese reactions to the Trump administration. Jane gives insight into how Chinese media coverage of Trump changed after he took office, what it was like to interview the president’s in-house China basher Peter Navarro, and that time she hopped in a cab with a pair of “Bernie bros.”

Recommendations:

Jeremy: The Málà Project (麻辣计划 málà jìhuà), a restaurant in New York that serves wonderfully spicy Sichuanese “dry pot” dishes. Also, a (sadly now defunct) Twitter account called burnedyourtweet, which, while active, posted a video of a robot printing out and burning every one of Donald Trump’s tweets.

Jane: Granny and the Boys, a band in Washington, D.C., that frequently performs at the Showtime dive bar in the Shaw district. Its style of funk fusion is no less remarkable than the fact that the band is made up of an 84-year-old grandma and four middle-aged men. Click here to read about and listen to the band on NPR (true to grandma form, this band rolls without a website of its own).

Kaiser: The Handmaid’s Tale, an updated but faithful TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s classic book about a totalitarian theocracy in America.