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Jan Wong's China: Reports From A Not-So-Foreign Correspondent
Award-winning journalist and bestselling author Jan Wong looks back on her body of work as a foreign correspondent in China in the late '80s and early '90s. Despite the fact that China continues to transform itself, Wong discovers that nothing really changes, and what she wrote then about love, work and living still holds, as do the conflicts over who rules, who survives, and who gets the bigger slice of Peking Duck. With wry humour and behind-the-scenes detail, Wong incorporates a selection of her articles published in The Globe and Mail into a richly narrated journalistic adventure.Jan Wong's first book, Red China Blues , was named one of Time magazine's top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China.
352 pages, Paperback
First published September 14, 1999
9 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Jan Wong
12 books69 followersJan Wong was the much-acclaimed Beijing correspondent for The Globe and Mail from 1988 to 1994. She is a graduate of McGill University, Beijing University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is the recipient of a (US) George Polk Award, the New England Women’s Press Association Newswoman of the Year Award, the (Canadian) National Newspaper Award and a Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Silver Medal, among other honours for her reporting. Wong has also written for The New York Times, The Gazette in Montreal, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal.
Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China. It has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Japanese, and optioned for a feature film.
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian, born and raised in Montreal. She first went to China in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as one of only two Westerners permitted to enrol at Beijing University. There, she renounced rock music, wielded a pneumatic drill at a factory and hauled pig manure in the paddy fields. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War in China. During those six years in China, she learned fluent Mandarin and earned a degree in Chinese history.
From 1988 to 1994, Jan Wong returned as China correspondent for The Globe and Mail. In reporting on the tumultuous new era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping, she reacquainted herself with old friends and enemies from her radical past. In 1989, she dodged bullets in Tiananmen Square, fought off a kidnapping attempt and caught the Chinese police red-handed driving her stolen Toyota as a squad car. (They gave it back.)
She returned to China in 1999 to make a documentary and to research her second book, Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent. It tells the story of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and offers fresh insight into a country that is forever changing.
Jan Wong lives with her husband and two sons in Toronto where she is a reporter at The Globe and Mail. The best of her weekly celebrity-interview columns, “Lunch With,” which ran for five years, have been published in a book of the same name.
[From Random House's Jan Wong Author Spotlight]
Her first book, Red China Blues: My Long March From Mao to Now, was named one of Time magazine’s top ten books of 1996 and remains banned in China. It has been translated into Swedish, Finnish, Dutch and Japanese, and optioned for a feature film.
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian, born and raised in Montreal. She first went to China in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution as one of only two Westerners permitted to enrol at Beijing University. There, she renounced rock music, wielded a pneumatic drill at a factory and hauled pig manure in the paddy fields. She also met and married the only American draft dodger from the Vietnam War in China. During those six years in China, she learned fluent Mandarin and earned a degree in Chinese history.
From 1988 to 1994, Jan Wong returned as China correspondent for The Globe and Mail. In reporting on the tumultuous new era of capitalist reforms under Deng Xiaoping, she reacquainted herself with old friends and enemies from her radical past. In 1989, she dodged bullets in Tiananmen Square, fought off a kidnapping attempt and caught the Chinese police red-handed driving her stolen Toyota as a squad car. (They gave it back.)
She returned to China in 1999 to make a documentary and to research her second book, Jan Wong’s China: Reports from a Not-So-Foreign Correspondent. It tells the story of China’s headlong rush to capitalism and offers fresh insight into a country that is forever changing.
Jan Wong lives with her husband and two sons in Toronto where she is a reporter at The Globe and Mail. The best of her weekly celebrity-interview columns, “Lunch With,” which ran for five years, have been published in a book of the same name.
[From Random House's Jan Wong Author Spotlight]
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
August 15, 2013
Jan Wong is a delightful storyteller who can see to the core of situations. In this book, she looks at China through the 1990s, through the changes after Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the Cultural Revolution itself. She tells the stories of China with insight and humour.
In her late teens, Jan Wong is besotted by Maoism and its ideals. She goes to China (from Canada) to be part of the collective and is soon disenchanted. She tells of the policies and the occurrences from the viewpoint of the people, not the politicians. Then, after the death of Mao, the changes that cascaded through China as the people started to learn about democracy and what it meant, how they tried to make it happen in their country, and how China is continuing today to become more democratic and “Western”. It’s not all good, the country is changing for both the better and the worse but Jan sees the positive potential in China and its future.
I enjoyed these looks at the policies and thoughts of the people of China in the 1990s as their world changed faster than ours changed for us.
In her late teens, Jan Wong is besotted by Maoism and its ideals. She goes to China (from Canada) to be part of the collective and is soon disenchanted. She tells of the policies and the occurrences from the viewpoint of the people, not the politicians. Then, after the death of Mao, the changes that cascaded through China as the people started to learn about democracy and what it meant, how they tried to make it happen in their country, and how China is continuing today to become more democratic and “Western”. It’s not all good, the country is changing for both the better and the worse but Jan sees the positive potential in China and its future.
I enjoyed these looks at the policies and thoughts of the people of China in the 1990s as their world changed faster than ours changed for us.
June 12, 2010
The first bit of this book is a painful and demoralizing slog ... not because it's poorly written (which it isn't ...) but because post-Mao China is so painfully and overwhelmingly backward. Then, precisely on page 77 in this edition, the absurdity becomes amusing. I especially love the description of the Maoist postal system and the "nostalgia" restaurant craze (where you can sip nettle soup and chew on tree bark while singing songs from the cultural revolution ... of course, there is no dessert).
While it's not particularly current (1999), Jan Wong's analysis and conclusions seem pretty spot on. This book gives you a glimpse into reality for 1/4 of the world's population and exposes the contradiction that exists in a country with a capitalist economy and a Stalinist state. Another confirmation that we live in a very f*cked up world!
While it's not particularly current (1999), Jan Wong's analysis and conclusions seem pretty spot on. This book gives you a glimpse into reality for 1/4 of the world's population and exposes the contradiction that exists in a country with a capitalist economy and a Stalinist state. Another confirmation that we live in a very f*cked up world!
October 31, 2018
wong is shaping up to be one of my personal favourite authors. book is witty, full of knowledge and choice anecdotes of her life and encounters. i feel much more understanding of how china has come to form itself as an economic powerhouse in recent years and why chinese tourists are so wild
November 7, 2014
Summary, Jan Wong visited China in 1999 to write her observations on the juxtaposition of a communist political system with an emerging capitalist economic system. Each chapter tackles a different aspect of Chinese life - Tibet, the status of women, population control, LGBTQ, urbanization etc.
I enjoyed JW's China immensely. Having also read her first book "Red China Blues" it was a very welcome follow up. Jan's writing is accessible through her conversational style. I've written of Bill Bryson that reading his Australian adventures had the effect of a regale over many pints of beer. Jan I feel left me with the satisfaction of a good, long visit with an old friend just returning from an extended trip. It effectively engages readers and provides insight. Fifteen years later, I would welcome another installment.
I enjoyed JW's China immensely. Having also read her first book "Red China Blues" it was a very welcome follow up. Jan's writing is accessible through her conversational style. I've written of Bill Bryson that reading his Australian adventures had the effect of a regale over many pints of beer. Jan I feel left me with the satisfaction of a good, long visit with an old friend just returning from an extended trip. It effectively engages readers and provides insight. Fifteen years later, I would welcome another installment.
July 16, 2014
A western traveller Jan Wong toured China as a 70's student then later in 1999. Her background allows her to have the unique view of China before the Chinese industrial revolution and as it was hitting full stride. She takes the reader through a total immersion into the everyday culture of China as it transformed in the 90's.
She describes a pragmatic people that have grasped capitalism at a frenetic pace. Her descriptions of the people, the one-child policy, pollution, economic inequality, Tibet's place in China, politics within China as well tales of the underbelly - drugs, prostitution, gangs are riveting. This is the story of the inner China.
I enjoyed this book so much that I had to slow my reading pace.
She describes a pragmatic people that have grasped capitalism at a frenetic pace. Her descriptions of the people, the one-child policy, pollution, economic inequality, Tibet's place in China, politics within China as well tales of the underbelly - drugs, prostitution, gangs are riveting. This is the story of the inner China.
I enjoyed this book so much that I had to slow my reading pace.
February 28, 2008
This book is about China in the 1990s, which was when I was living in Shanghai, so I had a lot of moments of recognition reading it. I also had a few "so that's what that was" moments. I really enjoyed it, but you might have had to have been there to appreciate it. It's a little outdated now, but still well written.
June 19, 2013
Things changed so quickly in China between 1989 and 1999. I'd like to know how things continued beyond 1999. (I never watch or read the news...) This book informed me quite well on a culture I really didn't know about, and has helped me better understand Chinese psychology, the "why" of some quirky and global personality traits.
January 18, 2013
it's hard to comment on a book finished 13 years ago. so much has changed. so many good quotes and stories. will make you laugh, will make you cry. maybe shake your head in disbelief. I really like her style of writing, she's so witty.
December 19, 2010
Read it so long ago that I can't remember why I liked it so much...but I did. Red China Blues was also great but Beijing confidential is not in the same league at all.
November 6, 2011
Interesting, but too out of date to provide a good snapshot about China.
February 12, 2012
Got this from my mom, it was good although difficult at some times.
December 5, 2013
Very compelling and well-written, but towards the end of the book it eventually becomes quite a lot to take in. A worthwhile, if somewhat depressing, read.
October 20, 2014
Very informative book about China from a Chinese Canadian who lived there as a student in the 1970's, worked as a Canadian journalist for 6 years in the 80's and then visited in 1992 and 1999.
February 11, 2015
Really a 3.5 - a good follow up to Red China Blues but just not in the same league as a story.
February 24, 2017
I didn't find this as interesting as Red China Blue, but still a worthy read. The timeline jumps around a bit too much for me.
August 8, 2018
Even with Red China Blues behind her, she’s still intent on covering her behind
May 3, 2020
An excellent book as all of Jan Wong's are. This one is now twenty years out-of-date, so it's hard to know how accurate it still is. Still, a shocking picture of how China was at the time, and one wonders if it has changed since then. A very good read. I should have read it a long time ago, but it ended up being a Covid-19 read since I was forced to fall back on books that we have around that I hadn't read it. I enjoyed it.
March 20, 2015
Interesting look at the transformation China went through to become what it is today. Wong explains things as global as workplace etiquette to things as small as day to day traffic. A must-read for anyone living in Beijing who is constantly wondering why they just got shoved for the tenth time this morning.
January 29, 2022
Incisive writing gives a clear picture of recent Chinese history from an experienced, Chinese Canadian author
December 18, 2012
I enjoyed it very much. A good follow-up to Red China Blues.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews