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Sinica Podcast
Murder House: Zhong Na on the Silicon Valley Tragedy That Exposed the Cracks in China's Meritocracy
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to the Seneca Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program we look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents and cultural trends that can help us better understand what's happening in China's politics, foreign relations, economics and society. Join me each week for in depth conversations that share, shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I'm Kaiser Goa, coming to you this week from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Sinica is supported this year by the center for East Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a national resource center for the study of East Asia. The Seneca Podcast will remain free, but if you work for an organization that believes in what I'm doing with the show and the newsletter, please consider lending your support. You can reach me@sinicapodmail.com and listeners. Please please support my work by becoming a paying subscriber at. You will enjoy, in addition to the podcast, the complete transcript of the show, essays from me, as well as writings and podcasts from some of your favorite China focused columnists and commentators. And of course, you will be able to bask in the knowledge that you are helping me do what I honestly believe is important work. So to do. Check out the page to see all that is on offer and consider helping me out. This week on Sinica, we're looking at one of the most widely discussed and unsettling stories to cross the Pacific in recent memory. A murder that took place in Silkon Valley that, for reasons we will be exploring, really captivated audiences across China. A young couple, both brilliant engineers, both products of China's most elite universities, both living the dream at Google, found themselves at the tragic center of a case that quickly became far more than just a true crime story. It became a kind of collective Rorschach test, a mirror held up to contemporary Chinese society, to the myths of meritocracy and study your way out social mobility to the prestige of global tech firms like Google, to shifting notions of gender of class and the Chinese dream itself. The writer who captured this story with uncommon depth and sensitivity is Zhong Na Na. Zhong is she goes by in English, a novelist and essayist who has contributed to the China Project back when it was still sup China and whose new piece, the Silicon Valley Murder, appears in the inaugural issue of Equator, a striking new magazine devoted to long form writing that crosses borders, disciplines and cultures. I've mentioned Equator on the show before, as have some of my other guests. Equator's mission is to connect global narratives that illuminate how people live, dream and struggle in a rapidly changing world. And Zhongna's story does exactly that. It's hauntingly written, really meticulously reported, and as we'll see, about much more than just this single act of violence. It's really about a generation raised on the promise of mobility through education, about the illusions and the burdens of tech world success, and also about gender, about rumor, about censorship, the way that China and its diaspora process tragedy in an era of algorithmic storytelling. We'll talk about all of that and about Zhongna's craft, the choices she made as a writer, the moral questions she wrestled with, and what she believes this case ultimately tells us about who the Chinese middle class has become and what they fear they might be turning into. I'm delighted to welcome the author today to the show coming to us from New York. Zhong Na, welcome to Seneca.
- [03:40]
B
Hi Kaiser. Thank you so much for having me. Such a pleasure to be here.
- [03:44]
A
Great to have you. So, Joong Na, before we get to the larger implications your piece draws out, maybe you could start with your own first encounter with this story and let me first lay out the basics just so that people know. It was January 16, 2024. Police entered the very, very nice Santa Clara home at 714 Valley Way, an address that actually matters in the way this story is later discussed. And there they found this guy named chen Liren, who's 27 year old, Tsinghua educated, Google engineer. He was kneeling near the body of his wife, whose name is Yu Xuanyi, who was also a Google engineer, also a Tsinghua graduate. I think anyone with even a glancing familiarity with China would understand intuitively why this story was bound to be more than just a grim domestic violence homicide and would instead detonate across all the different social media platforms and prompt a lot of intense sleuthing, polarized, gendered readings of it, even a lot of soul searching and why when it went to court, it would see packed hallways and real time live translations of the preliminary hearings. So, Jong Na, how did the story first reach you? And was it the human tragedy itself, the reaction to it, or something else that made you really glom onto it? When did you realize it was a story that you really needed to write?
- [05:06]
B
Sure, I think it started. I have to backpedal a little bit and talk about another case.
- [05:11]
A
Okay.
- [05:12]
B
It's the Luigi, you know.
- [05:14]
A
Sure, Luigi Magione.
- [05:16]
B
Yeah, the Luigi shooting case and why it captured me. And my attention is because, like, as an immigrant, I wrestled a lot with, you know, know Healthcare system and the insurance system in the US and when the piece came out, it gripped the mainstream English media and everybody was talking about it. And, you know, there are all sorts of discussions about it around it, and we feel like we are really getting into the meat of it. While, in contrast, when the Santa Clara case came out, I was surprised and also a little bit disappointed to see it was eventually dismissed as a horror story of middle class marriage. You know, like people, the reporters, to do their justice, they try to build a connection between, you know, the stress of working at a big tech company and also with the looming, you know, massive layoff that is always like a, like a cloud over their head. But eventually they didn't manage to find any evidence, you know, to prove this argument. So eventually they had to land on the, you know, the 2 million doll house in Santa Clara and also the brutality of the case itself.
- [06:25]
A
Sure, sure.
- [06:26]
B
I was definitely felt that the story, the English media's depiction of the story didn't do the couple justice. I feel like there's more to it, to the story. And meanwhile, the story has traveled back to China, where the two grew up and where people obviously knew more about them. So immediately it exploded across social media. People were talking about their, you know, even their. Which high school they went to, which none of the English media covered was heatedly discussed in China.
- [07:01]
A
You actually went to the same high school as Chen Liyue.
- [07:03]
B
Exactly, exactly.
- [07:04]
A
In Chengdu.
- [07:05]
B
Yeah. Yes, yes. Which is really interesting because I discovered it about two days, three days after the case reached China. And one of my high school classmates, they posted in the class group chat saying that, okay, hey, I think this guy went to the same high school with us.
- [07:25]
A
Wow.
- [07:26]
B
And that was the moment when it clicked for me because being an immigrant in America, you realize that everyone, you know, have a past life that they have left behind. So it's interesting to suddenly be able to see Chen Liren in this perspective. Suddenly he has depth for me as a character. I say character because I've never known him in real life. And so, yeah, that was the moment when I realized, okay, so there's this tension between China's reaction to this case and the English media's reaction to this case. And also I have this personal entry point to the story. That's when it suddenly makes sense for.
- [08:08]
A
Me that you should be the person to write it. Yeah, yeah. So you actually published this piece in the very first issue of Equator, which I've said is a new magazine. That magazine's earned quite a bit of Admiration for its cosmopolitan, deeply literary sensibility. It's not surprising, given the people who work on it. It features work that's quite global in scope, but also very intimate in its texture. I'd love to hear about how this collaboration came about. When did you first know you wanted to write about this case for Equator? Did you immediately have Equator in mind or did that come about later? What was it about the magazine's mission or editorial approach that felt, you know, like it was the right fit for the story?
- [08:48]
B
Sure, yeah. I'm really glad that you brought this up, because I think it was in 2024, I published a piece with the Drift on world literature, and one of the editors actually recommended me to Gavin Jacobson, who's the. One of the founding members of Equator. So he reached out, asking me if I would like to pitch a story to Equator. And to be honest, as a fiction writer, it never occurred to me to write a nonfiction piece. And a very in depth one. A murder. Back at the time, I was actually starting a new project, a fiction project inspired by the Santa Clara murder case. So when they came to me, basically having the murder very fresh on my mind, it was the only project that I can pitch. So I say, maybe, hey, I can dig a little bit deeper into this case. Is that something you guys would be interested in? And immediately they were intrigued and they wanted to know more. And back then I was trying to connect my piece to a John Didion quote, which, you know, begin this. My piece for this about the story is how some cases are picked up as stories while some slip into oblivion. So I think it's very interesting how we pick which story to tell and also what Gavin described about Equator's mission, you know, trying to bring in more perspectives, trying to pick stories that are usually neglected by other mainstream media. I think that's something that deeply resonated with me. So that's how this wonderful collaboration began. Yeah.
- [10:31]
A
Yeah. Well, it certainly wasn't ignored by the Chinese media, that's for sure, because it was really all anyone could talk about during that time. I heard about it constantly. I think one of the threads that just is so powerful, it runs through. Well, runs through the case. But very much in your piece is about class and about education and these things in China. Anyone who knows Chinese society today, they're really tightly intertwined so much that they just kind of collapse into one another. These two people were sort of the ultimate success stories. They were both Gulkhol prodigies from provincial cities. You know, Chen was actually from Chengdu like you. Right. But he had climbed the full ladder.
- [11:10]
B
Right.
- [11:10]
A
I mean, you know, he, like, she was the top gaokao scorer in her whole high school. I believe he scored very well. They both went to Tsinghua, which is, you know, the dream. Then they. They went to the United States and they studied there. Then they went, both went to Google. They had this dream house in Silkon Valley. But as you point out, that trajectory itself just exposes really deep cracks in the Chinese idea of meritocracy. So could you talk about what this case and the reaction to the case revealed to you about how Chinese society now understands education, class, and this promise or this illusion of upward mobility?
- [11:53]
B
Sure, yeah, That's a great question. I mean, for generations, even back in, you know, ancient times, China has always believed in education, the value of education. How, you know, there's a golden house in books that's basically a metaphor to describe how you can, as like you wonderfully put, study one's way out of one's initial social status. And which still holds true, especially after China restored gaokao system back in around.
- [12:21]
A
Like, 77, I think.
- [12:22]
B
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So my mother was one of the people who basically studied her way out of her hometown, and she became a high school teacher. And a lot of people I know, they changed their life through education. So there's knowledge that's been passed on from generation to generation. Like, people believe in it. People think that's probably the easiest and fastest way to climb the social ladder in a way. And also, especially for if you are poor, if you are, if you, You. You don't have other advantages in life, you know, that's the most effective tool you can leverage. But the first crack in this illusion of meritocracy system is that with the modernization of Chinese society, resources and. And became more and more sort of like intensified were like, they accumulated in. In places that are like, unevenly distributed in Chinese society.
- [13:18]
A
Sure, sure.
- [13:18]
B
For example, it never occurred to me that the high school that I went to, like, it never occurred to me as a younger person to describe it as an elite high school. But in retrospect, I think in certain aspects, it definitely is, because although I had to enter two qualification exams to secure a spot in my class, later on I discovered that some of my classmates, they actually went in through connections of their parents.
- [13:46]
A
And that sounds elite to me.
- [13:50]
B
Yeah. And also some of my peers, they are like the very accomplished academically, much more than I did back then. And this was also the result of really advanced educational resources. At an early stage in their life. So you can see that even if they got enrolled in a class on merits of their own, there are still invisible privileges that people never talk about. So I don't like, I mean, I don't know enough about Chen Liren and Yu Xunyi to make speculations about their, how they got into the schools or how they became the xue ba in their respective school.
- [14:29]
A
But I, Xue ba means sort of like the smarty pants, the top of the class, right?
- [14:34]
B
Yeah.
- [14:35]
A
Really excels in school, right?
- [14:36]
B
Exactly. So I feel like, yeah, this is the first crack because both of them went to Tsinghua and Yu Xuanyi, she being the, being the top scorer of her province, she naturally had a spot in the university. But for a lot of the students from my high school, sometimes they get advantages, you know, before the college entrance examination, they get like bonus points that can secure or like increase drastically their chance of getting enrolled at an elite university. So as you can see being this very, this is like the early stage of one's climb, ascent along the social ladder. But the hidden perks and the privileges are one of the many cracks in this system.
- [15:26]
A
So when we're talking about these privileges and advantages, it's what, having parents with the resources to get you all the after school tutoring, all that, that sort of thing. Is that what we're talking about?
- [15:36]
B
And also, you know, like dinner parties with the teachers, you know, who has the power to decide which student get the bonus score, you know, which student get to the right camp to have that on their resume, which student to have the opportunity to participate in, you know, exchange program in the U.S. you know, things like that.
- [16:02]
A
And do you think that there's a growing realization of how unevenly distributed these resources that allow access to the, you know, the meritocratic ladder are in China? Do you think that's really starting to change now?
- [16:14]
B
For sure. Like people have been aware of it for some time now and there are two mentalities. One mentality is that they want to, you know, join a gang. They want to, since the system is rigged, they want to play it to their own advantage. Which is why we see so many, you know, Haidian mothers trying to like also the so called, like tiger mothers in China who got their kids enrolled in like an absurd amount of after school programs so that they can squeeze their way into, you know, really elite schools in Beijing. Like, like Chinese media has picked on stories like this many, many times. But the other mentality is that they just, you know, they just Give up the. So the younger generation, I think there are people who embrace, like, a more, you know, lying flat attitude.
- [17:02]
A
Right, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. Because you mentioned in the essay that, like I said, you went to the same high school, you grew up around the same time as Yu Xianyi and Chen Liu, and you were all sort of steeped in the same mythology of Harvard girl Liu Yiting.
- [17:16]
B
Yeah.
- [17:17]
A
There's this sort of near religious faith that with the right schools and the right test scores and the right kind of diligence, you could redeem your entire family. Right. I mean, it's this faith, and it very much still drives countless Chinese parents and kids. I mean, I definitely see it here in America among Chinese parents. It feels more brittle now than it was, though. I look at the reactions to this case, and you can almost sense disillusionment, this kind of horror that even this perfect resume couldn't guarantee anyone's safety or their happiness or that they'd find meaning. You note that you actually, again, you attended the same school. How are people for you, this, this. This story, how did it reflect the fraying of that old compact, that old, you know, kind of unstated con contract between education effort and reward in China for you personally?
- [18:10]
B
For my. For myself personally, I was. Yeah, I was lucky to have parents who are very relaxed about my academic performance. I was. I guess I push myself a little bit too hard sometimes, but they never put too much pressure on me. But I did notice, and also from talking to the reporters who report on this case in China, she told me that, like, the Tsinghua University, sometimes, like, with some programs, maybe some programs more than others, some departments more than others, that there's this toxic environment where people are really competitive against each other, where, you know, the. The. There's no camaraderie, there's no friendship, but there's this fierce sense of, you know, it's either you or me. And I think this emphasis on education and on academic excellence definitely sometimes make people neglect the health of one's, the psychological state, their mental health, basically, right before they.
- [19:12]
A
Or your relationships with your peers and all those things. So there's this other thread that runs through your whole piece, and that's really about America itself. It's this place this couple had worked really hard to try to reach. And for so many Chinese of that generation, of your generation, Silicon Valley represented not just success, but arrival. It's like the end point of all your meritocratic striving. Right?
- [19:38]
B
Yeah.
- [19:39]
A
But in the online discussions that we all Saw after Yu Xuanyi's murder, you could sense a change, this feeling that the dream somehow had dimmed, that the US was no longer seen as this sort of safe or enviable destination like it once was. There was like this broader questioning of whether making it abroad still means what it used to mean. So how do you interpret this shift? What does the way that Chinese netizens talked about this case reveal about how America now figures into China's collective imagination?
- [20:13]
B
Yeah, I think the pandemic definitely played a role in this shift of narrative.
- [20:21]
A
For sure.
- [20:22]
B
The pandemic didn't create new problems, they only make old problems more acute. And so is the case with this shift. The shift is already happening, I believe, even before the pandemic, with the nationalistic sentiment being stowed up in China by the state propaganda. So. But during the pandemic it got worse because you get to see this sharp contrast between how the two countries deal with the pandemic. And there are definitely ups and downs where people are really trying to wrap their head around which is the right way to go. But I think people in China, unable to travel and having to rely on the state as the only source, sometimes as the only source of information, it's very. And also the news media in China trying to report on, you know, how poorly America was managing the pandemic at home. It's definitely, it's definitely, you know, pushing people into thinking about the sort of like decline of America or the. That it's political system no longer. Not. Not necessarily works, but not definitely does not work for China.
- [21:43]
A
Right. There's also all that racism against Chinese parts. Right?
- [21:48]
B
Right, yeah, yeah. So all of this combined make America sort of like lose some of its allure in the younger generation and particularly their parents eyes because it's their parents that are sponsoring their trips.
- [22:06]
A
It's amazing. I mean, my wife and I had. Our kids are already both in college, but we have younger relatives and younger friends who have kids now in school. And a lot of them are really rethinking their original plan to send their kids to the U.S. it's interesting, they're all asking me now about the UK instead, or about Australia or about Canada. But among, among my Chinese friends here in the States, I often hear this kind of uneasy refrain. I mean, it's both horror and embarrassment. It seems like a disproportionate number of the high profile killings here in America actually involve Chinese men. I mean, I haven't seen any data suggesting that's actually true, but it's clearly perception and it weighs heavily, especially after cases like this one. I remember, I mean, just a couple of years ago, I was just a few blocks away from where when a Chinese graduate student killed his professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I mean, have you sensed that anxiety too? That like a mix of a fear of shame, of like maybe self interrogation within the diaspora community about what do these tragedies seem to say about Chinese men? Or about the emotional costs of the whole immigrant success story?
- [23:19]
B
That's an interesting perspective. Yeah. When I was writing on that piece, it didn't occur to me but that you mentioned there was actually a disproportionate amount of Chinese men as perpetrators and Chinese women as victims. It's sort of like two sides of a coin. And I think that definitely has something to do with being an immigrant abroad. That definitely can take a toll on one's mental health. And you have difficulty adjusting to the new environment. And from literature, from, you know, from. For me, the main source is literature and I noticed that women tend to fare better when coming to a new environment. They are more resilient. They, because they enjoying so little, so few advantages back home, they are able to make more peace with their lack of advantages in the foreign land. While men, Chinese men, when they're in China in a very traditionally patriarchal society, they enjoy so many perks without realizing it. And once they're here, the. The perks are gone. And they are. I think the, the sense of loss for them is probably much stronger than the women.
- [24:29]
A
Yeah, I believe it. I think there's another factor in it too. And I, I know I used to notice this all the time when you'd see, you know, my Chinese male and female friends, they'd leave China and they'd go to the United States and they'd come back. And the men had not fundamentally changed. You know, they were still brutally reserved and kind of quiet and interest, you know, introverted. But the women had really flowered. They really knew sort of how to dress and they were much more sort of outgoing and confident. And you know, they. And my theory had to do with sort of their level of social acceptance in American society. I felt like, you know, the men were forever kind of condemned to sexual invisibility. Like they were not within the range of men that like white women in America would consider dating. Whereas, you know, Chinese women were very much in the range of people that white men would consider dating. And they got a lot of attention. So I think that that really translated into confidence and Yeah, I mean, I noticed that in that first and second wave of Hai Gui, who came back to China first in the late 90s and then later on, very, very pronounced. But I think that that definitely has something to do with it. But yeah, I think the whole gender thing is a huge part. And I think that really fueled a lot of the specific online reaction to your story, to this story. It tapped straight into the ongoing battles, feminism, male anxiety, resentment over these elite marriages, and all of that. You write in your piece about how people kind of performed a moral autopsy on this couple, who was ultimately more successful, who was dependent on whom, who failed whom. It felt like the crime scene became kind of this projection surface for the broader gender war that's now raging online in China. So how do you understand the whole intensity of this reaction? What does it tell us about the current state of gender discourse in China? Because, I mean, among the educated middle class that this couple represented, the gender war is very real, right?
- [26:30]
B
Yeah, for sure. One thing I need to put out first is that I think a lot of the discussion, gendered discussion around this case, they can be performative too, because the, like, gender discourse has become probably like, it's one of the few topics that are still allowed to develop online in China. So people tend to, sometimes they milk on it. They, they say outrageous things to infuriate each other and so the algorithms will push their content further and further away. So that's one thing. But still, I think even amongst this chaos, we're still able to glean some observations about insights about the gendered situation in China. And I think they are sadly divided by gender. I think, for example, the women usually are very sympathetic, like in case of this murder case, they're very sympathetic toward Xuanyi, the victim. They definitely see the power imbalance between Yu's family and Chen's family. Yu's family is definitely less privileged and less powerful, less wealthy than Chen's family. And Yu was definitely not as physically strong as her husband. And also although they both worked at Google, people still say, even like according to the pre trial that happened later, he used to compare his wife's salary with other women that he knew. So obviously there he, he seems to be a little bit dissatisfied with her salary. So people, women are very sympathetic, like women readers are very sympathetic to all these situation that you were subject to. While for the male audience, male readers, they, those among them who are most eloquent about this case, they started to project all kinds of insecurities. The victim, they, they try to do all this, like, victim blaming, they say maybe was having an affair with her boss, which is why she got the job where she was trying to were like, you was a gold digger who. Who got the job because of her husband. So it's. Yeah, I feel like each party is trying to see what they want to see with the story, which is often the case with online discussion.
- [29:02]
A
Yeah, I mean, when I was looking at this, I was really struck by just how, like, again, you're correct, public sympathy is definitely, you know, gendered. But it felt like, to me, like the men were kind of lamenting, like, this idea that, oh, you know, even this. This golden Tsinghua couple can't escape this terrible fate. And women, you know, were more focused on the structural inequality of the relationship, about the emotional neglect, like, you know, you talked about. I mean, I feel like it's like these two very fundamentally different ways of interpreting tragedy. And. Yeah, I don't know if you. If you agree with that, but I feel like it points to something much deeper about how men and women in China experience or react to success, whether their own or others, to intimacy, to pressure.
- [29:51]
B
Yeah, I think that's a very interesting point. Yeah.
- [29:54]
A
So, I mean, I guess one of the more unsettling aspects of the story's afterlife online was just how much energy people seem to spend just dissecting not just the couple, but also, like Chen's ex girlfriend, he figures into your story as well, you know, evaluating, comparing her looks to. To. To. To. To Shen's looks, her education, you know, the whole timeline of their breakup, even, like, supposedly her. Her moral ranking in this imagined hierarchy of. Of, you know, desirability or whatever. I mean, you. You handled this with, I mean, I think, really admirable restraint in your. In your piece. You never indulged the kind of gossip. But you show, though, that this obsession really reveals something larger. The way that kind of, like, moral worth and romantic success and class standing, how they get all just sort of mixed into. Conflated with this whole Chinese aspirational culture. What did you make of this whole fixation with the ex girlfriend? What does it tell us about the gendered economy of envy and judgment in contemporary Chinese life?
- [31:03]
B
Yeah. The reason I didn't dwell on the ex girlfriend is because, well, it's. She's not. She didn't play a direct role.
- [31:10]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [31:11]
B
Although she played a pretty big role in the unraveling of the couple's relationship, she didn't play a big role in my interpretation of this murder case. So also, I felt like I Particularly want to restrain from talking too much about her because the misogynism started with the victim blaming of Yu Xuanyi. But once her name was cleared, you know, by the appearance of this ex girlfriend, the blame was shifted on the ex girlfriend. So it was like it's always the women to be willing. So I definitely think that, well, previously there are many speculations but no facts. People spun up all kinds of theories, but now having this relatively fixed fact, fixed narrative, now they have something to concentrate on. And also I have to mention that there was, I didn't particularly elaborate, expand on it in my piece, but their trends seem to have a following online. I've seen a couple of like social accounts on my RedNote app that people were saying, well, how handsome he looked even when he showed up in pre trials wearing the prison clothes. And there were people who saying, well, I could have one like this for a husband. And I think this admiration for the criminal, for the murderer also has something to do is sort of like connected to this fixation on the ex girlfriend. There's some sort of like some kind of like sexual energy or like a secret attraction to this piece because like you, you know, in. When I was researching on this piece, I noticed that there are people who, there are women in particular who are attracted to serial killers. And it has something to do with the human being's primal instincts. And I think it probably played a role in how the story played out.
- [33:27]
A
Yeah, well, you started off talking about Luigi Mangione, right? And he's definitely been the object of a lot of. Yeah. Anyway, let's move to talking about the setting of this story. So you have these two young engineers from Tsinghua, they're working at Google and they live in this very, very nice home in Santa Clara. It's quite large. It's like two and a half million dollars in value. I mean, it's almost like this could have been scripted as the ultimate immigrant success story. But then of course, it gets shattered in this nightmare of violence. And for many observers in China, it seems to expose something very hollow or very dangerous in that whole dream. And some said that this showed the sort of emotional toll of meritocracy. Others read this whole thing as proof that even if you make it in America, you can't be protected from despair. So how do you see the whole American setting of this functioning in your piece? Is it like a mirror of Chinese aspiration? Or is it more like a mirage, something that shouldn't be pined after? It's like an object lesson don't worship the American dream.
- [34:38]
B
Yeah. The house definitely featured prominently in this piece and also in the online reaction to this piece. It's interesting, I think people. It's sort of like, you know, even the piece was named after, was titled Murder House. Right. Yeah, yeah.
- [34:56]
A
I have a song called Shungjai actually.
- [34:58]
B
Right? What? Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, I have to check that out. Yeah, yeah.
- [35:02]
A
It's a heavy metal song.
- [35:03]
B
But I. It's interesting because when I was revising the piece together with the editorial team, I was reading Bleak House, which also has a domestic title. And I think the house, it sort of provide an anchor for people's imagination to attach to. It's the, you know, every story needs a setting. And as it's like the fanciest setting imaginable to. Especially to. To Chinese readers.
- [35:37]
A
Right.
- [35:38]
B
And which is why six months after the murder happened, when it was resell, reselled to another couple in the neighborhood, it also made the news in the local San Francisco.
- [35:52]
A
Murder House is sold. We have to explain the number. Like, I mean, so, you know, Chinese, of course, are sort of obsessed with these homophonic numbers. Why the number 8 is lucky and the number 4 is unlucky, but sounds a little bit to them like.
- [36:11]
B
Right, yeah.
- [36:12]
A
Which means the wife will die. The wife will be killed.
- [36:15]
B
Right, yeah. So it's definitely because of this term to metaphysics among the younger generations. They definitely like pick that up, I would say.
- [36:24]
A
Yeah, that's the thing. Young people are turning more toward metaphysics these days.
- [36:28]
B
Yeah, Yeah. A lot of tarot readings, a lot of like an AI crystal ball readings.
- [36:35]
A
Oh, Lord.
- [36:37]
B
You definitely deserve another episode, for sure. It's. It's fascinating. Yeah.
- [36:42]
A
So, I mean, your piece also lands in a moment when, you know, the broader US China relationship has turned so sour that even like the most intimate immigrant stories get shaped by this whole thing. Like, you know, ever since the China initiative in 2018 and this whole rising climate of suspicion toward Chinese scientists and engineers, many in the Chinese community here in the US have come to feel very unwelcome, very unsafe even. You add that to the resentment, you know, in America over the so called China shock, it's easy to see how this tragedy would take on, like, symbolic weight beyond Silicon Valley. How have you seen these sort of geopolitical currents refracted in Chinese conversations among writers, among readers of your story, or observers of this case, among parents about what America represents now? I mean, have you seen geopolitics kind of filtering into Chinese conversations about this case and about maybe America More broadly. And are people who you speak with, you know, your parents of peers of yours, readers, are they rethinking the whole chasing the American dream thing now?
- [37:52]
B
Yeah, it's definitely happening. This conversation, this, like, it used to be a no brainer for my generation to come to the States for study and also later for work, but now it's less obvious as a destination choice. And I've had friends who returned to China for better job opportunities even before the pandemic and after the pandemic. But it's also interesting, you know, it's, it's the, the two countries, there's still such a strong interaction between these two. Like I've seen as many people leaving China for the States after the pandemic and as many who like go the other way around who, who leave the US for China. So it's. And also I've seen like conversations on social media about whether like, like my life is such better when I migrated from the US to the, to Japan. Like people. I think in the past it used to be a very simple choice, but now it has become like multiple choices. Like you have so many choices. And I've seen recently a news article talking about how parents in China are contemplating Russia as a destination for their children's education.
- [39:14]
A
Oh Lord. Really?
- [39:15]
B
Yeah.
- [39:16]
A
How very strange. So, Zhongna, I think one of the things that makes this essay of yours so powerful is that you strike a really careful tonal balance. It's very compassionate, but it's also unsparing. It's very reflective, but it doesn't really lapse into sentimentality or into judgment. You give the reader kind of their own space to feel the horror or the pity or the recognition kind of all at once. So maybe you could talk a little bit about how you approached balancing your tone in this, because I want to know what kind of internal guidelines, what kind of internal compass guided your decisions about what voice to use, the level of empathy in writing. Something that's really very morally and emotionally fraught. Right. So I think you did a fantastic job of striking that balance and maybe you could help us to understand what guided you to that.
- [40:09]
B
Sure. And thank you for the kind words. I mean, it's good to know that it's sympathetic but also unsparing. Yeah, I think one of the guiding posts is definitely Joan Didion's writing. I revisited one of her masterpieces, Sentimental Journeys, which she wrote, she wrote about the Central park jogger case back in the 90s, and it was such an excellent piece, not only on the case itself, but also on New York City and its obsession with coming up with narratives to justify its many, many flaws, which still read very, very timely even to this day. And so John Didion was definitely one of the models that I aspired to. I revisited a lot her writings. I usually would even like, read a short passage from her book before, you know, getting. Yeah. And also when I was trying to get ready for this piece, one of the editors at Equator also recommended Janet Malcolm's the Journalist and the Murderer. And I think this classic really lend me some strength in, and also helped me to build more confidence as a writer. Like, I want to do a very thorough job and also so that I have the authority to say, okay, so this is my take on the story. And I, I, I don't want to mislead you into any direction, but I want you to come up with, I want you, the reader, to come up with your own conclusion.
- [41:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, I think you very much succeeded in that. And it was really, it stimulated so much thought as I read through the story, and I thought, my God, this is something I'm going to really need to talk to the author about. And it's really great that we were put in touch with one another from that. So, Jonah, you've written short stories and essays that in very different ways, also explore the emotional undercurrents of life in contemporary China. So for listeners that maybe don't know your fiction, maybe tell us a little bit about it. What themes or questions do you find yourself returning to? And does writing a piece like this for Equator, does that change the way that you think about narrative or about China itself as a subject?
- [42:31]
B
Thank you. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, as a fiction writer, I write about, I write about, first and foremost, Chinese experiences, but I want to write about it in a way that doesn't, that doesn't quite readily meet the expectations of Western editors and readers. I don't want to write about historical events that have nothing to do with the shaping of myself, my identity, and I don't want to, to cater to the market. So I write about the liminal. I write from a liminal space between languages and cultures. I'm currently revising my novella titled Three, which is coming out from Joyland Editions next year. And it's about a fabilized account of a Chinese family as it braced through waves of revolutions of modernization. And also, and until it finally comes to the separation of its family members, the daughter from her parents. And also I'm also, I have another novel that's coming out in 27, which is a historical novel set in 1950s Chinatown, Manhattan. Chinatown, yeah. About an artist who's based on a Ling Chun, the legendary Chinese American novelist.
- [44:00]
A
Sure, sure.
- [44:02]
B
And it explores the conundrum that immigrant artists are. Is usually faced with when they're sort of like, stuck between two expectations. You know, A Ling Chun escaped China censorship, but she came to the US with another kind of expectation. Like, people are pigeonholing her into another kind of dissident writer who's asked to write political work. That's not her passion, you know, so this. In this novel, it's a little bit closer to my heart because it explores the sort of, like, pressures I am constantly faced with, so to speak.
- [44:42]
A
Yeah, that sounds terrific. I really look forward to reading that. I mean, it sounds like something I would be very, very eager to read. So do make sure to send me something when you're ready. Yeah, so at the end of this program, I like to do this section called Recommendations where I ask my guests to recommend something that they've enjoyed. I'm going to insist in your case that you tell me who some of your favorite Chinese writers are writing either in Chinese or in English. It doesn't matter. And some of your favorite works from those writers.
- [45:13]
B
Sure, Let me think. There are so many.
- [45:17]
A
Yeah, yeah, just a couple. I mean, ones that come first to mind that you really, really recommend.
- [45:23]
B
One of my favorite contemporary Chinese writers who recently also switched to English as her working language is Yan Gu. I think her short story collection Elsewhere came out in 2023, I would say. And this short story collection explores, you know, many, many interesting topics, including, you know, the experience of living between languages, like I said, which is why it struck such a chord with me. And also it explores the experiences of living as a stranger in a foreign land. And I think Yengge captures that sort of the sense of isolation, but also the. The potential it holds for someone's growth incredibly and with really wild imagination. And she's the kind of writer whose writing excites a reader, and she's the kind of writer whose prose excites itself. So I would definitely recommend her latest collection Elsewhere, to anyone who might be interested.
- [46:30]
A
Thank you. That's excellent. I'm going to get right out and buy it right away. And do you know if the stories and that were written first in English or were they in Chinese in the. Then translated?
- [46:39]
B
It was her first collection written in English. Yeah.
- [46:42]
A
Okay. Fascinating. Wow, that's really bold. I mean, I would never think to write something in my second language. I Mean, trying to write something in Chinese. I'd fail at it miserably. Fantastic. Fantastic. Recommendation. I am going to. For my recommendation, I'm going to recommend a film called Made in Ethiopia by Xin Yan Yu and Max Duncan, who's a British filmmaker. It looks at the lives of these three women in Ethiopia through whom the story of China in Ethiopia and the whole story of China and Africa is told. It's a really brilliant piece of filmmaking. The cinematography by Max Duncan is fantastic. I hope to have the people who made it actually on Seneca at some point. I've actually worked with her before on a film that we did for Nova with David Borenstein. But I only just met Max really recently and only briefly on a rooftop at King's College in London when I was there a few weeks ago. But I will try to find a way for. I mean, you can watch it. It's on pbs. You have to have a local PBS affiliate and you have to become a member. There's no minimum. Okay, so. Yeah, good, good, good. So you'll be able to see it. It's called Made in Ethiopia. Check it out. And those of you who haven't seen it yet, please watch it on pbs, your local affiliate. And if you're in America, if not, you're kind of shit out of luck. But. But do check it out. It's. It's quite good. Jong Na, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me about your excellent, excellent piece in Equator. And while you're there at Equator, there's just some terrific, terrific essays. I mean, I really look forward to the next issue. They've got a really good thing going over there. There's some great talent from all over the globe that's involved in this. Pankaj Mishra is a name that most of you will know. He's one of the people involved in the editors, and he's the person who first told me about this project. So I'm very excited. And maybe one day I'll get up the courage to submit something myself.
- [48:47]
B
Yeah, please do. I would love to read something from you.
- [48:52]
A
Thanks so much. Thank you. We will catch up with you again soon. I mean, as soon as maybe I've read your novel, I'd love to have you back on the show.
- [49:00]
B
Oh, thank you so much, Kaiser. It's such a pleasure talking to you.
- [49:04]
A
You've been listening to the Cynical podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited and mastered by me. Kaiser Guo support the show through substack@www.cynicalpodcast.com where there is a growing offering of terrific original China related writing and audio. Email me@cynicalpodmail.com if you've got ideas on how you can help out with the show. Don't forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin Madison's center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show this year. Huge thanks to my guest Jong Na. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. Take care. Sam.