China-bashing has been part of the US elections for ages, and in 2016 the ritual is the same, although China has become a much stronger force than in the past and the US candidates have failed to adjust their tone, writes author Zhang Lijia of the upcoming Lotus: A Novel. Few Chinese leaders lose sleep over the US elections, she writes for Aljazeera.Read More →

Author and journalist Zhang Lijia will visit in January the Netherlands, join a panel on China on January 22 and Amsterdam in January 23, 24. That coincides with the publishing of her novel Lotus: A Novel on the position of women and prostitution in China. Starting point were the stories of her grandmother, who was a concubine.Read More →

Forty years after Mao Zedong passed away, the country and its people are still struggling with the legacy of its former leader. Time to get clear on that legacy, writes Zhang Lijia, author of her autobiography”Socialism Is Great!”: A Worker’s Memoir of the New China on her weblog, and time to move on and change into a modern society.Read More →

China´s economy might be slowing down a bit, outbound tourism keeps on booming like before. Chinese tourists spend more per capital than any other natonality. In 2015 120 million Chinese spent in total over 100 billion US dollar, a double digit growth compared to 2014.

While there are some sure winning among the top destinations, Chinese tourists are fast looking for new trends, and the government is able to steer tourist stream to other countries, when political strubbles occur. Both Japan, France and Taiwan had now and then those political problemsRead More →

Zhang Lijia´s upcoming novel Lotus: A Novel will only appear early 2017, but the first raving reviews are already coming in. Renowned Indian author Amitav Ghosh praises the story the main figure migrant Lotus and the way she ends up in prostitution.Read More →

China´s country-side has a generation of left-behind children, children who grew up while their parents worked in the big cities, some with their grandparents, some even alone. Author Zhang Lijia visited four-year old Diandian, who lives with his grandparents and writes up his story at her weblog.Read More →

The 50-year anniversary of the Cultural Revolution has passed mostly in silence. China media mentioned briefly the event was with hindsight not a good idea, much of the families of Chinese leader – including the Xi family – suffered from it, but talking to victims is not easy discovered the Globe&Mail. Author Zhang Lijia comments.Read More →

Author Zhang Lijia enthusiastically reviews on her weblog Eight Juxtapositions: China Through Imperfect Analogies: Penguin Specials by Jeff Wasserstrom. “In the final chapter entitled The People’s Pope and Big Daddy Xi, he compared the Chinese Communist Party with the Catholic Church and the president Xi with the Pope.”Read More →

In her upcoming book Lotus author Zhang Lijia explores the life of Chinese sex workers, taking the life of her grandmother, a concubine, as a starting point. On the weblog Zhen de Gender, she explains what it took to do her research. “Prostitution is just a device, a window to show the tensions and the changes.”Read More →