“Lust, Life, and Liberty in Contemporary China: A Chinese Writer’s Perspective”- A Conversation with Lijia Zhang

Join the BCGU for a conversation and Q&A with Lijia Zhang moderated by Professor Cristina Zaccarini, PhD, Dept of History. Refreshments will be served.

Lijia Zhang (author of “Lotus” and “Socialism is Great”) is a writer, columnist and public speaker, and one of the relatively few Chinese social commentators who write in English for international publications. Her articles on China’s social, cultural and political changes have been published in South China Morning Post, Far Eastern Economic Review, Japan Times, The Guardian, Newsweek and The New York Times.

Lijia’s first book, “Socialism is Great!” (Penguin Books 2009), is a memoir about her experience of being dragged out of school in the 1980s’ and put to work at a military factory that produced intercontinental missiles. The memoir also reflects on the great economic and social transformation in China brought by the reforms and opening up under President Deng Xiaoping.

She then wrote her first fiction project “Lotus” (Macmillan 2017), the story of a young woman working in the sex industry in modern-day Shenzhen, known as China’s “capital of sins.” Like the city itself, Lotus is torn between the past tradition and modern desires.

For any questions, please contact Bhisé Center for Global Understanding, at 516.877.3167, or bcgu@adelphi.edu

Sponsored by the Bhise Center for Global Understanding and co-sponsored by the History Department.