Wo Men Podcast

The Wǒ Men Podcast is a discussion of life in China hosted by Yajun Zhang, Jingjing Zhang and Karoline Kan. Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men Podcast can be found here, and you can subscribe to Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

Against the backdrop of the China-US trade war, the recent "debate" between two presenters from opposing sides of the argument — Trish Regan from the Trump-supporting Fox network and Liu Xin from State-owned Chinese media platform CGTN — attracted a lot of eyeballs.

What materialized was ultimately more of a conversation than a debate, yet it was refreshing to see China's State media engaging in a direct conversation with an international audience and attempting to share its perspective directly into the homes of audiences in the US.

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But what's at the root of the perception that China is afraid engaging of in difficult conversations? What's going wrong with China's so-called soft power project? And is there a better way to tell a good China story?

In the latest Wǒ Men Podcast, Jingjing and Karoline share their own experiences and observations regarding China's attempts at storytelling and soft power and how these have evolved in recent years.

Living in an economic and sustainable way is not new in China. Actually, most of our parents and grandparents are still enjoying this kind of lifestyle. They use the same basin of water to wash vegetables, and then to water the plants. They take all their leftover food from the restaurant home. They wear the same clothes for years.

They don't waste anything.

However, the younger Chinese generation is totally brainwashed by consumerism and lured by the convenience of easy access to food and services. They buy piles of useless stuff during Single's Day sales and rely on food delivery services for their three meals a day which generates a huge amount of plastic packaging. The earth cannot bear the burden of a big country like China consuming and generating waste at the speed in which we do today.

Are we doomed?

Carrie Yu, the co-founder of The Bulk House, has a solution: living a zero waste life. Carrie dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and came to Beijing by herself. When she was then kicked out of her rental house, it made her rethink her whole lifestyle. Buying lots of cheap stuff and generating a lot of waste didn't make her happy, so she changed. She is now not only living a zero waste life in Beijing, but she has also started her own company to promote a sustainable lifestyle.

Today, she shares her life experience with us.

In late March, the Chinese tech world was rocked by protests from workers against startups' "996" work culture (the idea that employees should work from 9am-9pm 6 days a week). Although the initial wave of interest in a protest page set up on GitHub has subsided somewhat, the controversy over tech companies' employment practices has continued in China.

Discussions on the topic have examined it from an array of angles, from its legal and ethical status to the mentality and reality of "working hard to gain a better life".

In this Wǒ Men Podcast episode, we take a different approach to discussing 996 by inviting Cynthia He, a senior executive of a number of US-listed technology companies, to look at the underlying societal rationale behind this working culture.

The international community in China is changing.

Chinese still stereotype expatriates as hanging out in bar districts, commute on an old fashioned bicycle and live in a traditional neighborhood such as Beijing's hutong alleyways.

But how do the younger generation of overseas students and expats live in China and immerse themselves in Chinese culture?

In the latest Wo Men Podcast, Jingjing and Yajun sit down with Katharina Kempf to learn about her amazing journey in China. She talks about how she became fluent in the Chinese language in just three years, her passion for Chinese pop stars, and how she brings Chinese culture back to her home country.

After nearly two years producing the Wo Men Podcast, Yajun and Jingjing are excited to announce that author and former New York Times researcher and writer Karoline Kan has joined the Wo Men podcast team.

Karoline was the guest on our previous episode discussing her debut work of non-fiction, Under Red Skies: Three Generations of Life, Loss and Hope in China.

Karoline was born in Tianjin in 1989 and studied at Beijing International Studies University. After graduating she worked for three years at That's Beijing, writing long-form features in English about Chinese people's lives in a society shaped by a changing culture, economy and politics. She then worked at Radio France International, focusing more on hard news, which helped her develop a better understanding of China from different angles. From summer 2016 to the end of 2018, she worked for The New York Times in Beijing and is now an editor at China Dialogue.

Karoline has also contributed to various other publications including Foreign Policy, Roads and Kingdoms, The World Policy and The Anthill, writing from her perspective about Chinese politics, history, ethnic policies and other social issues.

With Karoline, we are expanding our coverage and our ability to present a China to the world from the perspective of Chinese women. Each of us was born and grew up in China, but we all bring our own perspectives and ideas. Karoline is one of the very few Chinese millennial women writing in the English language and she's looking forward to sharing stories of China's younger generation.

The Wo Men podcast is looking forward to bringing more new stories from a changing China to you. If you enjoy what you here, join the conversation! Send us your thoughts, suggestions, and ideas to us via twitter @women_podcast or by email at [email protected].

Karoline Kan is a second child born among the one-child generation in 1989. In order to give birth to her, her mother hid from local officials for almost ten months. But the challenges didn't end there — to her paternal grandparents, she was an unwanted girl, an idea that shadowed her whole childhood.

Yet she was also a lucky girl with a strong mother who pushed the family out of a remote Chinese village and completely changed Karoline's life by providing her with the best education she could. In her late twenties, Karoline, a girl with a humble background, became an author and international journalist for The New York Times.

Recently, she published Under Red Skies, widely touted as the first English-language memoir written by a Chinese millennial.

We were honored to interview her this past weekend at the Yenching Global Symposium hosted by the Yenching Academy of Peking University. On this live episode, Karoline talks about the millennial generation in China and foreign media's coverage of this group. She also talks about how numerous historical incidents have impacted her and her generation and shaped who they are today.

Originally broadcast February 2018

China has transformed greatly over the last few decades, and Chinese New Year has also come to mean very different things from generation to generation.

When our parents were children in the 1960s, their pleasure at this time of year was being able to finally enjoy vegetable balls fried with the oil that the whole family had been saving for the entire year. By contrast, when we were kids in the 1980s, meat dishes, sweets, new clothes and endless playtime with our cousins made the Chinese New Year the happiest time of the whole year.

Today, we can purchase imported food and new clothes on e-commerce platforms every day. Material pleasure doesn't thrill us anymore. Instead, the New Year has become an obligatory time to face relatives' constant questions about why we don't have boyfriends/girlfriends, or if we do, why we don't have babies yet.

On this episode of the podcast, we recall our memories and discuss all of the interesting and weird (and superstitious) customs and traditions that surround Chinese New Year in our own families, particularly in the old days.

Do you know when is the proper time to eat dumplings on New Year's Eve? Do you know why you are supposed to wear red during the New Year? Do you know what tricks there are to make sure you'll stay out of trouble in the coming year (at least, the ones that Yajun's grandma believed in)? You can answer all of the above questions in this episode.

Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men podcast can be found here, and you can find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

Have thoughts or feedback to share? Want to join the discussion? Write to Yajun and Jingjing at [email protected].

The World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland is one of the most prominent meetings of world leaders, business executives and scholars to discuss pressing international topics and issues. Many of us hear about it from afar, either from media coverage or our Twitter/WeChat feeds. But what does Davos really look like? How is the conference put together? And with the US-China relationship currently in a somewhat tense place, what do people talk about at Davos?

As a member of the Global Programming team of the World Economic Forum, Wǒ Men Podcast host Yajun helped to design and select the speakers for some of the 300 public sessions, particularly on the topics related to China. For this episode, she takes us inside Davos, shares her observations and interviews some of her colleagues who try to move the needle in a positive direction on major international topics. She also shares her view on perceptions of China at the conference and how China can better engage on the international stage.

Please do listen to the end of the episode and imagine Yajun walking on the street covered in snow wearing heavy snow boots in the dark and worrying about falling on the street. (Actually, she did fall and bruised herself, but compared with four other colleagues who fell and broke their arms and legs, she was quite lucky.)

(Note: This special encore episode was originally released on December 17, 2017)

Along our career paths, we face so many challenges and choices.

How can I make the best decisions for myself? This is a question that bothers us for the majority of our youth. Growing up in the '70s, '80s or even '90s, we don't have role models for career development.

Looking back, our parents' generation — who received professional training under China's planned economy — was very much used to the idea of going to work from 8 am to 5 pm, and believed in doing the assigned job diligently. They were not aware of the difference between a job and a career.

In addition to that, working overtime was an alien idea to them: why should one work so hard for their employers, as it is the employer who benefits, not each individual?

Our generation grew up in a reformed China, where more job opportunities had been created, new industries were developing, and Western values like "career development" had flooded in. However, we are pretty much on our own to navigate these changes, and learn how to build our careers.

Jackie You

Without realizing it, we've stepped on a career development treadmill, where we believe the only direction to go is forward. As we march ahead and grow older, we accumulate more and more baggage — families, mortgages, and children's tuition all become factors dominating our career choices. Is that the only path we're destined to take? Is there another option?

Jackie You's response to these questions is clear and sound: No, don't let these factors affect your choices. You should follow your heart!

Jackie is an ex-investment banker, former CFO of a US publicly listed company, and an entrepreneur. On our latest episode, Jackie uses her personal experience to explain why your heart knows better than your mind when it comes to certain life choices — according to her, when your heart points you in one direction, you should just go with it.

Previous episodes of the Wǒ Men podcast can be found here, and you can find Wǒ Men on iTunes here.

Have thoughts or feedback to share? Want to join the discussion? Write to Yajun and Jingjing at [email protected].

Before we even realized, 2018 has reached its end. It is the time to take a break and look at what we have accomplished or missed in the last year and make a resolution for the new year.

In 2018, both Jingjing and Yajun have experienced some ups and downs. We are using this episode to reflect on our lives and to share our thoughts with you. Hopefully, it can provide some perspective for our audience who may have similar experiences.

Last but not least, we want to thank all our listeners for your support in 2018 and wish everyone a very happy 2019!

See you in the new year!