We talked to the author of "Tongueless" about how Cantonese is disappearing from Hong Kong schools, and what literature can do to raise awareness.

Our guest this month is Lau Yee-Wa, one of Hong Kong's most exciting emerging fiction writers, whose debut novel Tongueless (The Feminist Press, 2024) came out in English last summer, translated by Jennifer Feeley. Lau studied literature and then philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she also started writing poetry. She worked as an editor in a publishing house, and her 2016 short story "The Shark" won the Hong Kong Champion Award for Creative Writing. Tongueless (失语) is her first novel, published in 2019 in Chinese. We were delighted to be joined by Lau Yee-wa to talk about the novel, Hong Kong identity, language and education, and the changes that has been undergoing in recent years.

The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire, a digital business platform that also publishes The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to editor[at]chinabooksreview.com.

As 2025 gets into gear, all eyes are on the year ahead, with a degree of trepidation (or excitement, depending on whom you ask) for the early impacts of the incoming Trump administration on U.S.-China relations, and global politics at large. From the Ukraine war to possibility of conflict across the Taiwan Strait, not to mention economic and diplomatic conflict across the Pacific, it’s a fresh era of uncertainty.

To unpack these risks, our guest this month is the academic and author Oriana Skylar Mastro, whose research focuses on Chinese military policy and Asia-Pacific security. She is Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her most recent book, Upstart: How China Became a Great Power (Oxford University Press, 2024), tells the story of China’s rise and it’s military modernization, as well as the challenge that presents to the U.S. She talked about China’s switch from emulation to entrepreneurship; her thoughts on relations with China under Trump; and why she thinks war over Taiwan is unlikely in the next four years.

The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire, a digital business platform that also publishes The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to editor[at]chinabooksreview.com.

The American socialite Wallis Simpson is best known as the wife of former British king Edward VIII. When they announced their intention to marry, her status as a divorcée (and an American) caused a constitutional crisis that led to Edward's abdication in 1936. But long before that, Simpson's adventures had led her to spend a year in interwar China, from 1924-25, while fleeing her abusive first husband and allegedly transporting U.S. diplomatic documents. Later maligned by the British press for this "lotus year," the truth of Simpson's China sojourn reveals much about the chaotic state of the nation in the 1920s, and attitudes toward it — and foreigners living there — from outside.

Our guest on the podcast this month is Paul French, a British writer who lived in Shanghai in the 1990s and 2000s, where he ran a market research firm. He is the author of several books on modern Chinese history, including the bestselling Midnight in Peking (Viking, 2012) and City of Devils (Picador, 2018). His latest title, Her Lotus Year: China, the Roaring Twenties, and the Making of Wallis Simpson (St Martin’s Press, 2024), tells the full story of Simpson's China year, long before her tryst with King Edward VIII caused a scandal worthy of Harry and Megan. French talked to us about the political backdrop to this personal drama, what it shows about the status of foreigners in China, and the state of the “China book” in general.

The China Books Podcast is a companion of China Books Review, a project of Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations and The Wire, a digital business platform that also publishes The Wire China. For any queries or comments, please write to editor[at]chinabooksreview.com.