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Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Book talk with Emily Feng in conversation with Eileen Chow
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Speaker
Emily Feng (T ’15; journalist, author)
The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there—and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression.
In vivid, cinematic detail, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom tells the stories of nearly two dozen people who are pushing back. They include a Uyghur family, separated as China detains hundreds of thousands of their fellow Uyghurs in camps; human rights lawyers fighting to defend civil liberties in the face of mammoth odds; a teacher from Inner Mongolia, forced to make hard choices because of his support of his mother tongue; and a Hong Kong fugitive trying to find a new home and live in freedom.
Reporting despite the personal risks, journalist Emily Feng reveals dramatic human stories of resistance and survival in a country that is increasingly closing itself off to the world. Feng illustrates what it is like to run against the grain in China, and the myriad ways people are trying to survive, with dignity.
During this event, Emily Feng will join Professor Eileen Chow (AMES, APSI) in conversation about her book as well as her career as an acclaimed journalist and writer.
Professor Ralph Litzinger (Cultural Anthropology) will introduce the speaker and moderate the post-conversation Q&A.
Audience members are invited to join Emily for a public book signing of Let Only Red Flowers Bloom following the talk. Books will be available on-site for purchase from the Duke Gothic Bookshop. The book is scheduled to be released on March 18, 2025 from Penguin Random House.
About the speaker:
Emily Feng is an award-winning international correspondent for NPR. She is a regular contributor to NPR podcasts and member stations and a frequent guest on U.S. and BBC radio and television programs.
Previously based in Beijing and Taipei for NPR, Feng now lives in Washington, D.C. She is an alumna of Duke University (T ’15), where she was a double-major in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies as well as Public Policy (Sanford).
About the discussant
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Eileen Cheng-yin Chow 周成蔭 is an Associate Professor of the Practice in Chinese and Japanese Cultural Studies at Duke University and one of the founding directors of Story Lab at Duke. She is currently the Director of Graduate Studies for APSI's East Asian Studies graduate program, and is a founding and core faculty member of the Duke Asian American and Diaspora Studies program.
Eileen is also Director of the Cheng Shewo Institute of Chinese Journalism at Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan 世新大學舍我紀念館與新聞研究中心. She co-directs the Biographical Literature Press and its longstanding Chinese-language history journal, Biographical Literature 傳記文學. Eileen serves on the executive board of the LA Review of Books, and as co-editor of the Duke University Press book series, Sinotheory.
About the moderator
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Ralph Litzinger (moderator) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology. His early research focused on ethnicity, nationalism, and post-socialism in China, and he has published widely on nationality theory in China, memory work, ethnic politics in the post-Cold War global order, gender and film, photography, and popular culture. Other Chinas: the Yao and the Politics of National Belonging (Duke University Press, 2000) was the first major ethnographic study to examine the work and writing of minority intellectuals in the imagining of post-socialist futures.
More recently, Litzinger's research has focused on activism and advocacy work around the environment, labor, migrant education. He has published essays on the transnational and media dimensions of anti-dam protest in southwest China; on global environmental NGOs and the privatization of nature; on self-immolation among Tibetans; on transnational activism directed at Apple and the companies that source its supply chain; and on the emerging field of global media ecologies.
Praise for Let Only Red Flowers Bloom:
“Emily Feng delivers an exquisite, up-to-the-minute portrait of the China you can’t grasp from afar. Her focus on ordinary people—bravely determined to shape their own lives—captures the mood of the Xi Jinping era more essentially than reams of statistics ever can.”—Evan Osnos, National Book Award winner, author of Age of Ambition
“One of the top China correspondents of her generation, Feng faced unremitting harassment to bring these stories to light.”—Barbara Demick, National Book Award finalist for Nothing to Envy and Eat the Buddha
“Through a dozen finely told stories, [Emily Feng] captures the breadth of China and the dilemma that many Chinese feel today: how to get ahead in a country where political conformity is once again stifling some of the country’s most creative young minds.”—Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winner, author of Sparks
“A meticulously researched, beautifully human and often heartbreaking account of what it truly means to be Chinese in Xi Jinping’s China today.”—Isobel Yeung, CNN international correspondent
“An absorbing account from one of the most intrepid China reporters of our times. Through her writing, Emily Feng takes you inside more visions of China than any traveler—and most reporters—could ever encounter.”—Yuan Yang, MP, author of Private Revolutions
“Emily Feng has written a spellbinding book, one that evokes China in all its complexities, beauty, and outrages. Spanning stories from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to the country’s heartland, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is masterfully reported and told.”—Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big Numbers
“In 2022, China barred widely acclaimed journalist Emily Feng from re-entering the country, part of a crackdown on foreign reporters. Undeterred by the ban, Feng settled in Taiwan and has written warm, often searing portraits of ordinary Chinese buffeted by the all-consuming presence of the Communist Party in people’s lives. That theme makes this a must-read about today’s China.”—Jane Perlez, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief
“[Emily Feng’s] deeply personal and sympathetic account of ordinary and extraordinary people struggling under a totalitarian yoke illuminates Xi Jinping’s China in a way that most reporting on the topic cannot. Read this book to understand the human stories behind the headlines.”—Jamil Anderlini, POLITICO Europe’s editor-in-chief
“Let Only Red Flowers Bloom . . . is a brilliant and perceptive meditation on what it means to be Chinese in today’s world, by turns loving and mournful.”—Howard W. French, author of Born in Blackness
“Essential reading for anyone interested in geopolitics—or the world of the near future.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is a moving series of portraits of individuals caught up in the security apparatus of Xi Jinping’s China, a paean to the endangered pluralism and diversity of Chinese identity today.”—Stephen Platt, author of Imperial Twilight and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom