The latest mass outbreak of COVID-19 in China has impacted people's lives, with over 5000 new cases reported each day this week. While the numbers are small compared with what other countries have experienced during the pandemic, the most recent outbreak is the largest in China since 2020. Many residents in major cities like Shanghai and the tech h…

When people feel confused or uncertain about their lives, some turn to fortune-tellers or psychics for guidance and advice. China has a long tradition of fortune-telling, soothsaying, and even exorcisms and shamanism. Those living in the Northeastern part of the country consult people known as Daxian (大仙), which can be translated as “spirit mediums…

It's an annual tradition. Yajun, Jingjing, and Karoline, the three cohosts of the Wo Men Podcast, got together virtually to discuss their experiences in 2021 and share their memories of the year that was. They also talked about what they were looking forward to most in 2022. Spoiler Alert: They would like to see each other and are hopeful that Chin…

In China, there have been generations that “stood up” (站起来 zhànqǐlai) and generations that “jumped into the sea” (下海 xiàhǎi), but many young people in China today are choosing instead to just “lie down and chill.” The term “Lying Flat” (躺平 tǎngpíng) became popular following a blog post entitled “Lying Flat is Justice” (躺平即是正义 tǎngpíng jíshì zhèngyì…

2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks carried out by the terrorist group Al-Qaeda against targets in the United States. Over 3000 people died as a result, and the world was forever changed. Since then, the United States has faced many challenges, including a long-running military occupation of Afghanistan, which ended only thi…

When most people think about China in the 21st century, they picture the big coastal megacities like Beijing or Shanghai. But that’s only a small part of the picture. For this episode, we traveled out west to Qinghai Province, which has an area the size of France but a population of just six million people. The region where Qinghai and southern Gan…

Are you tired of big city life? Ever think of escaping the noise, dust, and exhausting pace of life for a slice of the country? For many young people in China, work means 12-hour days, six days a week, with a long and crowded commute to and from work. No wonder so many people are considering trading urban living for a rural lifestyle. In recent yea…

The Medical Aesthetics industry (what your grandmother calls “plastic surgery”) is booming in China. According to Deloitte, China's aesthetic medicine market grew from 65 billion yuan (US$10 billion) in 2015 to 175 billion yuan in 2019. That’s three times faster than the global industry average. Why are Chinese women -- and men -- so crazy about be…

While many companies have felt the impact of Covid-19, some courageous entrepreneurs in China are still willing to take risks and launch new ventures in this time of global economic fluctuations. Our guest today, Lysa Wei, is one of them. In 2020, Lysa started her own company bringing hard seltzer to the China market. Low-calories and sugar-free, h…

The LGBTQ+ community in China is largely out of sight, and awareness of ideas relating to sexual equality is still very low. Ying, who calls herself Iron, is a feminist, activist, and director of the Beijing LGBT Center. She is one of the most prominent activists promoting LGBT rights in China and has played a vital role in arranging mental health …

Many people have thought about quitting their 9-to-5 job to travel around the world, but few people carry out their plan. One couple made it happen and found a new career inspiration and life direction along the way. Faye and Celyn live in Beijing. Faye worked at a Chinese agricultural company. Celyn (celynbricker.com) was an artist who had always …

How do you do it? Where do you find the time? Women in leadership positions are frequently asked how they balance family life and their career. Which makes us wonder: why don’t we ask the same questions of male executives? Is it less of an issue for men, or are they just more reluctant to talk about work-life balance, fearing that it might not conf…

Schools all over China have signs and banners exhorting students to hao hao xuexi, tiantian shang shang ("Study hard and make progress every day"). Being a kid -- or a parent! -- in China means a lot of pressure to compete and succeed and the educational system is built around the college entrance exams. Students sacrifice their childhood and freed…

It seems like every email we have received recently begins with “In this challenging year…” Well 2020, your time is almost up. You only have a few days left before we turn the page to 2021. Every year at this time, we look back on the year that was and talk about our plans for the future. In this episode, Yajun, Jingjing, and Karoline discuss survi…

Over the past few weeks, the US election has dominated the news worldwide, even in China. Chinese people have been fascinated to watch an odd political soap opera unfold in the United States beginning with the election of Donald Trump back in 2016. Four years later, despite harsh rhetoric and aggressive policies directed at China, Trump still has s…

China’s economy is getting back to normal. However, the outbreak of Covid-19 still changed many people’s lives forever. Some of them were fired while others spent months job hunting, and many more used the crisis to re-value the things they used to take for granted. Life almost one year after the first case of coronavirus is permanently different f…

For many people worldwide, the protests in Hong Kong have been a news story in a year full of news. But the demonstrations and political crisis have deeply affected Hong Kongers dividing the city and even families. Michelle is from Hong Kong but living in Japan and has been arguing with her girlfriend – who is from mainland China – about the protes…

2020 has been a challenging year. Many families experienced an incredible sense of loss, sadness, and desperation as they lost family members to Covid-19. Meanwhile, other families welcomed new life who brought love and hope during a difficult time. Our co-host, Jingjing, and our close friend, Annie, each gave birth this year and it was not easy. T…

The Covid-19 Pandemic has affected many people’s lives and had a detrimental impact on businesses around the world. But some industries have inadvertently benefited from the outbreak — such as pornography. Even though porn is legally prohibited in China, such restrictions don’t stop many people from looking for adult content, most of the time by us…

In a recent podcast episode, we discussed how Covid-19 changed the outlook when it came to China’s consumption boom. As a part of the generation that had taken supercharged economic development for granted and had never worried about financial stability, the potential impact of Covid-19 on the economy also requires us to rethink our finances. In th…

To many readers of English-language media, “news assistant” is an unfamiliar term. Yet the people operating in this role are often integral to many overseas outlets’ coverage of China. Also sometimes referred to as “news researchers,” they are Chinese citizens working as journalists for foreign media who often do far more than mere research and yet…

As China continues to recover from the Covid-19 crisis, some experts expected to see a strong consumption rebound in recent weeks. However, it didn’t happen. Instead, the amount of saving in the first quarter of 2020 surged in China. Many Chinese, including the post-’90 and post-’00 generations who are used to living paycheck to paycheck, have star…

While the world is suffering from the global pandemic of novel coronavirus Covid-19, Jingjing talks to Donna, a Chinese student studying in the UK. In this episode, Donna shares her perspectives on life under lockdown overseas, including how she ended up getting military food and her experience with racism in the UK.…

When her hometown went into lockdown, Yuli Wang decided to help send messages of hope and support from around the world to Wuhan citizens. Yuli Yang, a journalist born and raised in Wuhan, shared with us her #GoWuhan social media campaign launched right after the Covid-19 outbreak began making international headlines. She and a group of volunteers …

As China continues to deal with novel coronavirus Covid-19, it’s clear that this crisis wasn’t only a test of China’s governance and public health system. It was also a challenge to the resilience of many businesses in the country, particularly small and medium enterprises. What are the biggest challenges they are facing and what kind of measures c…

The novel coronavirus Covid-19 has taken hundreds of lives and caused disruption and psychological damage throughout China and — increasingly — across the world. With millions still under lockdown and self-imposed quarantine within China, and many Chinese unable to return home at an important time of year due to travel restrictions, Wǒ Men hosts Ji…

Last week, before the break out of the coronavirus, much of the world’s attention focused on Davos, a little European ski resort town in Switzerland where this year the World Economic Forum celebrated its 50 year anniversary and welcomed more than 3,000 political, business and other leaders. Jingjing and Yajun, the two co-hosts of Wǒ Men Podcast, m…

Podcast hosts Yajun Zhang and Jingjing Zhang come together at the start of 2020 to discuss their hopes, aspirations, and resolutions for the New Year.

This year more than 220,000 Chinese people sent online endorsements of gay marriage to China’s top legislative body, arguing for a same-sex marriage amendment to be made to China’s marriage laws. For the system to change in China, the LGBTQ+ community needs allies. Olivia Wang explains to us how she takes action to support the LGBTQ community by at…

China dominates global headlines right now — and few of those headlines are positive. But is fear of the country justified? How to separate the people, the government, and the Party? And what impact is the breakdown in dialogue between China and the English-speaking world having on Chinese living and travelling abroad? Hosts Jingjing, Karoline, and…

Have you done lots of shopping on Double 11? The reason we ask is that 11/11, also known as Singles Day, has become China’s biggest online shopping holiday and become the Chinese retailer equivalent of Black Friday in the west. Is Singles Day still a culture phenomenon in China where if you have not participated, you feel you would be left out? I h…

This week, we have a special guest — who for the purposes of the recording we’re calling “C” — who bravely came forward to share her deeply sad personal experience of being a victim of sexual assault when she was just 4 years old. Through discussing this horrendous experience, this episode looks at the underlying problems in some rural and underedu…

Life is not always fair, particularly in a dramatically changing society such as China. While many children from one child families in China enjoy the undivided attention of their parents, others need to fight for themselves to achieve a better future. Cai, our anonymous guest for this episode, was given a faulty vaccine shot as a small child in ru…

Have you ever thought about the true price of your morning cappuccino? It’s more than the five dollars you pay at the cafe on the street corner. The global coffee industry is worth 100 billion USD and rising. But the huge industry profits from the second-most traded commodity in the world are not trickling down to the people who grow the beans. Cof…

This is an encore episode originally released November 2, 2018 Annie recently changed her Chinese given name from Yating (雅婷) to Yiling (奕绫) based on the instruction of a part-time fortune telling master (who incidentally holds a full-time job as a private equity investor). Even though Annie has a well paid and highly regarded job and is in a lovin…

On the latest Wǒ Men Podcast, we are joined by feminist activist Zhang Leilei, who has played an important role in numerous feminist campaigns in China, including raising awareness around sexual harassment and gender equality. Zhang’s journey as an activist began when she was in university. Now aged 26, she has been a prominent figure in China’s ri…

Jocelyn Ford, a reporter, filmmaker, and educator, has dedicated her life to covering rarely-covered female-centric stories. She pushed the Japanese Prime Minister’s press office to build the first lady’s room in the building in the 1990s. She was one of the first reporters in Japan to cover the topic of WWII comfort women and forced the Japanese g…

The teaser trailer for Disney’s live-action movie Mulan has sparked a lot of discussion on Chinese social media since it was released in early July. The one-and-a-half minute teaser drew hundreds of thousands of comments on Chinese microblogging site Weibo. Many netizens say they are “satisfied” with the appearance of the first Chinese Disney princ…

This is a recording Jingjing made when she attended an event in Los Angeles in October 2018 called SlutWalk. Slut Walk is a movement calling for an end to rape culture, including victim blaming and slut shaming of sexual assault victims. She interviewed a sex worker who attends SlutWalk every year calling on people to respect women for who they are…

Would you be able to ride a bicycle for eight months along the ancient Silk Road through 13 countries, while interviewing tech companies and hosting workshops along the way? Eva Yoo, an international cyclist and writer, just accomplished exactly this feat — and she’s the subject of our latest podcast episode. Born in Korea, Eva has worked in five c…

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 …

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…

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 Ch…

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 cultu…

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 Hop…

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 mot…

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…

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 con…

(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. …

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. Hopeful…