Public Programs And Events

The Department of Foreign Languages presents a talk with writer and journalist Zha Jianying, in conversation with Professor Lei Ping, on Chinese Soap Opera and Social Change.

About the speaker:

Zha Jianying is a writer, journalist, and cultural commentator in both English and Chinese. She is the author of two books in English, Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China (named “One of the best books of 2011” by The Economist) and China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture, which was selected by The Village Voice as “One of the 25 Best Books of 1995", as well as five books of non-fiction and fiction in Chinese.

Her work has appeared widely in publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Dushu, and Wanxiang. Her Chinese book Bashiniandai (The Eighties), published in 2006, was selected as the “Best Book of the Year” by numerous mainland Chinese publications.  A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she also has been a regular commentator on current events on Chinese television.

In conversation with Lei Ping, Assistant Professor of Chinese, Schools of Public Engagement.

Lei Ping is an Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the New School University and Research Scholar at India China Institute. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on contemporary Chinese cities and cultural politics, urban land policies in socialist and post-socialist economic development, as well as middle class and consumption of space in China and India. She has written on the everyday life and the socialist project of “remolding” the Shanghai national bourgeoisie in the Mao era. She is particularly interested in the question of the formation, discourse of struggle, and the socio-political role of the middle classes in Chinese and Indian creative economies, and the shifting tensions and relations between the middle classes and the state apparatus in the post-Mao and post-liberalization eras in China and India. Her recent fieldwork engages research topics such as spatial consumption, life-styles, and pastime of the middle classes in the emerging creative economies in Shanghai and New Delhi. Her forthcoming book is titled as “Figures of Capital in Post-1949 Shanghai.”