Podcast Crossover: Rough Translation and China's Anti-Work Vibes

08/24/22 • 43 min

We're proud to present our last summer cross post with NPR's Rough Translation! In this episode, host Gregory Warner talks to reporter Emily Feng about the rise of anti-work culture in China. While you may have heard about the term 躺平 or "lying flat", Emily delves into 丧文化, or the sang subculture, which embodies cynicism and defeatism in response to China's particular flavor of late-stage capitalism. Later in the episode, Emily discusses how the Chinese government is trying to stamp out the anti-work vibes by using an internet star to shift the narrative.
This episode is part of Rough Translation's special @Work series.
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We're proud to announce our new podcast producers who've joined our team! Saga Ringmar (@saga_ringmar) is our new senior producer and Lauren Lau (@laurenflau) is our new associate producer. Learn more about Saga and Lauren at nuvoices.com

Previous Episode

Taiwan and US Foreign Policy with Meia and Veerle Nouwens

This week we’re interrupting our summer hiatus to bring you insight into US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan the most senior elected US official to visit Taiwan in a quarter of a century. In retaliation, China has engaged its military in days of drills that escalated tensions to their highest in years.
What did Nancy Pelosi hope to achieve by going to Taiwan and can we say that the trip was a success? How will this visit affect China-US relations and what are the pros and cons of the vague U.S foreign policy towards Taiwan, the so-called “strategic ambiguity”?
To unpack all of this and much more, we talk to twin sisters Meia Nouwen and Veerle Nouwens.

Meia is a senior fellow for Chinese Defence Policy and Military Modernisation, and the Defence and Military Analysis Programme, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think tank. She helps us dig deeper into what China’s display of force can tell us about its military capabilities and how far China has to go before they’re ready for a full-fledged invasion.

Veerle is a senior research fellow for Asia Studies and head of the Indo-Pacific Programme at the International Security Studies department of the Royal United Services Institute focusing on geopolitical relations in the Indo-Pacific region.
Sophia Yan, China correspondent for The Telegraph and NuVoices Board member, hosts this week’s episode.
This episode was produced by Saga Ringmar with help from Lauren Lau, our newest podcast team members! Big kudos for their first episode.

Next Episode

A Conversation with Emily Feng, NPR's Beijing Correspondent

We're kicking off our fall 2022 season with a special conversation between Emily Feng of NPR and Joanna Chiu, NüVoices chair and co-founder.
In this episode, Emily walks us through her hard-hitting reporting from the frontlines in Ukraine to a viral controversy surrounding her radio report on 螺螄粉 luósīfěn, snail noodles.
Emily also discusses the beginning of her journalism career in China—from freelancing, landing a job at the Financial Times, and eventually becoming NPR's Beijing correspondent in 2019, where she is still based today.
We also get a behind-the-scenes look at how Emily reported her Rough Translation episode on 丧文化, the sang subculture, which took the Chinese internet by storm last year. (Check out your podcast feed where we crossposted this episode on August 24th, 2022. A special thank you NPR and Rough Translation!)