Jianying Zha

Jianying Zha or Zha Jianying (; born 1959) is a Chinese American writer, journliast, and media critic. She writes and publishes in both English and Chinese.

Born in Beijing, Jianying Zha was educated in China and the United States. She is a contributor to The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Life and career Zha was born in Beijing in 1959 to a family of intellectuals; her father, Zha Ruqiang, was a philosophy professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, specilising in the studies of Engels. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution, experienced home ransack of her own, and saw families torn apart.

In 1978, Zha enrolled in the first class of students at the newly reopened Peking University. , and considered it "a devastatingly direct and detailed testimony on the physical and mental abuse an entire imprisoned intellectual community suffered." and Liu Xiaobo, leading to a full Hong Kong release; the excised sections had previously appeared in The New Yorker and circulated briefly online in China before deletion.

Works

Books written in English China pop: how soap operas, tabloids, and bestsellers are transforming a culture. New York: New Press, 1995. Tide players: the movers and shakers of a rising China. New York: New Press, 2011.

Books written in Chinese 到美国去，到美国去！(Dào Měiguó qù, dào Měiguó qù!; Going to America, Going to America! ) Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe (作家出版社), 1991. 留美故事（Liú Měi Gùshì; Stories of Studying in America) Shijiazhuang: Huashan wenyi chubanshe 花山文艺出版社，2003 八十年代访谈录 (Ba shi nian dai fang tan lu; The Eighties) Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2006.