Luna Tian
1. PrologueIn July 2022, at 2 a.m., Zhang Wen (a pseudonym) lay in bed scrolling through his phone. A news piece about protests by rural bank depositors unsettled him. After some hesitati...
Luna Tian
I. A Country That Feeds Millions, But Fails to Feed SafelyOn the morning of July 2, 2023, a story broke in The Beijing News that should have stopped the country in its tracks. It was abou...
Luna Tian“They protect the land. The land protects them. Now both are on trial.”
In the dry, wind-scarred plains of Inner Mongolia’s Urat Front Banner, 78-year-old Jiren Huoyar walks the earth of h...
Luna Tian
I. The War Reaches the CensorsOn a winter evening in early 2022, the Chinese actress and former talk show host Jin Xing posted a simple message on Weibo: “No war.” It was a rare moment of...
Luna Tian
I. When the Water Came, It Chose a CityIn the early hours of August 1st, 2023, the city of Zhuozhou—a modest northern town with a population of 650,000—woke to find itself underwater.
Res...
Luna Tian
Sometimes I wonder—oh, in this society, doing something completely normal is enough to make you an outlier.I didn’t do anything big. I just cut through a few locks. I only wanted to step...
Luna TianFor the safety and privacy of those involved, some names have been changed.
Prologue: A Night of ViolenceIn the early hours of June 10, 2022, a brutal act of gender-based violence shook Ch...
Luna Tian
“I want to see the world, but I keep hitting a wall.”— Comment under Namewee’s song “Outside the Wall”
When Malaysian rapper and filmmaker Namewee released his song Outside the Wall, he l...
Luna Tian
1. Can Karaoke Overthrow a Regime?—Carnivalesque Protest and the New Role of MusicIn 2014, one night in Hong Kong looked like this: a few tents, some lanterns, and a group of young people...
Luna Tian
“For the big questions, Dajia lived—and for the big questions, Dajia died.” — Jia Jia, founding editor
I. A New Level of SilenceAs China entered its second year of the COVID-19 pandemic...