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A Journey from Mao’s China to San Francisco’s Chinatown in Vanessa Hua’s ‘Forbidden City’

Novelist and journalist Vanessa Hua’s new book “Forbidden City” is a historical fiction set in 1960s China. It’s the story of a 16-year-old girl who was plucked from a rural village to join a troupe of dancers formed to satisfy an aging Chairman Mao’s – historically accurate – love of ballroom dance and teenage girls. Hua writes in the author’s notes, “I believe that fiction flourishes where the official record ends”; the novel leaves the impression that even if the woman at the center of the book were real, she would have been erased from history. We’ll talk about the dynamics of gender, power and manipulation that resonate across time and geography. “The past,” Hua writes, “is never as distant as it seems.”see more
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Forum (Rebroadcast)
8:20 pm – 9:00 pmForum (Rebroadcast)

A Journey from Mao’s China to San Francisco’s Chinatown in Vanessa Hua’s ‘Forbidden City’

Novelist and journalist Vanessa Hua’s new book “Forbidden City” is a historical fiction set in 1960s China. It’s the story of a 16-year-old girl who was plucked from a rural village to join a troupe of dancers formed to satisfy an aging Chairman Mao’s – historically accurate – love of ballroom dance and teenage girls. Hua writes in the author’s notes, “I believe that fiction flourishes where the official record ends”; the novel leaves the impression that even if the woman at the center of the book were real, she would have been erased from history. We’ll talk about the dynamics of gender, power and manipulation that resonate across time and geography. “The past,” Hua writes, “is never as distant as it seems.”see more
Radio Schedule
Latest Newscasts:KQEDNPR
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Science

A man with white skin wearing jeans and a blue-and-white checked shirt pulls on ropes to load a stack of hay bales onto his truck. Trees ring a brown field in the background, under a blue sky with thin white clouds.
Severe Drought in Sacramento Valley Slams Farmers, Salmon and Migratory Birds
Sacramento Valley growers protected for decades by their water rights are suffering for the first time during this record-breaking drought. Wildlife refuges are struggling, too.
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