LRCCS Occasional Lecture Series | History as Context for the Present: A Family Story of China’s Coming of Age
Scott Tong, NPR Correspondent, Marketplace Sustainability Desk
If you end up on the wrong side of history, nobody writes yours. Correspondent Scott Tong of Marketplace public radio – and a 2013-14 University of Michigan Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow – talks about China’s long and interrupted opening to the world, told through the lives of five people across five generations in his own family. The stories are told in his new book, A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World.
He begins by pursuing the lives of relatives and ancestors whose names are hardly ever spoken at the family table. The untold stories and history help fill in an oft-ignored chapter in the China story: the contribution of mainlanders who adopted the ideas, music and literature of the outside world. Although A Village with My Name is a personal, historical work of narrative nonfiction, it provides history as context to the present. Tong, who is reporting on the current globalization backlash, will also address issues of national identity, globalization and drawbridges that many in the world are asking right now.
Scott Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries as correspondent for Marketplace, from refugee camps in east Africa to shoe factories in eastern China. He toured the oil sands of Canada and snuck into Burma. Currently he serves as correspondent for Marketplace’s Sustainability Desk, where his coverage focuses on energy, the environment, natural resources and the global economy.
In 2006, Scott opened Marketplace’s first permanent bureau in China, as Shanghai bureau chief. His first book, A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World (University of Chicago Press, 2017), is a personal, journalistic discovery of China’s long and interrupted economic opening. More than a faraway story from a long time ago, it addresses the divisive questions about globalization and drawbridges that many countries are debating today.
His reporting includes special coverage of the 2016-2017 globalization backlash; Water: The High Price of Cheap; Venezuela’s economic collapse; the triumph of the shareholder value model in the U.S. and the Price of Profits; the challenge of long-term job creation in the United States; the 2011 Japan tsunami and recovery; the 2011 famine in the Horn of Africa; and the economics of one child in China. In 2013-14, Scott was awarded the Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Scott joined Marketplace in 2004, after working as a producer and off-air reporter for the PBS NewsHour, where he produced a series of mini-documentaries from Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003. He’s appeared on the PBS NewsHour, the Aspen Ideas Festival and TedxFoggybottom.
A graduate of Georgetown University, Scott is a native of Poughkeepsie, New York. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife Cathy and three children. He is an acknowledged soccer dad and cycles to work at a measured pace.
Cosponsored by the U-M Knight-Wallace Program.
This event is free and open to the public.
He begins by pursuing the lives of relatives and ancestors whose names are hardly ever spoken at the family table. The untold stories and history help fill in an oft-ignored chapter in the China story: the contribution of mainlanders who adopted the ideas, music and literature of the outside world. Although A Village with My Name is a personal, historical work of narrative nonfiction, it provides history as context to the present. Tong, who is reporting on the current globalization backlash, will also address issues of national identity, globalization and drawbridges that many in the world are asking right now.
Scott Tong has reported from more than a dozen countries as correspondent for Marketplace, from refugee camps in east Africa to shoe factories in eastern China. He toured the oil sands of Canada and snuck into Burma. Currently he serves as correspondent for Marketplace’s Sustainability Desk, where his coverage focuses on energy, the environment, natural resources and the global economy.
In 2006, Scott opened Marketplace’s first permanent bureau in China, as Shanghai bureau chief. His first book, A Village with My Name: A Family History of China’s Opening to the World (University of Chicago Press, 2017), is a personal, journalistic discovery of China’s long and interrupted economic opening. More than a faraway story from a long time ago, it addresses the divisive questions about globalization and drawbridges that many countries are debating today.
His reporting includes special coverage of the 2016-2017 globalization backlash; Water: The High Price of Cheap; Venezuela’s economic collapse; the triumph of the shareholder value model in the U.S. and the Price of Profits; the challenge of long-term job creation in the United States; the 2011 Japan tsunami and recovery; the 2011 famine in the Horn of Africa; and the economics of one child in China. In 2013-14, Scott was awarded the Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Scott joined Marketplace in 2004, after working as a producer and off-air reporter for the PBS NewsHour, where he produced a series of mini-documentaries from Iraq following the U.S. invasion in 2003. He’s appeared on the PBS NewsHour, the Aspen Ideas Festival and TedxFoggybottom.
A graduate of Georgetown University, Scott is a native of Poughkeepsie, New York. He lives in Arlington, Virginia with his wife Cathy and three children. He is an acknowledged soccer dad and cycles to work at a measured pace.
Cosponsored by the U-M Knight-Wallace Program.
This event is free and open to the public.
| Building: | Weiser Hall |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Asia, Chinese Studies, History, Media |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies, International Institute, Knight-Wallace Fellows at Michigan, Asian Languages and Cultures |
