Emily Feng
Emily Feng is NPR's Beijing correspondent.
Feng joined NPR in 2019. She roves around China, through its big cities and small villages, reporting on social trends as well as economic and political news coming out of Beijing. Feng contributes to NPR's newsmagazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms.
Previously, Feng served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. Based in Beijing, she covered a broad range of topics, including human rights and technology. She also began extensively reporting on the region of Xinjiang during this period, becoming the first foreign reporter to uncover that China was separating Uyghur children from their parents and sending them to state-run orphanages, and discovering that China was introducing forced labor in Xinjiang's detention camps.
Feng's reporting has also let her nerd out over semiconductors and drones, travel to environmental wastelands, and write about girl bands and art. She's filed stories from the bottom of a coal mine; the top of a mosque in Qinghai; and from inside a cave Chairman Mao once lived in.
Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards in 2018, recognized by the Amnesty Media Awards in February 2019 and won a Human Rights Press merit that May. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China earned her another Human Rights Press Award, was recognized by the National Headliners Award, and won a Gracie Award. She was also named a Livingston Award finalist in 2021.
Feng graduated cum laude from Duke University with a dual B.A. degree from Duke's Sanford School in Asian and Middle Eastern studies and in public policy.
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In his forthcoming book, The Party's Interests Come First, American University professor Joseph Torigian writes about Xi Jinping's father, Xi Zhongxun, a noted Chinese politician himself. -
Syrian soccer player Abdel Basset al-Sarout became the poster child for the Syrian revolution with his iconic protest anthems. In death, he has become its saint. But he didn't do it alone. -
Music is a big part of Taiwan's culture. The island even has its own special type of opera. In one temple, a small theater troupe is preparing a special performance -- just for the gods.
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A tiny Taiwanese archipelago of islands embodies the complicated relationship between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.
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What it means to be "Taiwanese" varies from one generation to the next, influenced by the island's complicated history with China. NPR talks with members of one family across generations.
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Turkey isn't a Thanksgiving dish on Taiwan: it's a common topping over rice. Turkey became big in Taiwan, which has a lot to do with the U.S.
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Flash floods and years of unusual rainfall — likely linked to climate change — are degrading ancient cave art along China's historic silk road at a rapid pace.
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More than 100 accusations of sexual harassment and assault have rocked Taiwan's media, music and political circles — showing the gap between laws meant to protect victims and their implementation.
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Tania Branigan, once China correspondent for the Guardian, makes the strongest English-language effort yet to reconstruct what it was like to live through, and then with, this part of Chinese history. -
A New Year's Day tradition returns without pandemic restrictions. Mechanical engineering student Benny Cruz describes the design and construction of the float he'll be driving.
