Emily Feng
Emily Feng is a White House correspondent at NPR. Previously, she was a foreign correspondent for NPR covering China, Taiwan, and beyond.
Feng joined NPR in 2019. Before that, Feng served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times, based in Beijing.
Feng's reporting has brought her all over East and Southeast Asia and the Middle East. She's filed stories from the bottom of a coal mine, inside a sauna in Ukraine, on a half-finished boat in the South China Sea, and inside a cave Chairman Mao once lived in.
Her book, "Let Only Red Flowers Bloom," published by Crown, came out in 2025. Based on a decade of reporting from the Asia Pacific, the book chronicles how ordinary people are redefining Chinese identity and the state's preoccupation with identity. Her second book, "Our Hearts Burned For Home," set for publication in October 2026, unearths the story of Uyghur exiles who fled China's expanding police state — only to become a pivotal force behind the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.
Feng's work from Taiwan was awarded a citation from the Overseas Press Club award in 2025. She's also been awarded Boston University's Hugo Shong Reporting Asia Award, the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize, given to a rising public media journalist 35 years of age or younger, and the Shorenstein Journalism Award for her overall reporting on the Asia Pacific.
Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards and won two Human Rights Press awards. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China was recognized by the National Headliners Award, and she spearheaded coverage that has won two Gracie Awards. 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.
She can be reached via encrypted message at emilyzfeng.96 on Signal.
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As a Syrian glassmaker created his wares in Damascus, watching his craft reminded this reporter to slow down and enjoy the moment. -
NPR's Books We Love has staff suggestions for non-fiction, including "My Mother's Daughter," "Days of Love and Rage" and "When It's Darkness on the Delta."
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A historian of modern China, Jung Chang turns the lens back on herself in her newest book to understand how she sees the world and why she writes about China today. -
The director of a Chinese-language film festival in New York City says he's been forced to cancel the event because of pressure from the Chinese government on the films' directors.
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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.
