October 26, 2010, Bridge Café (Wudaokou)

Speaker: ZHANG Lijia 张丽佳, Writer, Journalist, and Public Commentator

Zhang Lijia is the author of the best-seller Socialism is Great, an interesting portrait of social change in contemporary China. Now a writer, journalist, social commentator and TV show host; Zhang Lijia spent the 1980s in a factory in Nanjing that produced inter-continental missiles capable of reaching North America. To escape the oppressive routine, she taught herself English.

Zhang Lijia summarized the stations in her journey from being a disillusioned worker at a Nanjing rocket manufacturing site to an organizer in support of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations in 1989. She illustrated the sea-change sweeping China in the reform era using her biography. Zhang Lijia discussed her book, her personal experience of change in China over the past three decades and her thoughts on China’s position in the world.