China

Sheng Xue

Sheng Xue grew up in Beijing. She moved to Canada soon after the June 4th Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In 2000, she won the Canadian Association of Journalists Award for Investigative Journalism and the National Magazine Award, for an investigative report on the lives of Chinese boat refugees published in Maclean's magazine. In 2001, Sheng Xue investigated China's most prominent smuggling case and published a book (in Chinese), Unveiling the Yuan Hua Case, which soon became a bestseller in Chinese communities outside China and created shockwaves both inside and outside China. China’s Propaganda Ministry immediately banned the book. Since March 2002, Sheng Xue has been a regular commentator for NTDTV, a global Chinese TV network. In 2005, she joined Deutsche Welle (Voice of Germany) has been its North American correspondent. As a freelance writer, she has published numerous news reports and commentaries in various Chinese-language media. Sheng Xue has been writing poetry and prose for many years, over a hundred of which have been published. Sheng Xue's article, “The Unbearable Heaviness of Being”, was collected in The Exiles Who Did Not Die, published by INK Publishing Limited in Taiwan in February 2005. The book collected thirty-nine articles of Chinese authors in exile. Her prose stories “The Bloody Morning” and “Light up a Candle Please” were collected in Poetry and Tank, published in January 2007 by the Chen Zhong Publishing House in Hong Kong. Sheng Xue is a member of the Editorial Board of June 4 Poetry, a collection of poems commemorating the June 4th Movement.

Watch an interview in Mandarin with Sheng Xue about the Tiananmen Square 20th Anniversary.

Ming Yan

Ming Yan is an experienced fiction writer, essayist, journalist and poet. He has published collections of poetry and essays as well as three novels. He has also regularly filed reports for the Mandarin-language edition of Voice of America since his arrival in Canada in the early 1990s. Following the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, Ming Yan made a public protest on Radio Tianjin. He was summarily dismissed and held in detention for almost one month. Following that, Ming Yan was placed under house arrest. The following year, in an effort to obtain a passport so that he could leave for Canada, he was denied. Authorities ruled against Ming Yan because he remained under house arrest. Ming Yan lives in the Toronto area.