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Prologue

Jiayang Fan has this theory that because she's spent so much time thinking about her own accent when she speaks English, she believes that when she hears other Chinese-Americans speak, she can tell how old they were when they immigrated to the U.S. (7 minutes)

Prologue

Host Ira Glass explains how things have changed in Hong Kong this month, and wonders how things are going for a protester we’re calling Jennifer, who he went to protests with back in the fall.

Act One: Cursed Generation

A bunch of 22-year-olds from Hong Kong explain why they are cursed and what that means for their and Hong Kong’s future. (17 minutes)

Act Two: The Fight

Jennifer, Ira, and producer Emanuele Berry go to a protest and get tear gassed in front of a Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. (6 minutes)

Act One: A Phone Flickers in the Dark

Abdurahman Tohti left his home country, China, behind 7 years ago to move to Turkey, safe from the Chinese regime that discriminates and arbitrarily detains Uyghurs, specifically, which Abdurahman is. Reporter Durrie Bouscaren talks to him about what happened to his wife and children and extended family in China, and the endless challenges he faces trying to be sure they are safe.

Act Four: Party On!

Evan Osnos, a staff writer for the New Yorker who for years reported on China, tells producer Nancy Updike about an incredibly shrewd and successful propaganda campaign that hinged on two words. Evan's book about China, Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, won the national book award in 2014.

Prologue

In preparing for this show, we started reaching out to Americans living in China and asking for their stories. A shocking amount of the expats came back with stories about different times they were on Chinese television.

Act One: Why Do You Have to Go and Make Things So Complicated?

There are about seventy thousand Americans living in mainland China today, according to the Chinese and US governments. A lot of the Americans in China only stay for a few years, but then there are others — American ex-pats who’ve lived in China for a decade or more with no foreseeable plans to come home.

Act Two: Beautiful Downtown Wasteland

There are so few farmers in the United States that in 1993, the census stopped counting the number of Americans who live on farms at the time. But in China, despite the vast migration to cities in recent years, more than half the country still lives in rural areas.