Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping's China

by Emily Feng

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A boots on the ground story from inside China, this is an unmatched account of the inequalities in a nation being pushed further and further toward authoritarianism.

An intimate, deeply reported investigation into the battle over identity in China, chronicling the state oppression of those who fail to conform to Xi Jinping's definition of who is "Chinese," from an award-winning NPR correspondent.

“Emily Feng’s focus on ordinary people—bravely determined to shape their own lives—captures the mood of the Xi Jinping era more essentially than reams of statistics ever can.”—Evan Osnos, National Book Award winner, author of Age of Ambition

The rise of China and its great power competition with the U.S. will be one of the defining issues of our generation. But to understand modern China, one has to understand the people who live there – and the way the Chinese state is trying to control them along lines of identity and free expression.

In vivid, cinematic detail, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom tells the stories of nearly two dozen people who are pushing back. They include a Uyghur family, separated as China detains hundreds of thousands of their fellow Uyghurs in camps; human rights lawyers fighting to defend civil liberties in the face of mammoth odds; a teacher from Inner Mongolia, forced to make hard choices because of his support of his mother tongue; and a Hong Kong fugitive trying to find a new home and live in freedom.

Reporting despite the personal risks, journalist Emily Feng reveals dramatic human stories of resistance and survival in a country that is increasingly closing itself off to the world. Feng illustrates what it is like to run against the grain in China, and the myriad ways people are trying to survive, with dignity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593594223
Publisher:	Crown Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/18/2025
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	65,077
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Emily Feng is an award-winning international correspondent for NPR. She’s a regular contributor to NPR podcasts and member stations and she is also a frequent guest on U.S. and BBC radio and television programs. Previously based in Beijing, China for NPR, she now lives in Taipei, Taiwan.

Editorial Reviews

Emily Feng delivers an exquisite, up-to-the-minute portrait of the China you can’t grasp from afar. Her focus on ordinary people—bravely determined to shape their own lives—captures the mood of the Xi Jinping era more essentially than reams of statistics ever can.”—Evan Osnos, National Book Award winner, author of Age of Ambition

“One of the top China correspondents of her generation, Feng faced unremitting harassment to bring these stories to light.”—Barbara Demick, National Book Award finalist for Nothing to Envy and Eat the Buddha

“Through a dozen finely told stories, [Emily Feng] captures the breadth of China and the dilemma that many Chinese feel today: how to get ahead in a country where political conformity is once again stifling some of the country’s most creative young minds.”—Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winner, author of Sparks

“A meticulously researched, beautifully human and often heartbreaking account of what it truly means to be Chinese in Xi Jinping’s China today.”—Isobel Yeung, CNN international correspondent

“An absorbing account from one of the most intrepid China reporters of our times. Through her writing, Emily Feng takes you inside more visions of China than any traveler—and most reporters—could ever encounter.”—Yuan Yang, MP, author of Private Revolutions

“Emily Feng has written a spellbinding book, one that evokes China in all its complexities, beauty, and outrages. Spanning stories from Hong Kong to Xinjiang to the country’s heartland, Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is masterfully reported and told.”—Te-Ping Chen, author of Land of Big Numbers

“In 2022, China barred widely acclaimed journalist Emily Feng from re-entering the country, part of a crackdown on foreign reporters. Undeterred by the ban, Feng settled in Taiwan and has written warm, often searing portraits of ordinary Chinese buffeted by the all-consuming presence of the Communist Party in people’s lives. That theme makes this a must-read about today’s China.”—Jane Perlez, former New York Times Beijing bureau chief

“[Emily Feng’s] deeply personal and sympathetic account of ordinary and extraordinary people struggling under a totalitarian yoke illuminates Xi Jinping’s China in a way that most reporting on the topic cannot. Read this book to understand the human stories behind the headlines.”—Jamil Anderlini, POLITICO Europe’s editor-in-chief

“Let Only Red Flowers Bloom . . . is a brilliant and perceptive meditation on what it means to be Chinese in today’s world, by turns loving and mournful.”—Howard W. French, author of Born in Blackness

“Essential reading for anyone interested in geopolitics—or the world of the near future.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Let Only Red Flowers Bloom is a moving series of portraits of individuals caught up in the security apparatus of Xi Jinping’s China, a paean to the endangered pluralism and diversity of Chinese identity today.”—Stephen Platt, author of Imperial Twilight and Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom

From the Publisher

★ 2024-12-14
An inside look at Xi Jinping’s China through the eyes of its discontents and dissidents.

American journalist Feng traveled widely through China until being expelled in 2022; she now works from Taiwan. As she writes at the opening, “This is a book about identity, how the state controls expressions of identity, and who gets to be considered Chinese.” Whereas Mao Zedong sought a big-tent sort of nation, officially recognizing 55 ethnic groups, Feng writes that current leader Xi Jinping considers only Mandarin-speaking Han Chinese to be real Chinese—and heterosexual ones, too, and loyal to his version of the Communist Party. One pointed example from her travels is a member of the Hui minority, who, notes Feng, are “visually indistinguishable from Han Chinese” and speak Mandarin; the difference is that many Hui are Muslim, and Xi considers Muslims to be enemies of the state, a view reinforced by a loyalist social scientist who champions fighting against “religious fundamentalism eroding Chinese secular mainstream culture.” Treated even worse are visibly non-Chinese minorities such as Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs, who live under “grid policing,” a system of intense law enforcement scrutiny backed by numerous neighborhood informants. In this closely observed book, Feng profiles a civil rights attorney who has braved imprisonment for “subverting state power,” entrepreneurs once encouraged by the Chinese government to grow wealthy in a booming economy but now targeted as antithetical to the state’s ideology, and members of the Chinese diaspora in communities around the world, including the U.S., where Chinese students, fearful of government reprisal, actively censor critics of Xi and his policies. Those policies, Feng fears, are intended to produce a monolithic authoritarian state, a direction, many fear, that the U.S. will also take.

Essential reading for anyone interested in geopolitics—or the world of the near future.

Kirkus Reviews