THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (August 6, 2023) –

The Art of Telling Forbidden Stories in China

Hao Qun and an unnamed writer. Hao, who once enjoyed a successful writing career in China, fled to Australia after facing persecution.

Many writers are looking for ways to capture the everyday realities that the government keeps hidden — sometimes at their own peril.

By Han Zhang

On an August evening in 2021, the best-selling Chinese novelist Hao Qun, who writes under the name Murong Xuecun, was procrastinating in his one-bedroom apartment. He needed to be at Beijing Capital International Airport around 6 the next morning to catch a flight to London, but he found it hard to pack. Though Hao had a valid tourist visa to Britain, the Chinese government had kept tabs on him for years, and it was possible that he would be prevented from leaving; other public intellectuals had tried to travel abroad only to discover that they were under exit bans. Hao might have been packing for a life of exile or a futile trip to the airport.

How a Sexual Assault in a School Bathroom Became a Political Weapon

A photo illustration of a girls’ bathroom door slightly ajar.

It was an explosive claim — that a Virginia school district covered up a crime in order to protect transgender rights. But was it true?

By Charles Homans

For months a sort of aerosolized fury had hung over the Loudoun County school district. There were fights over Covid closures and mask mandates, over racial-equity programs, over library books. Now, in the weeks before the school board’s meeting on June 22, 2021, attention had shifted to a new proposal: Policy 8040, which would let transgender students choose pronouns, play sports and use bathrooms in accordance with their declared gender identity. In May, an elementary-school gym teacher announced that as a “servant of God,” he felt he could not follow the policy. The district swiftly suspended him — and just as swiftly, the antennae of conservative media outlets and politicians swiveled toward Loudoun County.