The Fall of a Chinese Pop Star, and Calvin Trillin’s Happy Marriage

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2019

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For some years, Denise Ho was one of the most popular singers in Asia. A Hong Kong native, she performed the style known as Cantopop in mainland China and in foreign countries with Chinese émigré populations. But, as Ho told the staff writer Jiayang Fan, she began to have qualms about the often-saccharine content of the genre. “Is that all? Is that all I can do with my songs, my career—just for personal wealth, and all that?” She was one of the first stars in China to come out as a lesbian, which the government took in stride; but, when she took part in political demonstrations in Hong Kong, she was arrested on television and detained. Authorities began to cancel her concerts, and to block access to her work on the Internet in China. Her endorsements followed suit. “I expected to be banned from China, but I wasn’t expecting the government to react to it in such a way,” she says. “The main goal is to silence everyone—especially the younger generations—with fear.” Now Denise Ho is trying to rebuild her career as something unfamiliar in China: an underground protest singer. Plus: Kai-Fu Lee on China’s tech sector and the challenge it poses to Silicon Valley; and the longtime staff writer Calvin Trillin, who puts his happy marriage onstage in a new play, “About Alice.” “This play certainly would have failed Drama 101 . . . But you have to write about what you know.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios.
0:14.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:23.6	Denise Ho was one of the biggest pop stars in China.
0:27.4	She played stadiums.
0:28.4	She was in movies.
0:29.6	She advertised brands like Motorola and Eve San Laurent all over Asia.
0:43.7	Denise Ho is a singer of cantalpop, which means that she performs in the Chinese dialect of Cantonese. At her peak, she was one of the top-selling female artists in Hong Kong
0:50.5	and played all over mainland China and Taiwan, basically any countries with a large Chinese
0:58.4	emigrate population.
1:00.6	That's staff writer Jayang Fon, who recently profiled Denise Ho.
1:04.0	And then 2014 rolls around and students and activists took to the streets to ask for a more democratic process,
1:14.8	and Denise joined them in their fight for universal suffrage.
1:19.5	The protests which sprung up in various neighborhoods throughout Hong Kong
1:24.2	became known as the umbrella movement, And the umbrella was a powerful symbol because it was a tool that protesters used to defend
1:36.3	themselves against the tear gas that police officers were spraying on them.
1:42.3	Denise was arrested on national television and became an enduring
1:47.1	image of the struggle for democracy. Before the umbrella movement, Denise Ho was earning about
1:54.7	80% of her income from mainland China, where she is now prohibited from performing and where her music has been completely scrubbed from the Internet.
2:08.6	Now Denise Ho is trying to reinvent herself as something like a countercultural songwriter, all under the very watchful eye of the Chinese government.
2:18.3	Here's Jiang Fan speaking with Denise Ho.
2:21.4	So you grew up at Hong Kong and you moved to Montreal at age 11, and then you moved
2:28.0	back to Hong Kong to pursue your singing career.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from WNYC Studios and The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.