World Chronicles: Margins, Travel, and Liu Zichao’s Writing

This lecture invites writer Liu Zichao to discuss his travel writing across the Global South, Southeast Asia, and Southeastern Europe, from Chasing the Monsoon: Journeys from India to Southeast Asia to Blood and Honey: A Journey Across the Balkans. The conversation will explore Liu’s work through the lens of travel, history, memory, and the genre of youji 遊記 or jixing 紀行 (travel writing or travel chronicles). By reading Liu’s work, we examine how contemporary Chinese travel writing navigates geographical and conceptual margins and destabilizes reified boundaries between center and periphery. Liu’s literary reportage, blending curiosity without voyeurism and empathy without sentimentality, complicates boundaries between Chinese literature centered on China and Sinophone literature emerging from Chinese-speaking communities worldwide. His peripatetic narratives also raise urgent questions: how do margins create their own meaning without becoming the next center? What ethical possibilities emerge when we write from and about the world’s peripheries? What is the urgency of writing about the world and out of “obsession with China?”

Guest: Liu Zichao (Writer)

2025/11/13

Thursday 15:30-17:30

Fung King Hey Building KHB220, CUHK

Moderator: Jannis Jizhou Chen (Assistant Professor), Department of Chinese Language and Literature, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Language: Mandarin

Organizers:

Department of Chinese Language and Literature, CUHK

Society of Sinophone Studies (SSS)

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Writer’s Bio

Liu Zichao (劉子超) is a Chinese writer, reporter, and travel essayist known for finely observed narrative nonfiction that bridges reportage and literary sensibility. A graduate of Peking University’s Chinese Department and a former journalist-editor at Southern People Weekly and GQ China, he has journeyed widely across Eurasia, translating field experience into vivid, humane portraits of place and people. His recent and representative books include The Lost Satellite (《失落的衛星》), Chasing the Monsoon (《沿著季風的方向》), and Blood and Honey: A Journey Across the Balkans (《血與蜜之地：穿越巴爾幹的旅程》), alongside the essay collection Arrival Before Midnight (《午夜降臨前抵達》). Liu’s prose is praised for curiosity without voyeurism, empathy without sentimentality, and a quiet wit that opens complex regions to general readers. His reportage on Central Asia received a Special Mention at the 2019 True Story Award; he was named Young Writer of the Year at the 2021 One Way Street Bookstore Literary Award. Blood and Honey was selected for the Harvest Literature List (Long Non-fiction) and as one of Asia Weekly (Yazhou Zhoukan)’s Top 10 Chinese Books of 2024 (Non-fiction). Liu frequently speaks on borders, memory, and the ethics of seeing, and collaborates across photography and documentary projects.