On Writing About Syria’s Uyghur Community As a Chinese-American

The author, Emily Feng, is a Chinese-American journalist who spent nearly eight years living in Beijing and worked as a foreign correspondent abroad for ten years.

She speaks fluent Mandarin and has a deep understanding of Chinese culture.

After moving back to the United States, she temporarily assisted NPR in covering developments in Lebanon.

While there, the fall of the Assad regime in neighboring Syria made it the primary focus of her reporting.

Feng’s background and identity played a significant role in how she approached reporting on the Uyghur community in Syria, a task she found both professionally and personally complex.