Emily Feng
Emily Feng is NPR's Beijing correspondent.
Feng joined NPR in 2019. She roves around China, through its big cities and small villages, reporting on social trends as well as economic and political news coming out of Beijing. Feng contributes to NPR's newsmagazines, newscasts, podcasts, and digital platforms.
Previously, Feng served as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. Based in Beijing, she covered a broad range of topics, including human rights and technology. She also began extensively reporting on the region of Xinjiang during this period, becoming the first foreign reporter to uncover that China was separating Uyghur children from their parents and sending them to state-run orphanages, and discovering that China was introducing forced labor in Xinjiang's detention camps.
Feng's reporting has also let her nerd out over semiconductors and drones, travel to environmental wastelands, and write about girl bands and art. She's filed stories from the bottom of a coal mine; the top of a mosque in Qinghai; and from inside a cave Chairman Mao once lived in.
Her human rights coverage has been shortlisted by the British Journalism Awards in 2018, recognized by the Amnesty Media Awards in February 2019 and won a Human Rights Press merit that May. Her radio coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in China earned her another Human Rights Press Award, was recognized by the National Headliners Award, and won a Gracie Award. She was also named a Livingston Award finalist in 2021.
Feng graduated cum laude from Duke University with a dual B.A. degree from Duke's Sanford School in Asian and Middle Eastern studies and in public policy.
-
Motivated to avenge their families in China, Uyghur mercenaries became valued fighting partners for Syria's rebels. Their participation helped Syria's new president ultimately win Syria's civil war.
-
The kecak dance involves a retelling of one of the stories in the Ramayana, the Hindu epic poem. At the story's climax, there is an eruption of fire as tufts of dried coconut husks are set aflame. -
NPR's Emily Feng speaks with Jack Jenkins of the Religion News Service and with participants and speakers at Rededicate 250, a prayer festival on the National Mall, about the purpose and significance of the event.
-
In this week's Cineplexity, where we examine life's complexities by talking about cinema, we're taking on the best and worst of the beloved trope of "weddings in the movies."
-
Thousands of Chinese-born Uyghur fighters fled China to fight in the Syrian civil war. They say generations of political persecution in China motivated them to take up arms.
-
Professor Eloise Marais from the University College London talks about her research on pollution from satellites and its impact on earth's climate.
-
GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy's primary loss in Louisiana shows the power of President Trump's opposition. It also highlights the importance of voting rules and maps.
-
Thousands of Uyghurs became key fighters against Syria's Assad regime. For the first time, they agreed to be interviewed. NPR spent weeks with some of them to understand why they fled China for Syria. -
The governor of Louisiana canceled the U.S. House primaries after tens of thousands of votes had already been cast. On Election Day, we hear from voters trying to make sense of the last-minute changes.
-
While in China to cover President Trump's visit to meet with leader Xi Jinping, host of NPR and WBUR's Here & Now Scott Tong spent time learning about a difficult chapter in his family's history.
