The Economist.
Shaloo Guo is an extraordinary chronicler of life in China and life in exile.
Where others look at the changes in China's infrastructure, physical and economic growth,
Shaloo's subject is internal growth and the lived human experience.
This year she's published her most ambitious book yet,
a retelling of Herman Melville's Moby Dick narrated by a woman and influenced by Buddhism and Taoism.
I'm Rosie Blaw, co-host of The Economist Daily News podcast, The Intelligence, and a former China correspondent.
Today I'm heading to Hackney in East London to meet Shaloo Guo
and ask her what it was like to grow up in China and how much the country has really changed emotionally and psychologically.
This is Drum Tower from The Economist.
Shaloo, thank you so much for meeting with me today and thanks for welcoming me into your home.
You've written 10 books in English, many in Chinese, and you've directed many films as well.
You were born in China in 1973 and you have lived in Britain and the US and elsewhere, you've lived outside China since 2002.
And I thought I would start by just going back to the beginning really
and ask you to tell me a bit about your early years growing up in China,
because they were extremely different from this lovely home in Hackney that we see here now.
Sure, thank you.
Yes, what a difference.
But then my childhood story is not that unique if you were grow up in China.
So I was born in the end of Cultural Revolution in the 1970s.