Jan Wong, author and former Globe andMail journalist, will be hosting this week’s edition of StoryFest at the HudsonVillage Theatre Thursday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m.
Wong,winner of such coveted journalism awards as the New England Press AssociationNewswoman of the Year in 1985 and the National Newspaper Award forInternational Reporting in 1992, is perhaps best known for her Lunch With… column featured in the Globeand Mail someyears ago.
Despiteunfounded rumors that said otherwise, her editor, Richard Addis, was the one toput an end to the column questioning its readership in 2006. “At the time therewas no proof of how popular the column was with the readers like there is todaywith web clicks. There was no way to prove the column had followers,” shetold me in a phone interview.
Thepremise for the column was built around Wong's lunchdates with high profile celebrities like Suzanne Somers, Margaret Trudeau,Stockwell Day and Margaret Atwood. She sites fellow journalist, now senatorPamela Wallin, as her mostmemorable guest.
"Preparingfor the interviews was a big job. Investigating a person thoroughly andthen writing the profile afterwards was very time consuming. It wasn't justabout having lunch," Wong says.
Oftenchided in the press for her less than complimentary profiles, she defends herwriting by saying “I went into the interviews wanting to censor nothing. Iwanted the reader to be there with me at the table like the camera, ” says Wong, wanting to dig beyond the gossip people are accustomed tohearing. In 2000 she published Lunch With Jan Wong, Sweet and Sour Celebrity Interviews, featuring 60 of her mostcontroversial and entertaining columns.
Sheintimates her approach to dismantling the persona of celebrities was in largepart due to her experiences in China in the early 1970s. “I learned to betough. Celebrities were no different than the Chinese Communist Party.”She adds, “We are all subjective. It's the nature of being human. Journalist need to realize it and do their best to fairlyrepresent.”
As one ofonly two foreign students permitted to study at Beijing University duringChina's cultural revolution, Wong says she was in the right place at the righttime. Nixon had just visitedChina, the West viewed China as trendy, and she had just graduated from McGillwith a BA Honors in History, specialty in Chinese culture. When a friend approached her to travelto China, they both applied for a Visa but her friend was refused. “I was granted an individual visabecause I am ethnic Chinese,” says Wong and so she went alone.
Her stayin China was marked with strife. “I had to push back, demand rights. Because I am Chinese I had to show ID all the time to prove I was aforeigner,” she told me.
A truebeliever in the revolution, and strong supporter of Maoist ideology, Wong’stime at Beijing University would in part alter the course of her life. Taking pride in her budding patriotism,she turned in a fellow student who sought her help in escaping to the UnitedStates. She also met and married her husband, Norman Shulman, the only Americandraft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.
In 1997she released her first book, Red China Blues, inspired by the her time as astudent and supporter of the revolution and by her return to China in the 1980sas a foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail, newly awakened to the harsh realitiesof Chinese communism. Experience and wisdom prevailing, she came torealign her beliefs with Western culture.
Hersecond book Beijing from 1996-2002 Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost andFound publishedin 2007 accounts of her quest to make amends for what Wong refers to as one ofher biggest regrets. She sets out with her husband and two teenage sons on amission to find Yin Luoyi, the young student she reported to the authorities in1973.
Wong,33 years later and firmly awakened, revisits Beijing to begin her search forredemption. "I wondered with dread what happened to her. Ichanged so much. I needed to explain," Wongsaid of her inspiration to write the memoir.
Aftergraduating from the University of Beijing in 1977, Wongwent on to complete a M.Sc. at Columbia University’s Graduate School ofJournalism. She then spent two years reporting for the Montreal Gazette beforemoving on to the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and finally Globe and Mailin 1987.
Wongleft the Globe and Mail a year ago. She rarely contributes anymore, withthe exception of a recent request to write a piece on the 50th Anniversary ofthe Beijing Bureau. Her time with the Globe and Mail did not end kindly. Backlash from an article she wrote on Kimveer Gill’s shooting rampage atMontreal's Dawson College sent her into a clinical depression.
“Myeditor at the time who approved the story and published it took noresponsibility. He did not back me at all, and went as far as to publishcritiques of my work. They muzzled me, and after my experience with ChinaI did not take it well,” she says of the trying time.
Her nextbook – now in its first edit with her publisher – will recount her experiencewith depression. Wong confides, “I was in denialwhen I was first diagnosed one year ago. I want to talk about the globalexperience of depression, the stigma attached to depression and the role toxicworkplaces play. It's all-consuming. You need to take yourself away from theproblem to be cured.”
Wongis currently doing freelance broadcasting for CBC and teaching a Masters InJournalism course at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she lives with herfamily.
Wong,winner of such coveted journalism awards as the New England Press AssociationNewswoman of the Year in 1985 and the National Newspaper Award forInternational Reporting in 1992, is perhaps best known for her Lunch With… column featured in the Globeand Mail someyears ago.
Despiteunfounded rumors that said otherwise, her editor, Richard Addis, was the one toput an end to the column questioning its readership in 2006. “At the time therewas no proof of how popular the column was with the readers like there is todaywith web clicks. There was no way to prove the column had followers,” shetold me in a phone interview.
Thepremise for the column was built around Wong's lunchdates with high profile celebrities like Suzanne Somers, Margaret Trudeau,Stockwell Day and Margaret Atwood. She sites fellow journalist, now senatorPamela Wallin, as her mostmemorable guest.
"Preparingfor the interviews was a big job. Investigating a person thoroughly andthen writing the profile afterwards was very time consuming. It wasn't justabout having lunch," Wong says.
Oftenchided in the press for her less than complimentary profiles, she defends herwriting by saying “I went into the interviews wanting to censor nothing. Iwanted the reader to be there with me at the table like the camera, ” says Wong, wanting to dig beyond the gossip people are accustomed tohearing. In 2000 she published Lunch With Jan Wong, Sweet and Sour Celebrity Interviews, featuring 60 of her mostcontroversial and entertaining columns.
Sheintimates her approach to dismantling the persona of celebrities was in largepart due to her experiences in China in the early 1970s. “I learned to betough. Celebrities were no different than the Chinese Communist Party.”She adds, “We are all subjective. It's the nature of being human. Journalist need to realize it and do their best to fairlyrepresent.”
As one ofonly two foreign students permitted to study at Beijing University duringChina's cultural revolution, Wong says she was in the right place at the righttime. Nixon had just visitedChina, the West viewed China as trendy, and she had just graduated from McGillwith a BA Honors in History, specialty in Chinese culture. When a friend approached her to travelto China, they both applied for a Visa but her friend was refused. “I was granted an individual visabecause I am ethnic Chinese,” says Wong and so she went alone.
Her stayin China was marked with strife. “I had to push back, demand rights. Because I am Chinese I had to show ID all the time to prove I was aforeigner,” she told me.
A truebeliever in the revolution, and strong supporter of Maoist ideology, Wong’stime at Beijing University would in part alter the course of her life. Taking pride in her budding patriotism,she turned in a fellow student who sought her help in escaping to the UnitedStates. She also met and married her husband, Norman Shulman, the only Americandraft dodger from the Vietnam War to seek asylum in China.
In 1997she released her first book, Red China Blues, inspired by the her time as astudent and supporter of the revolution and by her return to China in the 1980sas a foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail, newly awakened to the harsh realitiesof Chinese communism. Experience and wisdom prevailing, she came torealign her beliefs with Western culture.
Hersecond book Beijing from 1996-2002 Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost andFound publishedin 2007 accounts of her quest to make amends for what Wong refers to as one ofher biggest regrets. She sets out with her husband and two teenage sons on amission to find Yin Luoyi, the young student she reported to the authorities in1973.
Wong,33 years later and firmly awakened, revisits Beijing to begin her search forredemption. "I wondered with dread what happened to her. Ichanged so much. I needed to explain," Wongsaid of her inspiration to write the memoir.
Aftergraduating from the University of Beijing in 1977, Wongwent on to complete a M.Sc. at Columbia University’s Graduate School ofJournalism. She then spent two years reporting for the Montreal Gazette beforemoving on to the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and finally Globe and Mailin 1987.
Wongleft the Globe and Mail a year ago. She rarely contributes anymore, withthe exception of a recent request to write a piece on the 50th Anniversary ofthe Beijing Bureau. Her time with the Globe and Mail did not end kindly. Backlash from an article she wrote on Kimveer Gill’s shooting rampage atMontreal's Dawson College sent her into a clinical depression.
“Myeditor at the time who approved the story and published it took noresponsibility. He did not back me at all, and went as far as to publishcritiques of my work. They muzzled me, and after my experience with ChinaI did not take it well,” she says of the trying time.
Her nextbook – now in its first edit with her publisher – will recount her experiencewith depression. Wong confides, “I was in denialwhen I was first diagnosed one year ago. I want to talk about the globalexperience of depression, the stigma attached to depression and the role toxicworkplaces play. It's all-consuming. You need to take yourself away from theproblem to be cured.”
Wongis currently doing freelance broadcasting for CBC and teaching a Masters InJournalism course at Ryerson University in Toronto, where she lives with herfamily.
