In 1947, the acclaimed Chinese writer and linguist Lin Yutang stunned the world with an invention: the first Chinese-language typewriter with a keyboard. Lin poured years of effort and his life’s savings into the design, which he named MingKwai, ‘clear and fast’. Despite its celebrity and Lin’s high hopes, the MingKwai never went into production, and the lone prototype had long been assumed lost—until it surfaced in the basement of a New York resident’s late grandfather-in-law earlier this year.

What happened to the MingKwai? Why was its invention groundbreaking, and why did it fail commercially? For Episode 3 of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang speaks with historian Thomas S. Mullaney about the legendary typewriter and the century-old quest to bring the ancient Chinese script into the modern information age.

For some in the West, being a journalist in China—especially one at a state media organisation—is seen as little more than parroting party propaganda. This caricature not only disregards the courage and dedication of many Chinese journalists but also misrepresents the complex realities they navigate as mere state coercion. How does censorship actually operate inside a Chinese newsroom? What new possibilities and constraints have emerged with commercialisation and the rise of social media? And is it possible to produce quality journalism about China without institutional backing or from another country?

To answer these questions and more, for Episode 2 of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang spoke with legendary TV reporter Luqiu Luwei 閭丘露薇 and celebrated print journalist Fang Kecheng 方可成, both of whom now work as journalism professors in Hong Kong.

For the inaugural episode of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, Yangyang spoke with Jing Wang and Christian Sorace about the legacies of Covid-19, five years after the novel coronavirus upended all of our lives.