Louisa Lim
Beijing Correspondent Louisa Lim is currently attending the University of Michigan as a Knight-Wallace Fellow. She will return to her regular role in 2014.
Based in Beijing, NPR foreign correspondent Louisa Lim finds China a hugely diverse, vibrant, fascinating place. "Everywhere you look and everyone you talk to has a fascinating story," she notes, adding that she's "spoiled with choices" of stories to cover. In her reports, Lim takes "NPR listeners to places they never knew existed. I want to give them an idea of how China is changing and what that might mean for them."
Lim opened NPR's Shanghai bureau in February 2006, but she's reported for NPR from up Tibetan glaciers and down the shaft of a Shaanxi coalmine. She made a very rare reporting trip to North Korea, covered illegal abortions in Guangxi province, and worked on the major multimedia series on religion in China "New Believers: A Religious Revolution in China." Lim has been part of NPR teams who multiple awards, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, a Peabody and two Edward R. Murrow awards, for their coverage of the Sichuan earthquake in 2008 and the Beijing Olympics. She's been honored in the Human Rights Press Awards, as well as winning prizes for her multimedia work.
In 1995, Lim moved to Hong Kong and worked at the Eastern Express newspaper until its demise six months later and then for TVB Pearl, the local television station. Eventually Lim joined the BBC, working first for five years at the World Service in London, and then as a correspondent at the BBC in Beijing for almost three years.
Lim found her path into journalism after graduating with a degree in Modern Chinese studies from Leeds University in England. She worked as an editor, polisher, and translator at a state-run publishing company in China, a job that helped her strengthen her Chinese. Simultaneously, she began writing for a magazine and soon realized her talents fit perfectly with journalism.
NPR London correspondent Rob Gifford, who previously spent six years reporting from China for NPR, thinks that Lim is uniquely suited for his former post. "Not only does Louisa have a sharp journalistic brain," Gifford says, "but she sees stories from more than one angle, and can often open up a whole new understanding of an issue through her reporting. By listening to Louisa's reports, NPR listeners will certainly get a feel for what 21st century China is like. It is no longer a country of black and white, and the complexity is important, a complexity that you always feel in Louisa's intelligent, nuanced reporting."
Out of all of her reporting, Lim says she most enjoys covering stories that are quirky or slightly offbeat. However, she gravitates towards reporting on arts stories with a deeper significance. For example, early in her tenure at NPR, Lim highlighted a musical on stage in Seoul, South Korea, based on a North Korean prison camp. The play, and Lim's piece, highlighted the ignorance of many South Koreans of the suffering of their northern neighbors.
Married with a son and a daughter, Lim recommends any NPR listeners travelling to Shanghai stop by a branch of her husband's Yunnan restaurant, Southern Barbarian, where they can snack on deep fried bumblebees, a specialty from that part of southwest China. In Beijing, her husband owns and runs what she calls "the first and best fish and chip shop in China", Fish Nation.
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The 54-year-old artist says officials have lifted the strict bail conditions imposed after his release from detention last year. But he says he is not allowed to leave China and that he was prevented from attending a hearing this week on his tax evasion case. -
One irreverent tweet about a powerful Chinese politician was enough to get Fang Hong sent to a Chinese labor camp for a year. Encouraged by the recent fall of that politician, Bo Xilai, Fang is appealing his case and attacking the system of re-education through labor. -
Recent scandals have apparently cost Bo Xilai his job as Communist Party chief in the southwestern city of Chongqing. Bo had once seemed headed straight for China's top leadership body, but corruption allegations and an imbroglio involving his former right-hand man helped drive him from power. -
A South Korean man meant for his Twitter profile picture, with its backdrop of a North Korean flag, to be a visual parody of North Korean news programs. Now, Park Jong-kun may be charged with violating a security law from 1948. Critics say it's being used to stifle free speech on North Korea. -
Lee Myung-bak was so poor as a child that he wore his school uniform every day because he had no other clothes. He became a student activist and helped Hyundai become the massive conglomerate it is today. In many ways, Lee's life story — and ultimate success — mirrors that of South Korea. -
U.S. Ambassador Gary Locke returns to his ancestral village in southern China for the first time since his appointment. The Chinese-American was criticized as "a fake foreign devil who can't speak Chinese." But his humble behavior — flying economy, carrying his own bag — has won him many fans. -
Chinese authorities keep tabs on activists in the streets and on the Internet. But microblogs are now drawing attention to some human-rights cases. -
Last year, China overtook the U.S. as home of the world's fastest supercomputer. That lasted only six months, but generated intense national pride. Will the much-vaunted program able to live up to Beijing's high expectations? -
Last year, China overtook the U.S. as home of the world's fastest supercomputer. That lasted only six months, but generated intense national pride. Will the much-vaunted program able to live up to Beijing's high expectations?
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Chinese leaders are pouring money into research and development in a bid to rejoin the ranks of the world's top technological innovators. Beijing is also luring back Chinese scientists from overseas. But money and manpower may not be enough.
