Murder House: Zhong Na on the Silicon Valley Tragedy That Exposed the Cracks in China's Meritocracy

This week on Sinica, I speak with Zhong Na, a novelist and essayist whose new piece, "Murder House," appears in the inaugural issue of Equator — a striking new magazine devoted to longform writing that crosses borders, disciplines, and cultures. In January 2024, a young couple, both Tsinghua-educated Google engineers living in a $2.5 million Silicon Valley home, became the center of a tragedy that captivated Chinese social media far more than American outlets. Zhong Na explores how the case became a collective Rorschach test — a mirror held up to contemporary Chinese society, exposing cracks in the myths of meritocracy, the prestige of global tech firms, and shifting notions of gender, class, and the Chinese dream itself. We discuss the gendered reactions online, the dimming of America's appeal, the emotional costs of the immigrant success story, and the craft of writing about tragedy with compassion but without sentimentality. 5:06 – How the story first reached Zhong Na, and the Luigi Mangione comparison  7:05 – Discovering she attended the same Chengdu high school as the alleged murderer Chen Liren  8:10 – The collaboration with Equator and Joan Didion's influence  10:30 – Education, class, and the cracks in China's meritocracy myth  16:01 – Tiger mothers vs. lying flat: two responses to a rigged system 19:12 – The pandemic and the dimming of the American dream  22:49 – Chinese men as perpetrators: immigrant stress and the loss of patriarchal privilege  25:56 – The gender war online: moral autopsy and victim-blaming  30:25 – The obsession with the ex-girlfriend and attraction to the accused 34:37 – The murder house, Chinese numerology, and the rise of Gen Z metaphysics  37:08 – Geopolitics, the China Initiative, and rethinking America as a destination  39:42 – Craft and moral compass: learning from Didion and Janet Malcolm  42:31 – Zhong Na's fiction: writing Chinese experiences without catering to Western expectations Paying it forward: Gavin Jacobson and the editorial team at Equator Recommendations:  Zhong Na: Elsewhere by Yan Ge  Kaiser: Made in Ethiopia, documentary by Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan (available on PBS) See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.