Jan Wong
Jan Wong is a third-generation Canadian who grew up in Montreal speaking English, some French and zero Chinese. In 1972, she traveled alone to the People's Republic of China. At 19, she talked her way into Peking University, becoming the first of two Westerners to study in China during the Cultural Revolution, a tale she recounts in ‘Red China Blues, My Long March from Mao to Now’, http://www.janwong.ca/redchinablues.html. She became a journalist in 1979 as the first news assistant for The New York Times bureau in Beijing. In 1981, after graduating with a master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, she became a staff reporter at The Gazette in Montreal and, later, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail. She’s the recipient of numerous US and Canadian awards. She’s currently a columnist for Toronto Life magazine, a professor in journalism at St. Thomas University and a columnist for the Halifax Chronicle Herald.
