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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Later this month, an election will be held to select Hong Kong's next chief executive. The race has been tarnished with accusations of extramarital affairs and conflicts of interest. As the local press put it: Beijing has lost control of the puppet strings. -
These days, visiting Tibetan areas is a risky venture for journalists trying to cover the protest movement against Chinese rule, including a rash of self-immolations. But the dangers are far greater for those who talk to them. NPR's Louisa Lim recently traveled there and describes the challenges. -
Chinese authorities have tightened security around Tibet after a series of demonstrations by Tibetans demanding more religious and political freedoms. Self-immolation protests by monks and nuns have led to violent confrontations, and some monasteries appear to be emptying. -
Li Keqiang, who is in line to become China's next premier, has a very different resume than other Chinese leaders. He speaks English well, translated a book by a prominent British judge, and mingled with activist students when he attended Peking University three decades ago. -
The son of a communist revolutionary hero who was later imprisoned, Xi Jinping is set to become China's next leader. Family members and friends paint a portrait of a humble man with an appetite for knowledge, who is an efficient administrator and an open-minded politician. -
The transition of power in China this fall will usher out a generation of engineers and technocrats, and replace them with economists and lawyers who may be less scared of political experimentation. But two distinct factions are emerging, and their biggest challenge will be how to handle changes. -
Historic buildings in Beijing are being demolished in the pursuit of quick profit. Even the home of the architect who urged Mao Zedong to preserve Beijing's old city has fallen to the wreckers' ball, sparking considerable outrage. And the epidemic of destruction is spreading to new buildings, too. -
Shocked by the poverty he saw on a reporting trip, a Chinese journalist set up a program to provide meals to 25,000 poor children in rural China, many of whom suffer from malnutrition. Indirectly, his efforts have prompted the government to ramp up its efforts to feed the country's most vulnerable. -
Popular dating shows, imperial court dramas, ghost stories and spy shows have largely disappeared from prime-time TV in China. The clampdown on entertainment is part of a wider ideological campaign by Beijing. But the move risks alienating China's largely nonpolitical youth. -
As North Korea prepares for a new leader, China, South Korea and the other nations are recalibrating their policies and weighing new security concerns. The job is difficult because so little is known about Kim Jong Un, the son and presumed successor to Kim Jong Il.
