The Wall Dancers - by Yi-Ling Liu (Hardcover)

About the Book

"An indelible, deeply reported human narrative of contemporary China in which the country's carefully controlled internet offers a lens into the broader national tension between freedom and control. In the late 1990s, as the world was waking up to the power of the internet as a space of unprecedented connection and opportunity, Chinese authorities began constructing a system of online surveillance and censorship that became known as the Great Firewall. The online world that sprouted up behind the firewall was no less vibrant for being controlled, and in the years that followed China incubated a booming tech culture and a digital public square. But today, as the country's leadership has tightened the reins on public discourse and western headlines reduce the Chinese populace to a faceless monolith, journalist Yi-Ling Liu argues, China's singular online ecosystem may well be the most direct lens we have into the on-the-ground reality of life there. In tracing the evolution of the Chinese internet-from its lexicon to its memes to the precise nature of its censorship-Liu equips readers with a critical tool to assess the past, present, and future of a global power. Ingeniously conceived and meticulously reported, Dancing in Shackles spans the last three decades in China, a period that encapsulates the country's transformation into both the world's largest online userbase and one of its most dominant authoritarian states-from 1995, when ordinary Chinese people first logged onto the internet, swept up by its emancipatory promise, to the present day, as China polices its physical and virtual borders with unprecedented intensity. Drawing on years of intimate reporting, Liu weaves together the stories of individual citizens striving for freedom and community within state boundaries. A journalist-turned-activist taps into a nationwide feminist awakening, stoking a grassroots revolution on social media before being forced underground. The CEO of a gay dating app steers the company to a successful IPO despite laws prohibiting same-sex marriage. A disillusioned tech worker turns to writing science fiction to construct alternative visions of China's future. As Liu's subjects experience firsthand the internet's power as a tool of both state control and individual liberation, they grapple with universal questions of success and authenticity, love and solidarity, faith and survival. Dancing in Shackles is at once an unforgettable work of human storytelling and a vital window into a global power that we simplify and misunderstand at our peril"-- Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

An eye-opening exploration of the Chinese internet that reveals the intricate dance between freedom and control in contemporary China

In the late 1990s, as the world was waking up to the power and emancipatory promise of the internet, Chinese authorities began constructing a system of online surveillance and censorship now known as the Great Firewall. But far from being a barren landscape, the digital world that sprouted up behind the firewall brimmed with new subcultures and tech innovations, offering many Chinese citizens previously unimaginable connection and opportunity.

Today, as the country's leadership intensifies its control of public discourse and Western headlines reduce the Chinese public to a faceless monolith, journalist Yi-Ling Liu presents an intimate portrait of China's online ecosystem--and a crucial lens into the on-the-ground reality of life there. Tracing the last three decades of the Chinese internet's evolution--from its lexicon to its memes to the precise nature of its censorship--she equips readers with a critical tool to assess the past, present, and future of a global power.

Drawing on years of firsthand reporting, The Wall Dancers weaves together the stories of individuals navigating China's transformation into both the world's largest online user base and one of its most populous authoritarian states. As these entrepreneurs, activists, artists, and dreamers experience the internet's power as a tool for both control and liberation, they grapple with universal questions of success and authenticity, love and solidarity, faith and resilience.

The Wall Dancers is at once an unforgettable work of human storytelling and a vital exploration of what it means to live with dignity and hope within the technological systems that now shape all our lives.

Review Quotes

"The Wall Dancers is history told in a gripping, novelistic style. It is at once a crash course in contemporary Chinese politics and culture and an epic story about human drive, desperation, and ingenuity against inordinate odds. Yi-Ling Liu has written a masterwork."
--Jonathan Blitzer, New York Times bestselling author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

"In her intimate, inner history of the Chinese Internet, Yi-Ling Liu unearths lessons that apply worldwide as citizens struggle to assert their humanity against those who would homogenize what we see, believe, and consume. In the tradition of Vaclav Havel, Liu has given us an urgent, revealing guide for what Havel called 'living within the truth.'"
--Evan Osnos, winner of the National Book Award and New York Times bestselling author of The Haves and Have-Yachts

"With profound nuance, clarity, and courage, Yi-Ling Liu writes about a cast of individuals who deftly navigate the complex inner workings of the Chinese internet. And yet in Liu's expert rendering, their stories embody so much more: a history of China's dramatic rise, a portrait of those who molded and were molded by it, and an examination of the true scorecard of the global internet on free speech and expression. At once intimate and expansive, The Wall Dancers is a masterpiece, made only more impressive by Liu's own exquisite dancing. To gain this level of access and trust to sources in China and to breathe humanity and agency into an often faceless story can only be pulled off by a journalist of the highest caliber."
--Karen Hao, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of AI

"Gripping from the first page, The Wall Dancers is a work of rare urgency and insight. Moving effortlessly between the intimate and the world-historical, Yi-Ling Liu pushes beyond the tired binaries that so often define Western views of China, offering instead a portrait of human lives full of contradiction, aspiration, and desire. In doing so, she vividly demonstrates that psychic self-censorship--and the generative possibilities born of solidarity and collective power--are not unique to China but a lesson for all societies confronting ascendant authoritarianism."
--Brian Goldstone, author of There Is No Place for Us

"As Yi-Ling Liu shows in this masterful piece of reporting, China's internet is not only a battleground for authoritarian leaders and their oligarchs but also the site of a vibrant counterculture of queer activists, feminist writers, edgy rappers, and tech bros turned sci-fi novelists. A rare report from inside contemporary China, The Wall Dancers is an important intervention in our often-simplistic debates about China."
--Ian Johnson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Sparks

"This incisive, empathetic debut study from journalist Liu examines three decades of the internet's evolution in China, from the mid-1990s explosion of microblogs and message boards that corresponded with the country's increasing liberalization, to the mid-aughts raising of the Great Firewall....Liu conveys how these individuals' emotional and interior lives were shaped by events in the digital world, from their excitement at discovering a community online to the pain and isolation caused by growing restrictions and even the outright deletion of their platforms....It amounts to a vital and subversive window into a cloistered but sprawling online world."
--Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

"Liu brings broad perspective and nuance to an issue that, despite its extensive global impact, is often discussed only in terms of its extremes. . . . If Liu's text is in part revelatory of the particular ambitions, risks, and pitfalls humming beneath China's internet domination, it is also a global cautionary tale. . . . A timely and sophisticated study that is eye-opening, and a touch eerie."
--Kirkus

About the Author

YI-LING LIU's work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, WIRED, and The New York Review of Books. She has been a New America Fellow, a recipient of the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, and an Overseas Press Club Foundation Scholar. Born and raised in Hong Kong, and a graduate of Yale University, she now lives in London.