In this new audio interview on the New Books Network, Carla Nappi speaks with Judith Farquhar about Ten Thousand Things: Nurturing Life in Contemporary Beijing. Click here to learn more about the book. Click here to listen to the full interview. An excerpt appears below:

“ Q : … it is great to hear more about your collaborative relationship with Qicheng Zhang. The collaborative nature of the project is extraordinarily moving and vivid, and very much shapes … every aspect that the structure of the book takes. Can you say a little bit about the nature of that collaborative work? Because it is notable that your coauthor was not just your coauthor; but … Qicheng Zhang’s work turns out to be one of the subjects of the chapter itself. Can you say a little bit more about that?

A : … it is my favorite topic about the book: the nature of the collaboration…. Qicheng Zhang does not even read English – much less speak it. So it was necessary to work entirely in Chinese. I could never claim to be an effective communicator in all the registers of modern Chinese. So we learned how to talk with each other very well.”