Science in the Divide is a monthly column about science, civil society, and humanity caught between the conflicting cultures, political agendas, and value systems of China and the United States.
It is written by Yangyang Cheng, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center. Before joining Yale, she worked on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for over a decade, and was a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University and an LHC Physics Center Distinguished Researcher at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. Born and raised in China, Cheng received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 2015, and her Bachelor’s in Science from the University of Science and Technology of China’s School for the Gifted Young. She is a columnist at The China Project. Her essays have also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, Foreign Policy, MIT Technology Review, ChinaFile, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and other publications.
In the wake of the March 16 shootings in Atlanta, Yangyang Cheng reflects on life as a Chinese immigrant amid escalating racial violence and geopolitical tensions. Caught between an authoritarian homeland and an increasingly hostile U.S., how does one live conscientiously? Who grieves, and what makes a life grievable?
Two decades after first encounter, Yangyang Cheng revisits The Lord of the Rings trilogy and explores new lessons about state power, climate crisis, exile, and allegiance.
How does one tell a story about the COVID-19 pandemic? In his new documentary ‘76 Days,’ set primarily at Wuhan hospitals, director Hao Wu chooses to push back against the prevalent approach in foreign coverage of China, where the gaze is fixed on the government and art falls into a false binary of protest or propaganda.
What is the meaning of citizenship, and who deserves to be a U.S. citizen? The new documentary "First Vote" is a rare, close look at the Chinese-American community and their political participation. As Americans go to the polls, Yangyang Cheng explores the country's fraught history with immigration and conditional citizenship, and asks: How much should our personhood be determined by the types of paper we carry?
The Democratic and Republican National Conventions have just concluded. Yangyang Cheng reflects on her introduction to American politics, and shares her hopes and concerns for this election. Living in historic times, what is one's responsibility as an individual? Beneath the distorted realities, how do we reclaim the bond that is deep and intimate with this world and each other?
What is it like to watch "Hamilton" in 2020, when the romanticized version of an optimistic, inclusive America feels detached from reality? Yangyang Cheng explores what Lin-Manuel Miranda's hit musical has meant to her over the years, how the election of 2016 compelled her to repurpose her life, and the enduring power of the written word.
Whom, or what, do borders and the military protect? As COVID-19 alters the world as we know it, and governments exploit the crisis to amass power, Yangyang Cheng argues that we must rethink safety versus security, and reimagine community beyond the confines of a state.
Mo Hailong stole corn and went to jail for it. But — as documented in Mara Hvistendahl’s new book "The Scientist and the Spy" — his story is about so much more: Greed and compliance, political and corporate self-interest, a transnational struggle between two superpowers, and the failure of the American promise.
“April is the cruelest month,” so goes the opening line to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land.” And so it is that April has been exceptionally...
Illustration by Julia YH The coronavirus is claiming many casualties: lives and livelihoods, habits and customs. What is the purpose of studying the universe when...