Jianying Zha is a writer, media critic, and China representative of the India China Institute at The New School. She is the author of Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China and China Pop: How Soap Operas, Tabloids, and Bestsellers Are Transforming a Culture, both published by The New Press. She is also the author of fiction and nonfiction books in Chinese, including The Eighties, an award-winning cultural retrospective of the 1980s in China. Zha has published widely in both Chinese and English for a variety of publications, including the New Yorker, the New York Times, Dushu, and Wanxiang. She lives in Beijing and New York.