Jiayang Fan became a staff writer at The New Yorker in 2016. Her reporting on China, American politics, and culture has appeared in the magazine and on newyorker.com since 2010.
Reading List: Jiayang Fan recommends Peter Hessler’s “Tales of the Trash,” about a neighborhood garbageman in Egypt.
In a country that is trying to reconcile its system of stringent political control with the porousness of modern culture, even a feckless pop star can be a threat.
