A Memoir of China

Jian Ping is the author of Mulberry Child: A Memoir of China (2009), a book about her coming of age during China’s Cultural Revolution. Mulberry Child has been developed into an award-winning documentary movie and was broadcast on national PBS in May 2014 and will be again in May 2015.

Jian Ping is a contributing writer for Xinhua News (the major wire service in China), China Daily, and Asian Wisconzine, a monthly magazine in the Midwest. She is a film director, currently working on her next feature-length documentary on Art Paul, founding art director of Playboy who created the rabbit logo and is a legendary designer and artist. She also works as a consultant for bridging cultural differences between the U.S. and China, and has brokered a groundbreaking classical music exchange program between the Chicago WFMT Radio Network and several radio stations in China. She teaches as an adjunct professor at DePaul University.

Jian Ping obtained her B.A in English from Jilin University, China and M.A. in Film and International Affairs from Ohio University. She lives in Chicago.

Jian's talk to the Rotary will be focused on China--my family story surviving the ordeal of the Cultural Revolution, and the immigrant life in the US, the generation/cultural gap between my American-raised daughter and me, which is the narrative arch of the award-winning documentary film, Mulberry Child. The film is based on my memoir of the same title.