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Essays | Reportage | Opinion and analysis | Interviews and profiles
Reviews and criticism | Lists | Poetry | Books

Featured

Love in the lowlands as a Muslim lesbian tomboy, Sixth Tone, 20 May 2016.

China’s LGBTIQ+ movement is under attack. But international support can be a double-edged sword, ABC, 29 November 2021.

Genderfeels in nomads’ land, Them, 13 August 2020.

Essays

Revising whiteness in aisle five, Overland, 21 February 2022, with Dr Arlie Alizzi.

Underfoot: history from below, Overland, No. 241, Summer 2020/2021, with Liz Crash.

Sexting at the end of the world, Kill Your Darlings, 14 September 2020.

Yellow peril isn’t what it used to be, Meanjin, Summer 2019/2020.

The T on Chinese transmasculinity, Popula, 27 March 2019.

Shapeshifting in the Year of the Monkey, The Lifted Brow, 4 February 2016.

Things and their makers: From ‘European labour only’ to ‘ethical consumerism’, Right Now, 8 September 2015.

Border violence as settler nativism, The Platform, 26 July 2014. [archive link]

The name and the face, Overland, No. 208, Spring 2012, pp. 27-32. All of Jinghua’s writing for Overland can be found here.

Fissures and friendships: How I became a woman of colour, Peril, no. 10, January 2011. Full archive of Jinghua’s work for Peril available here.

Reportage

Non-binary finery: can genderless fashion move beyond a label?, The Guardian, 30 August 2022.

Fa’afafine Yuki Kihara celebrates Samoa’s third gender: ‘Galleries think they can tick the box with me’, The Guardian, 29 April 2022.

‘All clothes are handmade’: the migrant workers behind Australian fashion, The Guardian, 14 July 2021.

Is China’s indie scene growing up or selling out?, ABC, 7 July 2021.

Chinatown: Melbourne, Culture Trip, 29 June 2020.

The lack of diversity in Australia’s sperm banks, ABC, 11 June 2020.

Mental health online (beyond avoiding the comments), ArtsHub, 11 October 2019.

Bringing the world home, ArtsHub, 5 August 2019.

From Taiwan to Melbourne: First Nations exchanges that decentre the west, ArtsHub, 10 May 2019.

It’s complicated: Chinese millennials and marriage, Sixth Tone, 4 August 2018, with Fan Yiying.

What sex workers can tell us about China’s transformation, Sixth Tone, 23 May 2017.

‘Against Chinese values’: homophobia, nationalism and marriage, Overland, 29 May 2017.

After watershed year, Chinese trans activists hold first summit, Sixth Tone, 14 December 2016.

Chengdu, the questionable queer capital of China, Sixth Tone, 8 November 2016.

LGBT mental health: closet prejudice remains, Sixth Tone, 19 May 2016.

Women take sex ed into their own hands and phones, Sixth Tone, 6 May 2016.

Return home and ‘settle’, Confucians tell women, Sixth Tone, 22 April 2016.

Waking up to the threat of domestic violence, Sixth Tone, 3 April 2016.

Full archive of Jinghua’s stories for Sixth Tone can be found here. 

Opinion and analysis

No money, no time, no space, no company? Seven tips for eating well on a solo budget, The Guardian, 6 March 2023.

Ex talk is a deal breaker? Absolutely not. It’s a treasured feature of queer culture, The Guardian, 26 February 2023.

I can’t apply for another grant, Un magazine 14.2 (print, audio and digital), November 2020.

Walking away, backwards; or woman-lite in women’s lit, Feminist Writers Festival, 20 November 2020. [archive link]

Adding people of colour to a racist workplace isn’t the answer, Overland, 7 September 2020.

Navigating Australia’s mutual obligation system has been humiliating and counterproductive, The Guardian, 31 August 2020.

It doesn’t work like that, VCOSS, 16 July 2020.

How coronogamy (coronavirus-induced monogamy) has changed my sex life, MTV, 24 June 2020.

Too often theory is divorced from lived experience, and too often marginalised people are invited to share their stories as illustration for someone else’s opinion.

Jinghua Qian, Overland, 2012

What’s wrong with saying ‘ni hao’, HuffPost, 15 June 2020.

Labor’s attack on migrant workers is a painful reminder of our sad history, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 2020, with Sanmati Verma.

Call out China’s meddling, but the yellow-peril alarm at ‘Chinese influence’ is racist, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 September 2019.

What I do as a sensitivity reader, ArtsHub, 9 September 2019.

‘The Farewell’ will break your heart in the best way, SBS, 2 September 2019.

How to come out to your migrant parents, SBS, 16 April 2019. Translations in Chinese and Thai.

How to get a five-year residency permit if you’re sort of Chinese-ish, Popula, 3 December 2018.

We went to Asia’s biggest pride march, Autostraddle, 10 November 2017.

Four perspectives on race & racism in Australian poetry, Overland, No. 222, Autumn 2016, with AJ Carruthers, Samuel Wagan Watson, and Elena Gomez.

From eyelids to skin tone, beauty isn’t always about ‘looking white‘, The Guardian, 19 August 2015.

Erasing transgender women doesn’t erase gender, Overland, 28 May 2014.

Interviews and profiles

#198 Lian Low, Liminal, 17 January 2022.

#192 Sab D’Souza, Liminal, 18 October 2021.

#191 Jenna Lee, Liminal, 11 October 2021.

#176 Truc Truong, Liminal, 24 May 2021.

Stage doyenne Nancye Hayes, The Saturday Paper, 14 November 2020.

Q&A with Fan Jian on documentaries of desire, Sixth Tone, 17 December 2016.

Reviews and criticism

Ceramics: An Atlas of Forms, Journal of Australian Ceramics, Vol 62 Issue 3, 1 November 2023. [paywall]

Loaded, The Saturday Paper, 27 May 2023.

She and Her Pretty Friend, The Saturday Paper, 13 May 2023.

Made in China 2.0, The Saturday Paper, 11 March 2023.

Against Disappearance: Essays on Memory, The Saturday Paper, 8 October 2022.

Polysecure, The Saturday Paper, 3 September 2022.

Folding tofu skins while Shanghai stills, Going Down Swinging, 21 August 2022.

Sort Of, The Saturday Paper, 5 February 2022.

Baking Impossible: cooking meets engineering in hare-brained but moreish show, The Guardian, 29 November 2021.

Shoko’s Smile, The Saturday Paper, 6 November 2021.

Heaven, The Saturday Paper, 10 July 2021.

As Beautiful As Any Other, The Saturday Paper, 24 April 2021.

Antipodean China, InDaily, 23 March 2021.

Eating with My Mouth Open, The Saturday Paper, 20 February 2021.

Saving Face: The Half of It director’s 2004 lesbian romcom debut was way ahead of its time, The Guardian, 10 February 2021.

Not For Broadcast, The Saturday Paper, 30 January 2021.

Ellie & Abbie (& Ellie’s Dead Aunt) review – delightful and distinctive queer romcom, The Guardian, 27 November 2020.

Loaded, The Saturday Paper, 7 November 2020.

Revenge, The Saturday Paper, 26 September 2020.

Guilt mountain, Meanjin, Spring 2020.

Tell Me Why game review: a poetic exploration of memory against a stunning Alaskan landscape, The Guardian, 14 September 2020.

The Baby-Sitters Club: the perfect PG escape for millennials and their kids – or anyone, really, The Guardian, 20 August 2020.

Sex, life: The fundamental queerness of ‘Vida’, The Monthly, 16 July 2020.

‘Dear Australia’: dispatches from a world overdue for a reckoning, The Guardian, 2 July 2020.

Yellow peril isn’t what it used to be, Meanjin, Summer 2019/2020.

Boundless plains to share: ‘Lost Years’ and the Chinese diaspora, Metro, Issue 180, 2014. (print)

Lists

Australian supermarket lasagne taste test, The Guardian, 28 April 2023.

Music for genderfeels: the dysphoria soundtrack you didn’t know you needed, Double J, ABC, 18 October 2022.

Playlist: 10 tracks to get you obsessed with Chinese indie music, Double J, ABC , 11 August 2021.

A local’s guide to Seddon, Time Out Melbourne, 5 November 2020.

Playlist: Music of the Sinosphere, Peril, 24 June 2020.

Playlist: Teacup in a storm, Peril, 31 May 2020.

10 books for an apocalyptic summer, ArtsHub, 17 December 2019.

TV shows that were ruined by stray shoes, SBS, 18 June 2019.

Poetry

Still life, The Saturday Paper, 12 September 2020.

Mainland girls, Cordite, Vol 52 (Toil), 1 November 2015.

Consumed without consent, Writers Victoria, 15 September 2015.

Leaving traces, released as part of National Young Writer Month along with an interview with the poet by Izzy Roberts-Orr, 29 June 2015.

Toisan, Mascara Literary Review, No. 15, May 2014.

Tong xing, Overland audio edition, 7 August 2012.

Typography, Melbourne Poetry Map, 2011.

Patriot, Going Down Swinging Vol. 27, 2009.

Jinghua has performed extensively over the last decade. Listen to eir work here.

Books and catalogue texts

Chinatown, Melbourne (& elsewhere), Liminal Vol. II, ed. Leah Jing McIntosh, Liminal, Melbourne, 2022. ISBN 9780646843537.

Still life, Best of Australian Poems 2021, ed. Ellen van Neerven and Toby Fitch, Australian Poetry, Melbourne, 2021. ISBN 9780992318925.

Ghost in the mirror, Disobedient Daughters, ed. Sophia Cai, Heart of Hearts, Melbourne, 2021. ISBN 9780648704027.

We need new names, Silent Dialogue, ed. Emma Thomson, correspondences, Melbourne, 2020. ISBN 9780645029703.

Out, Offshoot: Contemporary Life Writing Methodologies and Practice, eds. Donna Lee Brien & Quinn Eades, UWA Publishing, 2018. ISBN 9781742589626.

Hard, Press: 100 Love Letters, eds. Francesca Rendle-Short and Laurel Flores Fantauzzo, University of the Philippines Press, 2017. ISBN 9789715428293.

Queering the Air, Bold: Stories from older lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender & intersex people, ed. David Hardy, Rag and Bone Man Press, Melbourne, 2015, with Pham Phu Thanh Hang and Arjun Rajkhowa. ISBN 9780992584504.

Floodgates, Poetic Justice: Contemporary Australian Voices on Equality and Human Rights, eds. Andre Dao and Roselina Press, Right Now, 2014. ISBN 9780992496005.

One night snatch, or Brother Wang’s guide to eating out in Tashkent, Sincerely Yours exhibition, ed. and curated by Sophia Cai, West Space, Collingwood Yards, 22 January to 6 March 2022. Print and online.

In praise of laziness, Feast de Resistance, ed. Priya Pavri, May 2022.

On agonism, Who’s Afraid of Public Space, ed. Miriam Kelly, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, May 2022.