Jessie Lau is a writer and award-winning journalist in London

Hi there—I’m an independent writer, artist and multi-platform journalist from Hong Kong. I’ve spent the past decade covering the intersections of human rights, politics and culture from Asia, Europe and the United States. My essays and reportage have appeared in The Guardian, BBC, Los Angeles Review of Books, CNN, Times Literary Supplement, WIRED, The Economist and many more publications. I was shortlisted for the inaugural Philip Hoare Prize for global creative non-fiction writing.

I’m the founder of New Tide, the UK’s only East and Southeast Asian journalism network, head of the magazine team at NüVoices, a non-profit supporting women and minorities working on China topics, and contributing editor at Translator, a publication of translated journalism. Read a selection of my stories below + commission/pitch me here!

Featured stories

  • How a dog stolen from China sparked a British luxury craze

    Meet “Looty,” a dog stolen by the British in the looting of China’s Old Summer Palace and gifted to the queen. Her journey sparked a craze–and left behind a legacy mired in imperialism and racism

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  • ‘It’s difficult to survive’: China’s LGBTQ+ advocates​ face jail and forced confession

    Trans and queer people and their supporters suffer ‘systemic persecution’ as country pushes increasingly conservative values

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  • Can AI speak the language Japan tried to kill?

    More than a century after colonisation, the Ainu language almost vanished. Now machines are listening to hours of old recordings and learning to give it a new voice.

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  • Planning my multicultural wedding was already difficult. Finding a dress was even harder

    I wrote about how my wedding dress anxieties became less about the look itself, and more about what it had come to represent—my identity in a mixed-race marriage.

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  • Deported to a Country You Can’t Remember

    The Biden administration sent Phoeun You, a former child refugee, to Cambodia after more than four decades in the US.

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  • China’s war on Christmas hasn’t deterred kids from sending thousands of letters to Santa

    One Christmas, 12-year-old Wang’s classmate died of cancer. It was the first time one of her friends had passed away, and she wasn’t sure how to feel. Wang had written a letter to Santa the year before, so she decided to sit down and write another.

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  • “We’re All Chinese, Aren’t We?”

    Jessie Lau ponders Emily Feng’s “Let Only Red Flowers Bloom: Identity and Belonging in Xi Jinping’s China.”

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  • Myanmar’s Women Are on the Front Lines Against the Junta

    Protesters are using the military's fear of women against it.

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  • Hong Kong Is Still Waiting for Its Feminist Uprising

    Women and girls in the ongoing protest movement are up against a deeply unequal society.

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  • The Ghost Villages: A Guide to Hong Kong’s Abandoned Hakka Settlements

    Just a short minibus ride from the MTR, the rich history of Hakka villages lies in ruins along the Starling Inlet. 

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