Transcript: Life, Love, and Loss in China: Hazza Harding's story of resilience

Below is a complete transcript of the episode. Thanks to CadreScripts for their great work, to Lili Shoup for checking and formatting, and to Zhou Keya for the image! Listen in the embedded player above.

Kaiser Kuo: Welcome to the Sinica Podcast, a weekly discussion of current affairs in China. In this program, we’ll look at books, ideas, new research, intellectual currents, and cultural trends that can help us better understand what’s happening in China’s politics, foreign relations, economics, and society. Join me each week for in-depth conversations that shed more light and bring less heat to how we think and talk about China. I’m Kaiser Kuo, coming to you from my home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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I first noticed the name Hazza Harding popping up on my Twitter feed, someone with an unmistakably Aussie name, and a very memorable one at that, and one that happens to, in at least its unstrained version, Harry Harding, happens to be the full name of one of the most prominent Sinologists of the last half century, a political scientist whose work I really admire. I noted that this Hazza Harding character had retweeted or liked or commented positively on things I’d written, variously on Twitter, on posts, on podcasts, different essays, and so forth. I pieced together that he had worked for Chinese state media, actually, it’s right there in his Twitter bio, as the former host of Guangdong Today, and had lived in China for several of the years that I was there, though our paths, sadly, had never actually crossed. Then one day, on a whim, I clicked into his Substack and I found myself reading this deeply personal heartfelt essay that resonated with me in so, so many ways. It was called “Ten Lessons from an Australian Who Lived, Loved, and Lost in China,” and if you want to hit pause right now and go and read that, I encourage you to do so. You can find the link right there in the show notes. Let me take a quick aside here to profess my love for Substack. I mean, it’s essentially perfected the lost art of the blog, something that thrived a couple of decades ago before social media fragmented it and swallowed it completely whole. Substack makes it feel all fresh again, not just bringing back that sense of individual voice, but making it so much more convenient, so much better for discovery, for engagement, and just, aesthetically, just so much better than the shitty old blogs of years past. Some of the best writing out there today is, in my opinion, happening on Substack.

Anyway, this essay of Hazza’s was a perfect example of that. It’s raw, it’s unguarded, but it’s deeply reflective, and quite wise. It’s not just about China or even just about his own story, though that’s quite a story, as you’ll hear, it’s about the process of making sense of the world, of identity, of grief — coming of age, the struggle to hold on to what we believe in while also allowing ourselves to evolve. Like me, Hazza lived in China for a good long stretch. And like me, there were times where he felt like he’d been chewed up and spat out by the place, but it didn’t leave either of us, I think, embittered, or at least not permanently. So, like me, he was involved in media. He was also a performer, and we’ll talk about that too. And like me, he’s trying to navigate between some very extreme views out there in the discourse on China in the countries where we live — me in the U.S., Hazza in Australia. So, I knew instantly that I wanted to have a conversation with him about this, about this essay of his. And so he joins me today from Brisbane. Hazza Harding, a very warm welcome to Sinica.

Hazza Harding: Good day, Kaiser. Thank you very much for having me. It’s a very special moment, actually, because I can remember when I was back in Guangzhou and I was sitting at my desk at my previous employer — I don’t like to mention the name specifically too much anymore just because it sometimes can cause some people some grief — and just listening to your podcast and listening to the guests that you would have on your show and just all of the content that you put out at the time. And it was just so refreshing. And it was like a breath of fresh air. If I was stressed and I was having a bad China day where things were just piling up and it was just becoming a little bit overwhelming, I would just sit down and listen to you or read something that you’d written. And I don’t want to be too much of a fanboy at the moment, but…

Kaiser: No, no, go on. Tell me more. (laughs) Hey, thanks. That’s so super kind. That’s so super kind of you.

Hazza: I think that in this crazy world, we do need sane voices, calm voices, and Twitter has just gone a little bit crazy. I still use it a little bit every now and then just to check in on different people. But I found something really useful is to turn on notifications for specific people, and I’ve turned them on for about six people. And so, you are one of those people. I won’t say who the other five people are, but it’s just nice because when I get a notification that someone I respect or look up to has posted something to Twitter, I can click on that, and it brings up a nice feed of just the people that I really care about, their opinions and their thoughts.

Kaiser: That’s a good idea. I think I’m going to do that.

Hazza: Yeah. Yeah, so I have to admit I’m a little bit nervous talking to you today because I haven’t done anything like this in a couple of years. And yeah, I'm pinching myself at the moment.

Kaiser: Ah, you’re an old professional, you’re a broadcast guy. I mean, you were on TV for God’s sake. This is nothing.

Anyway, let’s jump in. That’s very, very kind of you. But for those listeners who did not take my advice and hit pause and read that essay, maybe we should just start with the major plot points of your personal story. What initially drew you to China? How did your experiences in China unfold from that starting point?

Hazza: Well, it’s actually a very long story. So, I went to a school in Queensland called West Moreton Anglican College. And from grades one through six, we studied Mandarin Chinese.

Kaiser: Oh, wow.

Hazza: But obviously, we learnt very basic Mandarin. So, by the end of those six years, I could basically say, “mom,” “dad,” “my favorite food is,” and “我的朋友在哪里 wǒ de péngyǒu zài nǎlǐ,” you know, those sorts of things. And then, so in about grade 11, I did something a little bit sneaky because I don’t like maths, and so what I did was I dropped maths and did a term at TAFE, which is technical college here in Australia, and that counted as one of my subjects for school, for high school. And then when I went back to school and I had to take up a sixth subject again, I didn’t pick maths back up, I asked if I could join the Chinese class. I actually didn’t ask the head of school or anything like that. I just asked my teacher in maths class if I could go to the toilet. And then I walked to the classroom where I knew the Chinese class was, and I knocked on the door and I asked the teacher, I said, “If I wanted to join this class, would you let me join?” And then she said, “Yeah, fine, if you can make it happen.”

Kaiser: Fantastic.

Hazza: I found a way to make it happen. And so, in grade 11, I joined Chinese class, and I was sitting up the back of the class, sort of starting from scratch while everyone else was already in their third-year textbook, and I’m starting from scratch up the back again. And then from there, I went to study Chinese at university. But, along the way, I went to Beijing when I was 14 years old for a school trip. And it was actually very lucky that I got to go on that trip because I was one year too young to go on the trip but a friend of mine and myself, we really wanted to go, so we, I don’t know, somehow at this school that I was at… Anyway, somehow I convinced the organizer of the trip to allow me to go if I could get parental permission, and so I got that. And so, 14 years old, I was in Beijing for the first time. It was just so different to what I was expecting.

Kaiser: Well, clearly, you already possessed the main qualification for living in China, which is the ability to get around bureaucratic obstacles with… Like push hard and do what you… (laughs)

Hazza: Yes, yes. I’m very persistent, and I was definitely persistent before I went to China, but after living in China, especially for about 12 years, I am certainly a very persistent person now. And I think that’s something that China teaches you.

Kaiser: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Hazza: Just because there are constant challenges. Just small challenges that put a little bit of a road bump in your way and you’ve got to find a way to navigate around those.

Kaiser: So, you went in what? It was like 2010 or 2009? Is that about when you went or?

Hazza: So the first time I went, I think it was three or four years before the Olympics. It was around 2004.

Kaiser: Oh, okay. That was when you were 14.

Hazza: Yeah, that was when I was 14. Yeah, 2004.

Kaiser: When did you actually move there?

Hazza: Okay, so then after that, I had been back to China three or four times.

Kaiser: Ah, I see.

Hazza: Maybe one month here and then… I had some great Chinese friends at school who were international students. And one Christmas summer holiday, they invited me over and I went over to China and stayed with them for a couple of weeks with their family. And so I had slowly sort of exposed myself more and more to China, but I ended up moving there in 2011.

Kaiser: Oh, okay.

Hazza: 2011. And that was just after I’d graduated from university. And I’d been doing a little bit of singing online and posting cover songs. And so, I was over there for a holiday just to explore if there was any opportunities. And there was a manager who’d contacted me via Weibo who was offering to be my manager, and as someone who’s twenty-something, 20, 21 years old, like, it was pretty exciting. So, I went over for a seven-day holiday, and then that turned into a 12-year stint in China.

Kaiser: (laughs) As a singer first.

Hazza: As a singer first. Yeah.

Kaiser: Just to give us an idea, I mean, you do what? Pop or are there other genres you do?

Hazza: So, I’m not a professional singer. It’s all self-taught. Yeah, I do pop. Mainly I do covers of Chinese pop songs, but I do have some original Chinese songs that I’ve written as well. But back when I was in university, I just found covering Chinese songs to be the best way to learn Chinese and memorize vocabulary. Because if I memorize the song and the lyrics and what those lyrics meant, then I could sort of draw on them when I needed them. But the only problem with that is…

Kaiser: You don’t learn the tones.

Hazza: Lyrics. Yeah, lyrics can be very poetic. I always had feedback from my Chinese teachers that a lot of the things I would say were very abstract because I’d be drawing on these lyrics from Chinese ballads about love and breakups.

Kaiser: That’s hysterical. I’m trying to imagine what that analogy would be, if some guy in English who only spoke in terms of… I actually wrote a little short story once where there was a character like that. I couldn’t sustain it, but the conceit was that his English was basically learned entirely from lyrics to Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Doors, The Who, The Beatles. And so everything that he said would be like, you know, “People are strange when you’re a stranger.”

Hazza: Well, that’s me, except I was listening to The Flowers and Jay Chou and JJ Lin.

Kaiser: Hysterical.

Hazza: Actually, it all kicked off because when I was sitting in Chinese class in grade 11, when I just joined the class, or maybe it was grade 12, and there were a couple of Hong Kong students in the class because they considered learning Mandarin Chinese as an easy way to get a high grade because they can argue that their first language is Cantonese and so they’re also learners of Mandarin. I mean, we became very good friends, but at first, they kind of teased me a little bit. And one day they handed me a pair of headphones and just said, “Can you listen to this song and try and sing it as you’re listening to it?” Because, apparently, that was like a game that was played on a very popular talk show or something at the time in Hong Kong. And so they played “Black Humor" by Jay Chou, which is a very difficult song to sing.

Kaiser: Yeah, yeah.

Hazza: And so I was trying to sing it as I was listening to it, and they were laughing at me, and I just thought, “I’m going to show you, I’m going to come to class tomorrow and I’m going to know how to sing this song, and I’m going to prove to you that, you know, don’t underestimate people.” And so I went home and I spent all night learning the lyrics to that song, and just to the point where I could manage to sing it. And then the next day in class, and I said, “Hey, can I just have a listen to that song again?” And I put the earphones in, and I started singing it. And the look on their faces was just priceless. It just gave me this sense of satisfaction that, you know,
“You were teasing me yesterday, but now you’re surprised that I can actually sing the song.”

Kaiser: That’s amazing. That’s so funny. Oh my God. So, you go there, I mean, your seven-day planned holiday turns into 12 years. But along the way, like me, your career changes quite a bit, right?

Hazza: Yeah.

Kaiser: I started off also doing music when I first moved to China. And then very quickly got into internet stuff and into media. Let's hear about your transition eventually into working for state-run media.

Hazza: Yeah. Well, looking back, I kind of did things in reverse because I had built a bit of a following online on Weibo and Renrenwang and those sorts of…

Kaiser: Yeah, I remember Renren, yeah.

Hazza: 56.com.

Kaiser: Yeah, 五六网 wǔliù wǎng, I remember that.

Hazza: Yeah, old-school websites. So, when I went to Guangzhou first… Well, actually, so I went to Beijing, the airline lost my luggage. It was the middle of winter. I’m an Australian. I was wearing thongs, a t-shirt on my flight over here. Got out in Beijing, and I was just frozen. And the airline said it would take a couple of days to get my luggage, and so, basically, like I looked at a map of China, and I said, “Where can I go that’s warmer than this?” And it looked like the most southern sort of large city was Guangzhou. So, I said, “I’m going there just so I can be warm.” So I went to Guangzhou and after a couple of days, a producer from Guangdong Television sent me a message on Weibo and said, “Oh, you’re in Guangzhou, would you like to be a guest on my show? And we can talk about your singing.” And so I went and did that.

And after we’d finished recording the show, the producer said, “Well, would you like to come and speak to our manager or our leader?” And went and spoke to them, and they said, “We just watched you on screen and thought you did a pretty good job. We’re looking for foreign hosts at the moment. We’re launching this international channel, and would you be interested?” And I kind of just pretended that I wasn’t all that interested, but really I was thinking, this is an amazing opportunity, I’ve got to say yes. And so I agreed, and then I came back to Australia for probably a week or two weeks just to pack some things, and yeah, then I moved over. And so, initially, I was working part-time for the TV station, and mainly focusing on music. Yeah, it just slowly, I guess, transitioned into doing both. And then, towards the end, more of the state media work.

Kaiser: Yeah, yeah.

Hazza: Which I look back and I think, gee, I wish I had done more singing because that’s what I actually enjoy doing the most. And I have actually been doing a little bit of singing on RedNote recently.

Kaiser: Oh, we’ll have to check that out. And we’ll make sure to put some links in there to your RedNote, your Xiaohongshu profile. And I’m sure a lot of your old stuff still lives on YouTube or something, yeah?

Hazza: Yeah, so you can find some of my songs on Apple Music, Spotify. If you’re in China, they’re on QQ Music.

Kaiser: Oh, fantastic. So, stuff you recorded in studios, actually, like proper.

Hazza: Yeah.

Kaiser: Oh, nice.

Hazza: So, I have a couple of original songs. I actually had a couple of songs that made it onto music charts in China, which is-

Kaiser: Oh my lord.

Hazza: Yeah. Yeah, so I had two songs that… one song that went to number one on the Guangzhou new music charts. That was in about 2012. And another song that went to number three, and then one more song that reached number 12, but that was sort of more on a national music chart that is the, I guess, music chart for about 56 radio stations across China.

Kaiser: Oh, fantastic.

Hazza: Something like that.

Kaiser: We’re going to have to listen to some of that at the end in lieu of my little usual instrumental outro. Fantastic. That’s great. I can’t wait to hear this.

But let’s move along because your essay only just sort of glancingly talks about your career in music, and it dives mostly into sort of the whole, well, I mean, a less happy experience, a lot of it. I mean, there are a lot of people who immerse themselves deeply into any other culture, and China is just one of them, and they experience this sense of limbo, of not feeling fully at home anywhere. I mean, you describe falling in and out of love with China multiple times. That’s also really super relatable for me. I think we all, to some extent, have a kind of… a lot of people who go and live in any country end up with sort of a love-hate, right?

Hazza: Yeah.

Kaiser: What were some of the pivotal moments when you felt maybe closest to China and when you felt maybe most alienated?

Hazza: I can answer the most alienated question first because that probably springs to mind a lot quicker.

Kaiser: That’s an unfortunate characteristic of humans that that’s the case, but yeah, it is true.

Hazza: It is. It is really sad because, as you were asking me that question, I instantly knew the answer to when I felt alienated. But when I felt closest to China, I’m going to have a little bit of a think about that. Probably the first example of feeling a little bit alienated was, I just moved into a new apartment in Tianhe District of Guangzhou, and downstairs there was a bar. And they had a sign on the door that said “Foreigners Are Not Welcome.” And it was in Chinese and in English. And I just thought, “This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this in China.”

Kaiser: Yeah, that’s very unusual.

Hazza: Yeah. It was in 2019. And I made a little bit of a scene about it, posted on Weibo and called 12345. I think I might’ve made a little bit of a video about it at the time or something like that. And so within a couple of weeks, the sign was gone. The local authorities sent me a message apologizing about it, and I thought, “Oh, great response.” But I think that was the start for me of just noticing a bit of a shift in China.

And then it was the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia that really just… I don’t know, it gobsmacked me because before then, before that period in time, I felt very aligned to what I thought was this mainstream idea or concept in China that just war was bad, and any form of violence and war, fighting, there’s no excuse, there’s no justification. But then suddenly there were justifications for Russia. It wasn’t instant. I think for the first couple of days, the people around me were just as shell-shocked as I was by what I was seeing. But then, slowly, people started to say things like, “Well, if we don’t support Russia, who’s going to support us against the U.S.? If we go against Russia, that’s going to leave us on our own.” And so for the first time in a long time, I felt like China was taking a side in a military conflict, and it just went against every grain in my body. It was just, yeah.

Kaiser: I had the same experience I really had to wrestle with. And I would really butt heads with a lot of people on this issue. I think it depends on who you’re hanging out with though because I don’t know a single one of the sort of think tankers, the more kind of academic or analytical types that I hung out with who are like that. But a lot of ordinary friends of mine were saying just that sort of thing. I mean, in fact, in exactly the same words, you know, “Hey, if we don’t hang with Russia, who’s going to help us when the chips are down?” So, yeah.

Hazza: Yeah. And then I copped a bit of flack during that time as well because I didn’t really hold back in showing that I did not like at all what I was seeing from Russia and support for Ukraine, sometimes in more subtle ways than others, depending on the context and the situation. Obviously, there were other things as well. I think being in Guangzhou, it really was a little bit of a different world to the rest of China in a lot of respects. I sort of only started really understanding that after I left China, but during COVID, in Guangzhou, just the discrimination against non-Chinese people, it was actually quite palpable. I think maybe in Guangzhou that was a little bit more of a problem than in some other areas in China. And I think it’s because Guangzhou does have such a large population of foreign nationals. If I’m not wrong, it actually has the highest population of non-Chinese residents in all of China. And usually, people think of Beijing and Shanghai because there are lots of Western-

Kaiser: But they’re not thinking about sub-Saharan Africans and the people from the Middle East. They’re not thinking of-

Hazza: Exactly. Exactly, yeah. Guangzhou actually is a very diverse city, and I think that there is a segment of the population in every society that does not like outsiders. And when things get difficult and when people are feeling scared, I think that’s when some of those more discriminatory behaviors can come out. And I have a few different stories. One time when I was accosted on the street by this really tall, strong northeastern guy, and he grabbed onto my arm and he wouldn’t let me go, and he demanded to see my ID and was asking me whether I was a spy. And this was just on the street, like in downtown Guangzhou. And it was just moments like those moments where you just feel a little bit heartbroken because of all the time that you’ve spent trying to immerse yourself in a different culture and learn the language and trying to build bridges, and then, suddenly, you feel like you are the enemy. It can be a little bit confronting.

Kaiser: Oh, absolutely. I remember, I mean, for me, yeah, it was the embassy bombing in ’99. That was the catalytic event. I mean, I ended up taking a beer mug to the jaw in a rooftop bar brawl on account of mainly because, “You don’t have one of these,” he said, pulling out his 身份证 shēnfèn zhèng and showing it to me, and then whacking me with a beer mug. But yeah, I mean, and like you, I didn’t hold back.

What was it like for you, though? You were working in state media at this time? I mean, both when you moved, presumably, into this apartment, and you had this encounter with the sign that said, basically, “No Foreigners Allowed,” and during the hypernationalism around Ukraine, and even before that when you were working during the early years of the COVID lockdown, what was it like for you as somebody on state media? Were you ever put in a position where you had to say things that you just felt really you had to take a shower afterward, that you felt like you were saying things that you simply didn’t believe?

Hazza: I have to give credit to the people that I worked with because I was never intimidated or forced into saying anything that I personally did not believe was accurate. Actually, I don’t like to go into too many specifics about former colleagues, but just as an example, probably in 2020 or 2021, I can’t remember…

Kaiser: Those years blur. Yeah, I know.

Hazza: Yeah, it’s all a blur. And I think orders had come down that our department had to make a documentary about Xinjiang and they wanted a foreign host to do it, and they did not even ask me if I was interested. They just knew that that would be something that I would not touch. And so they found somebody on social media and asked them to go and do it. And I think, also, I do have to give my former colleagues quite a bit of credit because, throughout the whole saga of COVID, I think that reporters and journalists in Guangdong, I feel they were as responsible as they could be within the limits that you find yourself constrained under in media in China, especially during COVID.

And I still honestly believe that before COVID, Guangdong was still holding onto this thread of, I guess, a little bit of freedom to tell its own story in its own way. And sometimes that meant airing things that Beijing was not happy about the world knowing about. And I always had respect for journalists who work under challenging conditions. I learned from those journalists how to do the job when things are tough, and things just kept getting more and more difficult. And people just kept finding new innovative ways to get the message out there, the required message out there. I would pay attention to media output from Beijing and other cities like Shanghai, etc., and you could definitely tell that there was a bit of a difference between the information that people in Guangdong were being provided with and people in other areas of China were. And I believe that that’s a hangover of the effect that Hong Kong media had on Guangdong because Guangdong media always had to compete with Hong Kong media, especially in terms of Cantonese channels, because people found ways to watch Hong Kong television. The censors would try to press that button and play the ads so you couldn’t see certain news stories, but people still heard them. And so, Guangdong television always was competing with TVB for audiences in Guangdong. And so, obviously, when it comes to news and current affairs programs, they had to, I guess, give a little bit more wiggle room in Guangdong just to be able to compete.

Kaiser: Yeah. I’m sure your explanation is the correct one. I’ve certainly heard that before from other people, and it’s definitely shaped the way that media is… I mean, you look at even newspapers, some of the most liberal papers before 2012, 2013 were all in Guangzhou, or many of them were, you know, Southern Weekly.

Hazza: Yeah. And that’s another reason why I think that, being based in Guangzhou for most of my time in China, I feel like I saw a China that maybe was a little bit different to… especially being in media circles. If I was in media in Beijing, I’m sure my job would’ve been very different and there would’ve been things that I just would not have been allowed to do in Beijing that I was permitted to do in Guangzhou, being a producer of programs. Even sometimes, I guess, you’d use the word “censorship,” but I would say “review.” I was reviewing programs, like there’s three levels of reviewing programs. And a couple of the programs that I worked on, I was the second reviewer. I hope saying that doesn’t get anyone in trouble. I don’t imagine that that could be a possibility in Shanghai or Beijing, and it was probably because I think Guangzhou continued to move in a more liberal direction while the rest of China started, I guess, becoming a bit more ideological. And so, there was, I guess, a disconnect for a little while.

Yeah, for a long time, I guess I didn’t realize that China was changing because Guangzhou hadn’t changed that much yet. And then, during the pandemic, it hit, and also after the protests in Hong Kong. I think that really was a huge blow to the psyche of people in Guangzhou because, honestly, I felt for a long time people in Guangzhou looked at Beijing and thought, “The craziness happening there, it’s never going to make its way here. We are more pragmatic than that. We just care about business, making money. You can deal with the politics.” But then when Hong Kong was suppressed so much, I think people in Guangzhou felt like, “Okay, if that can happen in Hong Kong, it can certainly happen here. So, now we really need to start being careful with what we do and what we say and how we go about things.” And that was really sad for me to see because I guess personally I would identify as being more liberal than the other way. So, it was just sad to see a place that had been so full of optimism and just positive change nonstop, just suddenly, I guess, slam on the brakes and go into hibernation a little bit.

Kaiser: It’s interesting though, I mean, what you’ve already recounted would be enough to turn a lot of people very, very pessimistic and very, very dark on China. That is not how you present at all — in your public persona, certainly, I don’t see you taking positions that are sort of gratuitously critical of China. And we haven’t even talked about the darkest thing that happened to you while you were in China. And that, of course, I mean, is something very deeply personal and something that you write about, and I was really just struck by how directly you were able to write about this, and that is your marriage and the devastating loss of your husband, Wayne, who died at such a young age of a heart attack. So, talk about how your love story shaped your experience of China, and how did China maybe shape your love story as well?

Hazza: Well, I think just going back to what you said just now, I refuse to be anyone’s enemy. That’s just how I go about life. I don’t want to be anyone’s enemy. I don’t want to be China’s enemy. I don’t want to be Russia’s enemy. I don’t want to be the United States’ enemy. But I can be critical of all these places when they do things that I don’t agree with. But I just don’t want to allow it to engulf me and turn me into somebody that just feels anger constantly and outrage constantly because there was a period after my husband died that I felt that, because grief is just such a powerful and unpredictable force, and it’s so hard to know how you are going to react or deal with grief until it happens to you.

And Wayne was just such an incredible human being. He had studied in Australia for 10 years. He was a translator, so he studied translation in Australia and then got a master’s degree and then went and sat the test to get the accreditation. I can’t even go and sit that test because you actually have to study the master’s degree to be eligible to sit the test. Anyway, so we just connected because he had been in Australia for 10 years, I had been in China for a significant amount of time at that point, and we just understood each other because we were both in between two worlds and we were both navigating being… I guess understanding different worlds, but being outsiders in those worlds, or feeling as though they were outsiders or with a foot in the door, but halfway out the door at the same time.

Kaiser: Absolutely. Yeah, I know the condition well.

Hazza: At the time, I was not interested in a relationship or dating or anything. I’d spent about a year going to the gym, and going to the gym four days a week and focusing on work and just eating healthily.

Kaiser: Sounds like you did want to meet someone. (laughs)

Hazza: Well, I mean, I guess long term I did. I was in the mindset that I needed to love myself first before I could get into a relationship where someone else would love me in return, genuinely. And so, I was back home in Australia for a trip, either during Chinese New Year or the National Day holiday, and my sister was living down in New South Wales. I’m in Queensland, so it’s more of a northern state, and she was in New South Wales, which is down south. And so we went on a road trip to go and see her, and as we drove past Sydney, I was on Tinder, and he was on Tinder, and we matched. And we started chatting and we realized, “Oh, we both live in Guangzhou, but we’re here in Australia on a trip. And so yeah, let’s meet up when we go back to Guangzhou.” And so yeah, he asked me out a couple of times, probably three or four times. And the first couple of times, I said, “No, I really have to go and do Zumba. I haven’t done my Zumba in a couple of weeks, put on a few kilos. So, I’ve got to go and do Zumba.” And then, finally, he convinced me to go and have a drink after gym one night. And then we just became very good friends, and then from there, we eventually got married. And then he passed away at 34 from a heart attack.

Kaiser: My God.

Hazza: Yeah.

Kaiser: Just overwork? I mean, what was it? That’s too young. My God.

Hazza: Even to this day, I still have a lot of questions because after he died, I was just basically excluded from everything. It took me about two years before I even saw a death certificate. And so, for that whole time, I had been told that he died. I was excluded from going to the funeral by the family because they…

Kaiser: Right. I get it.

Hazza: As soon as I learned that he’d passed away, like I was onto his family. Obviously, I wanted to be there for the funeral and wanted to be involved. And they told me, “Yes, we’ll invite you to the funeral.” But then they called me at 11:00 PM the night before, and the funeral was up in Dalian, and I was in Guangzhou, and there were no flights, and the funeral was like 9:00 AM the next day. And so, yeah, it’s just being told that your husband is dead, but just not seeing and not having any proof and then just being excluded. Yeah, it was a really difficult time because that was during COVID as well. So, it was just everything.

Kaiser: Was he away from you when he passed?

Hazza: Yeah, so he had gone home for a week, just to visit home. He was a workaholic and he had been a little bit sick leading up to his death, but he was getting better and he was feeling really, really good. So, he went home and he was going to spend a week or two back home before he came back to Guangzhou to get back to work.

Kaiser: He wasn’t out to his parents, or?

Hazza: No, he wasn’t.

Kaiser: Oh my lord.

Hazza: Yeah. There was a period of two days where he didn’t answer my calls or respond to my messages. And that wasn’t uncommon because his job was very intense, and so sometimes there would be a period of 12, 24 hours where I wouldn’t get a message back or a call back or whatever. I’d just finished hosting the news and I was walking across the pedestrian bridge opposite the TV station to get in a taxi and go home. And one of his colleagues called me and said, “Is it true that Wayne’s died?” And I said, “Pardon? Could you… what?” That’s how I found out. It all just-

Kaiser: This was during COVID? I mean…

Hazza: No, this was December 2019. So, just before COVID.

Kaiser: Okay, so just before. But the grieving, which takes years. I mean, that already can be so isolating, and you were experiencing so much of it during this isolating time when COVID hit.

Hazza: Yeah. And plus in the role that I was in with state media a bit visible and then, well, I was dealing with the grief and then the isolation of COVID, and then there was all this sort of online abuse coming from all different directions because there were people in China that were saying that I was a CIA spy or a plant or I don’t know…

Kaiser: You were getting homophobic attacks too, maybe, or?

Hazza: …Colonizer. No, because I was not out.

Kaiser: You weren’t out that way. Okay.

Hazza: And that was out of respect for Wayne because he felt that he had quite a high-profile job as well at the time, and he was concerned that it would impact his work.

Kaiser: I see, I see.

Hazza: And I thought, you know, we’re young. We’ve got time. Even if it takes five years or 10 years before he feels comfortable to tell his family or come out at work, or whatever it was. I mean close friends knew. I wasn’t out. But then there was a period where this rule came down where “sissies” couldn’t be on TV. I’m using quotation marks because that’s not a word that I would personally use. And then there were some inappropriate messages and emails and people sort of… yeah, I guess…

Kaiser: Yeah. And it wasn’t just that side attacking you either, right? I mean, just in your role as somebody who worked in state media and as somebody who was popular for singing songs in Chinese, there’s a stigma attached to that for obvious but unfair reasons. We’ll talk about that in a little bit, but I want to stay with this because you went through something incredibly difficult. I can’t even imagine. It’s hard for me to imagine that I’m looking at you now, even though it’s across many, many time zones and you look great. You look happy and healthy. I mean, you say in your essay, “What doesn’t kill you will always make you stronger,” quoting Nietzsche, but you add, “It just takes time.” This time has clearly healed you a bit. How did experiencing that kind of profound loss in a foreign country where you already have these issues, that must have shaped your whole, well, first of all, your resilience, but also your perspective on life.

Hazza: Yeah.

Kaiser: That’s what I really got out of your essay is you had these fantastic meditations on this. And I was wondering if you could maybe share some of that with our audience.

Hazza: I hit rock bottom. I absolutely hit rock bottom. And I lost faith in myself. I lost confidence in myself. I just thought, how could I get so many things wrong? How could I make all of these decisions that got me into this situation where I’m just feeling… It was very tough. I would just say that. And I think it was a little bit of a shock to the system because, internally, I was dealing with so much and just a lot of grief. And then just seeing the way people were interacting with each other and the world, and just how much animosity there was out there and how much anger and just people were just not respectful with each other if they had different views. It all felt like, “Oh my gosh, this is how the world really is.” I’ve been living in a bubble for my whole life where I’ve been mostly happy and fell in love. Before same-sex marriage was legalized in Australia, I would not have even considered sort of going down this path in my life. And it just felt like a cruel joke because it was like, to get where I had gotten, I’d surmounted so many challenges and road bumps along the way. And it just felt like, “Oh, it was so difficult to get here, and now this is the real challenge. And I’m just not up for it. I’m just not up to it.”

Kaiser: I mean, it’s bad enough. I think one thing we haven’t even mentioned is how bad the Australia-China relationship was during that time. I mean, that must have affected your sense of belonging, your sense of identity too.

Hazza: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Kaiser: I mean, this feels incredibly relatable to me too, obviously, you know, just substitute the U.S. for Australia.

Hazza: Before that point, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be. I felt like I was being a bridge builder. I was connecting cultures. And I was not only learning about this whole other world, but also about myself, and then trying to sort of make learning about China seem more accessible to Australian people. And that’s why I like to do the singing because people are so impressed by someone that can sing in Chinese, and everyone always talks about how difficult it is to learn Chinese. And so, for so long, I just thought, I want more Australians to learn Chinese. We need more Australians to understand Asia and our place in the world. And we’re not living in the 1950s anymore, the world doesn’t revolve around…

Kaiser: Anglo-Saxons, yeah.

Hazza: Yeah. And I just thought, I’ve made such a great decision in life because China is growing more and more prominent on the world stage. And I’ve learnt the language, I’ve immersed myself in the culture. Like, surely, something great has to come from this.

Kaiser: You have no idea how much what you’re saying resonates with me. I mean, it’s like the story of my life, except, obviously, I haven’t lost like you have. So, I mean, I’m filled with even more admiration for you for having navigated this. It’s just unbelievable.

Hazza: Yeah, when the relationship did… yeah.

Kaiser: I mean, when I’ve put myself on the couch and just thought about just during my dark, dark days of the severe downturn in the U.S.-China relationship, and going through a lot of it too, getting attacked from both sides as you have. I mean, I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve come under attack from one side or the other. Michael Berry, who translated Fang Fang’s books, New Yorker writer Jiayang Fan, Pete Hessler, I mean, all these guests who are labeled as panda huggers. I mean, obviously, there were more than two sides to get attacked from, but you know what I mean.

But you are somebody who, like me, has been attacked from both sides. There are people who find equanimity in this because they just think, “Well, this means I’m doing something right.” I never used to be able to do that. I’m better at it now, but I had this sense, and I’ve written about this before, I’ve had this sense that maybe I was taking a little credit for things getting better when they were getting better. I mean, because I had devoted myself to this, it felt like my side was winning, and I maybe let my guard down, got a little complacent, maybe even took a little credit. And so, maybe I was doing a little too much blaming of myself when obviously what I was trying to do was failing. Did that happen to you at all? Or is that something you recognize?

Hazza: I relate to that so much. Absolutely. You just articulated exactly how I felt and how I feel when I look back on that time. And I think I’m a highly critical person of myself, and so when I get external criticism, that is just adding on top of me just expecting 100% from myself all the time, and if I only give 90%, I’m so hard on myself for that. And then plus these external criticisms. And what you just said about “if nobody’s happy with what you’re doing, you must be doing something right” — for a long time, I tried to convince myself of that as well.

Kaiser: Yeah, me too.

Hazza: But then I got to the point where I was thinking, “Well, if nobody’s happy with what I’m saying or doing, I must be doing everything wrong. And so, do I need to reassess my life? Do I need to reassess my values and beliefs and morals, or am I just an idiot that just has read the world totally wrong?” And so there was a point in time-

Kaiser: In your essay you talk about, and it’s one of the most moving parts, is you describe being dismissed or gaslit about your own experiences in China, these things that you personally experienced, and suddenly having those sort of devalued or invalidated somehow. And you lost this sense of self-trust. And that’s got to be really, really hard. You’re talking about it right now, about this sort of faltering confidence.

Hazza: It’s scary.

Kaiser: Yeah, I can imagine.

Hazza: Honestly, it is really scary because, for the longest time, especially in China, I felt like I was navigating China quite well, and I felt like I knew where all the red lines were. I felt like I could, you know, find a solution to almost any problem, but then suddenly I couldn’t. I guess I was just a little bit disillusioned by the willingness of people to just dismiss anything that doesn’t align with their narrative.

Kaiser: Yeah. And you’re talking about people on both sides.

Hazza: People on both sides. Especially when they know you personally. I’m actually quite a private person, so when I share details about my life with other people, it’s because I’ve considered for quite a while, you know, is this the right person to share this information with? Is it better just kept to myself? And then you would share some experiences with people and they would just be like, “Oh, you must have misheard,” or, “Oh, you, no, you must have misunderstood the situation.” And some of these people were people that don’t even speak Chinese telling me that I had misunderstood something that someone had shouted at me or misunderstood why a taxi driver sprayed disinfectant in my face and yelled at me for bringing COVID to China. There were just all these… And I was just sad because my initial response, if I hear somebody sharing an experience like that, my initial response is empathy — How did you feel? Did somebody help you? Can I do anything? Rather than just like, “Oh, well, America blames China for the virus. So, it’s not weird or strange if a Chinese person blames you for the virus.” And in my mind, it’s just like, no, we’re all human beings. We need to respect and treat each other kindly and with empathy.

Kaiser: You haven’t lost that, though, have you? You haven’t lost that?

Hazza: No. I just refuse to. I think I got to a point where I felt like I was losing it, and that was a bit of a wakeup call for me. And I really needed to just sit down and say to myself, “Just give yourself some time.” And I sort of stepped away from the China space for a little bit. I just needed some perspective. Because I did have a little bit of bitterness within me just because I felt like I had dedicated so much of my life to China and trying to build bridges between Australia and China. And in the end, it just didn’t really mean much to anyone.

And I just felt, what is the world coming to? Because we don’t necessarily need to come to the same consensus, but we do need to make an effort to try and learn where other people are coming from. Because if you go straight to thinking that people are coming from a place of evil intent, or, I guess, that they’re trying to attack you, or they have a different opinion, so they’re implying that you are not intelligent enough or… I can’t even articulate how I feel about the whole situation. And so I just needed to step back and just say, “Look, I’ve been through a lot and I need to give myself some time to heal, and I don’t want to let my trauma become someone else’s trauma.” And I think the world needs to do more of that. The world needs to do more of self-reflection and looking at their behavior and asking, “Why do I do this?” Like, “Why do I go on Twitter every night at 11:00 PM and…

Kaiser: Doom scroll.

Hazza: …Doom scroll or curse at people? Why do I do that? Is it because I’ve had a bad day and I don’t have a healthy way to process that?” I hope more people can do that because we’re not going to make any progress if we’re all enemies. And even in Australia, and I can see in the U.S., everyone is so divided at the moment.

Kaiser: Oh boy, tell me about it. Amen to absolutely everything you’re saying.

I mean, all the lessons in your essay are very valuable, and I really encourage people to take a look at those, and we’ve talked about a lot of them. One, though, that really spoke to me, is you said, “The loudest voices rarely have anything useful to say,” and I could not agree more. So, what were some of the quiet, under-the-radar interactions that have taught you the most about China, about China and Australia, about being in the world?

Hazza: I just loved interacting with everyday people in China. That was like my oxygen while I was over there. And from taxi drivers…

Kaiser: The ones who weren’t spraying you with disinfectant, anyway.

Hazza: Yeah. The ones who weren’t spraying me with disinfectant. There were just so many kind moments where, before WeChat and Alipay, like, I’d forgotten my wallet, and a taxi driver just said, “No, give it to me next time you see me,” and then a couple of years later, he remembered me, and said, “Hey, you are the guy who sat in my taxi and forgot his wallet.” And I said, “Oh, how much do I owe you?” and he said, “Oh, I can’t remember.” And then we started talking about how it was fate that we ran into each other again. And then we went and had rice noodles on the side of the road that night after his shift had finished.

Kaiser: Your treat.

Hazza: Yeah, my treat, obviously, and a couple of beers. It was just so nice just to be there sitting with someone. We didn’t want anything from each other, just good conversation, sharing our views on the world and our experiences and how we grew up. That’s just one example of that happening during my time in China, but that is just, oh, it was just my reason for living, to be honest. People that put politics aside and what makes people tick, what makes people happy, what makes people scared? Like, what causes joy for people and what brings happiness into people’s lives? I just love learning about that, and it doesn’t mean I need to emulate that, it just means that I’m aware that different things make different people happy. And different people place different priorities on certain things. I think that’s the nuance missing from a lot of the discourse.

Kaiser: Yeah. Hazza, you’ve rebuilt your life in really remarkable ways. I mean, no spoilers, but you look like you’re headed toward a happy ending right now. What advice would you give… I mean, maybe what can you tell us about that? But also, as somebody who has just been in such depth of a loss, who’s struggling to see a way forward, what kind of advice could you give? I mean, if you could go back and sit down with your younger self, that Hazza who just arrived in China, what would you tell that person about ambition, about burnout, about finding balance, about what’s important?

Hazza: Well, burnout. Burnout — I definitely know what that word means. I would just say be patient. Give it time. Give yourself time. And be more lenient with yourself because I guess I was so accustomed to just reflecting on myself that I just always thought, “Well, how could I have avoided this situation in my life? What decisions could I have made differently or what could I have done differently?” I guess I blamed myself for so many things that were out of my control, and I really needed to just become aware of that and give myself a break. Things can feel very tough and like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. And I think in those moments, if you just say to yourself, “I’m going to give it some time, I’m going to not add any more pressure to myself, I’m going to start making small decisions that improve my life,” so for example, I used to be a smoker — a bit ashamed to say that.

Kaiser: Well, we lived in China.

Hazza: But I quit smoking. Yeah, exactly.

Kaiser: That happens to everyone.

Hazza: And then I cut out drinking and then I cut out highly processed foods, and regular exercise, and I lost about 20 kilos in a year. It was just sort of setting myself goals that I felt like I could achieve, and then getting there and achieving them, and then looking back and thinking, “Okay, well, a year’s passed. I’ve made a lot of progress in this year. It may not be the kind of progress that I used to really, I guess, treasure, like career advancement and that sort of thing, but it’s my health and it’s my wellbeing.”

And also another thing that really helped me was going to study a master degree in international relations because I just wanted to listen, and I just wanted to learn and soak up different perspectives because I had lived in the China world for so long. And yeah, I guess just opening myself up to hearing these new perspectives, these new voices, and aiming for the highest marks I could get, and then mostly achieving that. That slowly started to build my confidence back.

Kaiser: Good, good, good. No, I’m all about school. I love school.

Hazza: Yeah. It’s different for everyone. Everyone deals with grief differently. Obviously, I also sought out professional help, so I saw a psychiatrist. But I think if you are in the depths of grief and you have hit rock bottom, don’t put too much pressure on yourself to get straight to a peak.

Kaiser: Right. You have a little baby heart you need to nurture.

Hazza: Little steps.

Kaiser: Yeah.

Hazza: Yes. Baby steps. And even if you just take this tiniest baby step each day, you need to give yourself credit for that and just love yourself. Just slowly learn how to love yourself again.

Kaiser: You’ve mentioned a bunch of your goals that you knocked down, which are great. Your near-term goals don’t involve China, but you do leave open the possibility of reengagement. I mean, it would be a shame if somebody like you took yourself permanently out of this conversation about China. I totally get wanting to back off from that really highly toxic and painful space. But what’s it going to take to get you back in mentally, professionally, if not physically? Maybe you’re not ready to go back, but I mean, would hate to lose a valuable voice in this conversation.

Hazza: Well, I think when I saw the influx of so-called TikTok refugees on RedNote, I had to jump on, and I had to…

Kaiser: Good for. Yeah, no, I’m so glad you’re there.

Hazza: I just had to see what was happening and just the beautiful interactions between people and just the respect being shown and the kindness, and it just warmed my heart. And I just had to jump in and I just filmed like a one-minute video of me speaking in Chinese, just almost in tears, just being happy about what I was seeing. And the response I got was just so different to what I was used to.

Kaiser: Yeah, I should try it.

Hazza: Yeah, there was nothing like, “Stop stealing our Chinese girls,” like when people would-

Kaiser: That you’re not guilty of.

Hazza: …Passing messages like that. And all the time I was just like, “I’m actually not doing that.” But people were just so kind. And then I thought, oh, I’ll post a couple of videos of singing covers of Chinese songs. And so I’ve almost done like a 360, I’m back to where I was when I was studying Chinese at university in Australia for my bachelor degree, posting covers of Chinese songs on the internet. So, I haven’t closed the door entirely. I think I’ve just retreated slightly, and I would be open to engagement with China when the right opportunity arises. I’ve done 12 years where I lived in China and worked for a Chinese state-owned company. So, obviously, my preference would be to be in China working for an international company or an Australian company, or maybe in the future I might try and go into diplomacy. And who knows? Maybe I could be a diplomat one day stationed in China.

Kaiser: That would be fantastic.

Hazza: But also, just with the way things ended for me in China, I’m not really a hundred percent certain about what my status would be in China. And I have been given some advice that it would not be the best decision for me to go to China. And so I’m just erring on the side of caution at the moment until I hear something different.

Kaiser: Yeah. Things change. Things do change.

Hazza: Yeah, things change. And I’m sure they will change. And if it takes 10 years or 20 years, I’ll be back in Guangzhou, in karaoke.

Kaiser: No, that’s fantastic, man. I hope that I’m there with you one of these days.

Hazza: Yeah, that’d be great.

Kaiser: You end your essay on such this lovely note of gratitude for just the vastness of the world and all the new experiences and opportunities that are out there. Not everyone in the world gets to do a do-over like you’re getting right now. You’re back doing what you were doing right when you were out of college — recording songs again in Chinese and posting them on the internet. Older, wiser, having lived a lot more and having learned a lot more. You’re in an enviable position right now.

Hazza: I’m 34 now. So, I’m the age that Wayne was when he died. And I don’t like giving myself arbitrary sort of goals and forcing myself to stick to them. Quite early on, I said to myself, “I’m going to give myself five years, and I feel like I need five years.” And so it was the fifth anniversary of his death in December. And so I think somehow I just looked at my life, I’m engaged again and planning to get married in 2026, so there’s a happy ending to this story. Well, I mean, hopefully, there’s many more chapters to come in this story. But yeah, just thinking about getting married again in 2026 and my fiancé, I totally forgot about your question. Can you repeat it?

Kaiser: No, it wasn’t really a question. I mean, I think that that’s just a great note to end on. I was just talking about just how you ended your essay on this note of gratitude. And I want to express my gratitude to you for taking so much time to speak with me and speak so candidly about really difficult things, I imagine, to talk about. So, hey-

Hazza: I appreciate it. I want to say thank you to you, because when you reached out to me, I did um and uh a little bit about whether I would go on the podcast because yeah, I just was thinking, “Ah, a quiet life. If I just keep to myself, I won’t cause anyone any angst or any whatever. Maybe I shouldn’t go on.” But thank you for inviting me to come on, and thank you for giving me the opportunity because it’s been nice to talk about China again. And especially talking about China with somebody who I can relate to on so many levels. And I feel like our worldview might be quite similar, actually.

Kaiser: It is.

Hazza: It’s been a pleasure.

Kaiser: The pleasure has been mine, but we’re not done yet. Let’s move on first to Paying It Forward. It’s this segment that I added at the beginning of the year. I ask guests to just namecheck somebody, usually a younger individual, somebody, a scholar, or somebody working in the China field, who you think is just doing great work and is worthy of a little more attention. So, who do you have in mind?

Hazza: James Laurenceson.

Kaiser: Oh, yeah, I know James.

Hazza: From UTS in Sydney. He is an amazing guy, just very knowledgeable on economics and China and the Australia-China relationship. And he is quoted quite frequently by Australian media, but I just think someone with his expertise should be heard more. And if you don’t mind, actually, apart from James, there is another person I would like to mention, and it’s because they helped me a lot through the book that they wrote. The author is Nicole Webb. She’s an Australian who used to be a television host, and she wrote a book called China Blonde. And during some of the most difficult times in China for me, I sat in my massage chair reading her book, and it was just her recounting her experiences moving to China for the first time and living in China for the first time. And as someone who had lived in China for so long, I forgot what it was like to experience China for the first time. And it’s like, you always think, “Oh, I wish I could just feel that again or know what it was like again,” and her book was just that. And it was just so heartwarming and down to earth. It’s not a book, not like going to change the world in terms of like new insights into China or anything like that. But if you just are bogged down by negativity and just too much politics — China Blonde, I’m blonde, I was in China, I read the book.

Kaiser: Yeah. I will count that as your recommendation. I will count James Laurenceson as your Paying It Forward and this book as your recommendation — China Blonde. I’ll check it out.

Hazza: Two great Aussies.

Kaiser: Yeah. All right. I’ve got a recommendation myself. It’s a television show, a Chinese television show called Xi Bei Sui Yue. The English translation is “Into the Great Northwest,” “Northwest Years” might be a more literally accurate translation. It began running in November of last year on CCTV-1. It can be streamed on iQIYI, but those of you who are not in China, it’s also on YouTube. It’s actually subtitled by some guy whose channel, it’s actually on somebody named Chet Ozmun, O-Z-M-U-N. Let’s leave his politics aside, he seems to be a full-blown and unapologetic fan of the Party and a communist himself. Ignoring the show’s obvious political intent still because it’s about Xi Zhongxun — Xi Jinping’s father. It’s still quite good, really, and certainly worth watching. Really good production values. Quite good acting in what I’ve seen of it so far.

I will put a link to it in the show notes and or just search for it on YouTube, search Into the Great Northwest, and you’ll find it there. It’s good. I’m only a couple of episodes in, but it’s… I got to say Chinese television has made huge strides. There’s a lot of quite good stuff. I have another show I’ll save for another recommendation because I’m just watching it right now and just only finished two episodes, but it’s really good too, another Chinese show, but next time. Hazza, once again, thank you so much. Tell the people where they can find your Substack again.

Hazza: Oh gee, I’m really not good with all these things and remembering all my… but I think if you search “Hazza,” it should come up. I’m fairly new to Substack. I’ve only written two articles so far.

Kaiser: All right. It’s just, yeah, substack.com/hazzaharding.

Hazza: I have a website as well. It’s hazzachina.com. And I’m trying to figure out how to embed Substack into the website. Hopefully-

Kaiser: Oh, it can be done. You can just ask on Substack, they’ll give you real clear directions, their AI there.

Hazza: Oh, Cool.

Kaiser: They’ll tell you how to do it. Yeah, so you can redirect. I’ve done that now. So, you can go to sinicapodcast.com and get my Substack, so yeah. Hey man, thanks. It was such a pleasure to talk to you.

Hazza: I was just going to say, obviously, I’m preaching to the choir, but I really would love it if more people were willing to support you and your program because I’m a paid subscriber and I just know how much you and your content helped me, helped keep me sane during some of my most difficult times. So, you provide a very valuable service, and I think more people need to get behind it.

Kaiser: Thanks man. Really appreciate it.

Hazza: I’ll just put that in there.

Kaiser: I’ll keep that in there, thanks, seems we haven’t made the plug. We’ll talk to you again soon, Hazza. Thank you so much.

Hazza: All right, thank you.

Kaiser: You’ve been listening to the Sinica Podcast. The show is produced, recorded, engineered, edited, and mastered by me, Kaiser Kuo. Support the show through Substack at www.sinicapodcast.com, where there is a growing offering of terrific, original China-related writing and audio. Or email me at sinicapod@gmail.com if you’ve got ideas on how you can help out. Do not forget to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Enormous gratitude to the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for East Asian Studies for supporting the show this year. Huge thank you to my guest, Hazza Harding. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week. Take care.

(“I Was Wrong” by Hazza Harding)