Michael Meyer
Author
Michael Meyer first went to China in 1995 with the Peace Corps. As the author of the acclaimed The Last Days of Old Beijing, he received a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has also won a Lowell Thomas Award from the Society of American Travel Writers. Meyer’s stories have appeared in the New York Times, Time, Smithsonian, Sports Illustrated, Slate, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and on This American Life. He teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Pittsburgh and spends the offseason in Singapore.
Mar 23, 2015
For three years, Micheal Meyer rented a home in the rice-farming community of Wasteland, Jilin, hometown to his wife's family. Their personal saga mirrors the tremendous change most of rural China is undergoing, in the form of a privately held rice company that has built new roads, introduced organic farming, and constructed high-rise apartments into which farmers can move in exchange for their land rights.