Episode 1: Homecoming

“West is the best”—or so we were told growing up. We study our childhood away with hopes of making it into one of the best universities in the world. But what happens when we get to the other side and realize that all that glitters isn’t necessarily gold? What do we do when our long-held symbol of success is tarnished? And how much bitterness much we eat in order to prove to ourselves that we’ve made it?

Our Guest

Jannis Jizhou Chen was born in Chengdu and left China in his teens. Since then he has sojourned in Singapore, Germany and the United States. His multimodal migratory experience has largely informed his writing. He is a multiple-time winner of the Singapore Tertiary Chinese Literature Awards and the Lianhe Zaobao Gold Award. Jannis’s first book, The Stories of Eng Watt Street (永發街事), is a collection of twelve short stories set in Singapore. The book explores themes such as migration, sexuality, religion and intergenerational issues among family members of migrant background. His short stories are published in the greater Sinophone world including China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.