https://www.scmp.com/rss/328878/feed William Han is a lawyer and writer. Born in Taiwan and a citizen of New Zealand, he is a graduate of Yale College and Columbia Law School. en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Some time during the 4th century BC, two young men set out to seek fame and fortune in a chaotic China. They were close friends and had studied together, and together they waved their master goodbye. Their names were Su Qin and Zhang Yi. And this was the period in Chinese history known as the “Warring States”, when seven kingdoms – Qin, Qi, Chu, Yan, Han, Zhao, and Wei – vied for supremacy. Ambitious men such as Su and Zhang travelled across China to offer their services as advisers to the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3151714/aukus-nato-and-eu-there-are-plenty-lessons-chinas-warring-states?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3151714/aukus-nato-and-eu-there-are-plenty-lessons-chinas-warring-states?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 10 Oct 2021 00:30:17 +0000 When I was a child in Taiwan, my mother introduced me to the art of xiangsheng or traditional Chinese stand-up comedy. In a 1991 show titled Strange Tales of Taiwan, the famed performer Lee Li-chun described Taiwan in the 1950s and 1960s. “In that era, everything was temporary,” he said. One “worked a temporary job in a temporary office. The names of the streets were temporary, so was the city plan. The government was temporary, the capital was temporary, and even the constitution was a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3133543/if-taiwan-borrowed-time-why-do-taiwanese-keep-calm-and-carry?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3133543/if-taiwan-borrowed-time-why-do-taiwanese-keep-calm-and-carry?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 May 2021 00:00:07 +0000 In recent weeks, signs have popped up all over this part of Auckland bearing an oversized photograph of a young man in a suit. He is slim, clean-cut, a harmless looking greenhorn, the sort of young man who seems too insubstantial to hold up the very suit on his body. If you didn’t know any better, you might mistake him for the assistant manager at the electronics store. But this is in fact Simeon Brown, our area’s 29-year-old member of parliament. The signs are for his campaign for... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3104861/new-zealands-mundane-election-narnia-americas-trumpian-apocalypse?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3104861/new-zealands-mundane-election-narnia-americas-trumpian-apocalypse?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 09 Oct 2020 21:00:12 +0000 William Han William Han Mephistopheles knocks again. On Thursday, the United States Department of Justice accused my alma mater, Yale University, of discrimination against Asians and whites. It’s the latest salvo in the ongoing fight in the US over affirmative action: the practice of preferentially admitting under-represented and underprivileged racial groups for the sake of diversity, and a part of America’s tortuous reckoning with its racial demons. The US Supreme Court set up the framework in the landmark 1978 case... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3097580/asian-americans-trump-administrations-attack-affirmative-action?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3097580/asian-americans-trump-administrations-attack-affirmative-action?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Aug 2020 14:57:48 +0000 Being Zion is a funny thing. It’s an archetypal idea, the place of refuge free from whatever threatens or contaminates the rest of the world. Chinese mythology gave us Yaochi, the Emerald Lake on Mount Kunlun, where the mother goddess resides. Hollywood zombie films typically feature a “safe zone”, or the tantalising prospect of one. And the Bible gave us Zion, David’s blessed city. To this list we can now add New Zealand, Aotearoa, “the land of the long white cloud”. In the course of the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3088601/new-zealand-place-refuge-covid-19-now-rest-world?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3088601/new-zealand-place-refuge-covid-19-now-rest-world?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 13 Jun 2020 21:00:09 +0000 It was Thursday, April 9. New Zealand was at the halfway point of its four-week lockdown. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was holding her Covid-19 press conference, now a near-daily ritual. Dr Ashley Bloomfield, 54, the country’s ectomorphic, quietly unflappable director-general of health, had just reported the day’s numbers: 29 new cases and 35 recoveries. Every afternoon, New Zealanders anxiously watched as the numbers were announced. “You are breaking the chain of transmission,” Ardern (or... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3080286/new-zealand-looks-be-winning-coronavirus-war-does-jacinda-ardern?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3080286/new-zealand-looks-be-winning-coronavirus-war-does-jacinda-ardern?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 16 Apr 2020 21:00:17 +0000 I’ve always said that New Zealand is the place you’d want to be in the event of a zombie apocalypse. I just never thought I’d get to actually test that proposition. I was in the Serbian capital of Belgrade when Covid-19 went global, and I had thought I’d ride out the storm there. To go anywhere else, particularly home to distant New Zealand, seemed to present a significant risk of catching the virus. In contrast, if I simply stayed in my flat, except for grocery shopping I would have almost no... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3079470/how-i-escaped-europes-coronavirus-crisis-and-made-it-back-home?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3079470/how-i-escaped-europes-coronavirus-crisis-and-made-it-back-home?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 11 Apr 2020 21:00:16 +0000 At one point in the early 2000s, when I was at university in the United States, I returned to New Zealand for a visit. I grew up there after my family emigrated from Taiwan in 1994. One evening, I went to a bar with a high school friend. There I spotted a skinhead: white, young, with a shaven head, in a Swastika T-shirt. I asked to leave. Just out of the door, I felt a hand touch the back of my head. I swung around and swatted away the neo-Nazi’s arm before taking a good look at what was going... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3002037/christchurch-shooting-racism-new-zealand-isnt-new-and-era-donald?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3002037/christchurch-shooting-racism-new-zealand-isnt-new-and-era-donald?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 Mar 2019 08:15:10 +0000 When I was in high school in New Zealand, I decided that I wanted to go to university in the United States. I contacted members of the Ivy League and a few other colleges and asked them to send me their application forms. This was in 1999, when you couldn’t do everything online yet. Then I signed up to take the SAT and ordered such prep books as I could find on Amazon. My parents had a spare room next to our garage that smelled of exhaust fumes every time they parked. My high school teachers... https://www.scmp.com/opinion/william-han-us-college-admissions-scandal-ignores-real-problem/article/3001637?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/opinion/william-han-us-college-admissions-scandal-ignores-real-problem/article/3001637?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 14 Mar 2019 10:19:11 +0000 When I was in high school in New Zealand, I decided that I wanted to go to university in the United States. I contacted members of the Ivy League and a few other colleges and asked them to send me their application forms. (This was in 1999, when you couldn’t do everything online yet). Then I signed up to take the SAT and ordered such prep books as I could find on Amazon. My parents had a spare room next to our garage that smelled of exhaust fumes every time they came back with the car. In there,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3001501/forget-felicity-huffman-bribes-arent-real-scandal-us-college?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3001501/forget-felicity-huffman-bribes-arent-real-scandal-us-college?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 13 Mar 2019 11:00:08 +0000 In the summer of 2015, I left the United States. After growing up in Taiwan and New Zealand, I went to America to study before working in New York City. But in the end, I was unable to secure my permanent residency through a green card. As the prospect of my exile drew nearer, I correspondingly grew fascinated with a story I heard even as a child: in AD97, during the Eastern Han dynasty, China sent an explorer and envoy westward along the Silk Road to locate and to make contact with the Roman... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185338/wall-water-chasing-ghosts-history-iran?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185338/wall-water-chasing-ghosts-history-iran?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 07 Feb 2019 15:15:00 +0000 In the summer of 2015, I left the United States. After growing up in Taiwan and New Zealand, I went to America to study before working in New York City. But in the end, I was unable to secure my permanent residency through a Green Card. As the prospect of my exile drew nearer, I correspondingly grew fascinated with a story I heard even as a child: in AD97, during the Eastern Han dynasty, China sent an explorer and envoy westward along the Silk Road to locate and to make contact with the Roman... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2185333/wall-water-talking-chinese-politics-and-dodging?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/2185333/wall-water-talking-chinese-politics-and-dodging?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 07 Feb 2019 13:19:06 +0000 In the summer of 2015, I left the United States. After growing up in Taiwan and New Zealand, I went to America to study before working in New York City. But in the end, I was unable to secure my permanent residency through a Green Card. As the prospect of my exile drew nearer, I correspondingly grew fascinated with a story I heard even as a child: in AD97, during the Eastern Han dynasty, China sent an explorer and envoy westward along the Silk Road to locate and to make contact with the Roman... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185208/discovering-ruins-suyab-birthplace-legendary-chinese-poet-li-bai?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185208/discovering-ruins-suyab-birthplace-legendary-chinese-poet-li-bai?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Feb 2019 13:15:30 +0000 In the summer of 2015, I left the United States after living there for most of my adult life. After growing up in Taiwan and New Zealand, I went to America to study, attending Yale University and Columbia Law School. Then I practised law in New York City. But between the arcane American immigration system and my ineptitude in office politics, I was unable to secure my permanent residency through a Green Card. As the prospect of my banishment drew nearer, I correspondingly grew fascinated with a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185135/retracing-old-silk-road-meet-uygurs-kashgar?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2185135/retracing-old-silk-road-meet-uygurs-kashgar?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 06 Feb 2019 04:15:45 +0000 In the summer of 2001, after my freshman year at Yale, I rented a house on Lynwood Place in New Haven with several classmates. Each of us was spending that summer working on campus. One Friday night, when I happened to be alone in our house, the doorbell began to ring urgently. I went over to the window from which I could see who was at the door. It was a white man in his mid- to late-twenties. And he was visibly drunk. He saw me through the window as I saw him. “Open up!” he bellowed. “Who are... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2166993/yale-has-many-brett-kavanaughs-one-them-peed-my-door?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2166993/yale-has-many-brett-kavanaughs-one-them-peed-my-door?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 04 Oct 2018 11:00:45 +0000