The Wall Dancers

“A sensitive debut. . . . Foreign observers, Liu argues, tend to portray Chinese people as either the enablers or the victims of their government’s excesses. But reality, her book suggests, is messier, as the state and its citizens participate in a ‘dynamic push and pull.’”
—New Yorker

“The Wall Dancers is history told in a gripping, novelistic style. It is at once a crash course in contemporary Chinese politics and culture and an epic story about human drive, desperation, and ingenuity against inordinate odds. Yi-Ling Liu has written a masterwork.”
—Jonathan Blitzer, New York Times bestselling author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here

“One of the best books of the year.”
—Joe Weisenthal, Bloomberg’s “Odd Lots” newsletter

“The Wall Dancers employs the stories of Ms. Liu’s interviewees to show how ‘dancing in shackles’ is both possible and ever-changing . . . China is notorious for its internet restrictions. . . . Ms. Liu acknowledges these limits to expression but highlights the people who have broadened and deepened their networks online…”
—Wall Street Journal

“[The Wall Dancers] should prompt a timely, uncomfortable global debate on whether tech has proven easier to weaponize than to democratize. . . . As much as this book is a portrait of a flourishing garden behind the Great Firewall, it’s also a map of Beijing’s insecurities.”
—Bloomberg Opinion

“In her intimate, inner history of the Chinese Internet, Yi-Ling Liu unearths lessons that apply worldwide as citizens struggle to assert their humanity against those who would homogenize what we see, believe, and consume. In the tradition of Vaclav Havel, Liu has given us an urgent, revealing guide for what Havel called ‘living within the truth.’”
—Evan Osnos, winner of the National Book Award and New York Times bestselling author of The Haves and Have-Yachts

“Eye-opening. . . . Liu shows how social media became the space for her generation to work out the politics and passions of their everyday lives. . . . It might be hard to build a book around online life, but Liu . . . follows a group of effervescent netizens who more than carry it. . . . What emerges is a portrait of nonconformists who, by feeling out the walls the regime has built, turn that maneuvering into a kind of limited freedom. They do not escape the system; they improvise within it. They dance.”
—The New Republic

“The Wall Dancers is such compelling reading because it provides deeply intimate portrayals of this universal yearning and the creativity of the human spirit in the face of repression. . . . Liu weaves these personal narratives into the broader background of intensifying authoritarianism and censorship, demonstrating the impact of seemingly abstract political shifts on real individuals’ lives.”
—Jacobin

“With profound nuance, clarity, and courage, Yi-Ling Liu writes about a cast of individuals who deftly navigate the complex inner workings of the Chinese internet. And yet in Liu’s expert rendering, their stories embody so much more: a history of China’s dramatic rise, a portrait of those who molded and were molded by it, and an examination of the true scorecard of the global internet on free speech and expression. At once intimate and expansive, The Wall Dancers is a masterpiece, made only more impressive by Liu’s own exquisite dancing. To gain this level of access and trust to sources in China and to breathe humanity and agency into an often faceless story can only be pulled off by a journalist of the highest caliber.”
—Karen Hao, New York Times bestselling author of Empire of AI

“When American pundits talk about China, they often speak in the language of binaries. . . . Against these extremes . . . Liu offers an alternative language: one of dance. . . . It’s an apt metaphor . . . evok[ing] an idea often missing in conversations about China—a recognition of a common humanity; of people just like us, constrained by circumstance, grasping for freedom.”
—The Nation

“An intimate social history of the Chinese internet told through the lives of characters who experienced profound transformations and empowerment while also navigating shifting red lines of government censorship and regulation.”
—Reuters

“Gripping from the first page, The Wall Dancers is a work of rare urgency and insight. Moving effortlessly between the intimate and the world-historical, Yi-Ling Liu pushes beyond the tired binaries that so often define Western views of China, offering instead a portrait of human lives full of contradiction, aspiration, and desire. In doing so, she vividly demonstrates that psychic self-censorship—and the generative possibilities born of solidarity and collective power—are not unique to China but a lesson for all societies confronting ascendant authoritarianism.”
—Brian Goldstone, author of There Is No Place for Us

“Liu excels at the magazine-style profile, engagingly dramatizing the experiences and interior lives of her subjects. She deftly builds in contextual detail, ranging from political slogans to the rise of ByteDance (the parent company of TikTok). . . . The resulting narrative is more than a sum of its parts.
—Asian Review of Books

“As Yi-Ling Liu shows in this masterful piece of reporting, China’s internet is not only a battleground for authoritarian leaders and their oligarchs but also the site of a vibrant counterculture of queer activists, feminist writers, edgy rappers, and tech bros turned sci-fi novelists. A rare report from inside contemporary China, The Wall Dancers is an important intervention in our often-simplistic debates about China.”
—Ian Johnson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Sparks

“There’s a tendency in writing about alternative music in China to consider scenes as cultural freezeframes, forever ’emerging’ or ‘flourishing.’ In The Wall Dancers, the freezeframe flickers, then moves. Liu lets us feel the complex Chengdu backbeat that now pulses through all Chinese hip-hop. . . . We’re there as verses are spit, as moshpits heave . . . and beyond that, with the forum lurkers downloading Eminem mp3s in the hypnotic vastness of the early Chinese internet.”
—Equator

“China may be known for its Great Firewall, but journalist Yi-Ling Liu chronicles how the Chinese internet has also provided fertile ground for countercultures, activists, and writers—and in doing so offers a portrait of the country’s political and cultural trajectory in the last three decades.”
—Foreign Policy, “Most Anticipated Books of 2026”

“This incisive, empathetic debut study from journalist Liu examines three decades of the internet’s evolution in China, from the mid-1990s explosion of microblogs and message boards that corresponded with the country’s increasing liberalization, to the mid-aughts raising of the Great Firewall. . . . A vital and subversive window into a cloistered but sprawling online world.”
—Publishers Weekly (STARRED REVIEW)

“Liu brings broad perspective and nuance to an issue that, despite its extensive global impact, is often discussed only in terms of its extremes. . . . If Liu’s text is in part revelatory of the particular ambitions, risks, and pitfalls humming beneath China’s internet domination, it is also a global cautionary tale. . . . A timely and sophisticated study that is eye-opening, and a touch eerie.”
—Kirkus