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Stephen Ling is a Chinese American author

Stephen Ling’s grandparents immigrated from China to Malaya (now Malaysia) in 1903 because the Malayan government was looking for the “poor of the poorest” in Fujian Province, China to establish an “agricultural colony” in a remote corner in Malaya, primarily to grow rice to feed a rising population but more to curtail their importation of expensive rice from other Southeast Asian countries. He was born in Malaya, and adopted by one of these families. They blamed the Japanese Occupation for their life of poverty and servitude. He grew up with a mother who wanted him to be a farmer. Throughout his early teens, he fought against her because he suspected, early in his life, there was something better awaiting him beyond the farm. Growing Up Chinese is a book about his struggles against a culture or mother that endeavored to control and define his life and his future.

Eventually he obtained a scholarship to study in America. Crazy Americans focuses on his American dream, and the few crazy Americans he met on board a cargo-cum-passenger ship from Singapore to Los Angeles. Eventually he pursued journalism and economics at the University of Texas. The seven years he spent as a visiting professor in China would forever change his life and thinking. With This Is China (his 6th book), he wants to share his experiences in mainland China with every reader who has a desire to know and understand the role of China in the 21st century.

Prodigal Son is his first fiction about the new wealth in China.