About me

I’m Lehyla Heward—a literary scholar of Manchuria based at the University of Malta, where I am a Lecturer in Chinese Studies. I received my doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand in 2020. I am from Arizona, but I have been living outside of the U.S. since 2007. I spent four semesters in various study abroad programs in China, Singapore, and South Korea during my undergraduate years. Then I taught English in Yanji, China (the prefectural capital of the Korean Autonomous Prefecture, which borders North Korea) for one year from 2010-2011. Afterwards, I moved a few hours away to Changchun, the capital of Jilin province, to earn a master’s degree in modern Chinese literature at Northeast Normal University. I graduated in 2015 and moved to New Zealand to begin my PhD program.

Living in northeast China, colloquially referred to as Dongbei in Chinese, was one of the best experiences of my life, which I’ve blogged about before. Even though Dongbei is known to be a cold and harsh environment—life there has its difficulties, don’t get me wrong!—it has produced a particular literature and culture that I find endlessly fascinating. Scholars and residents alike have generally considered Dongbei to be quite distinct from the rest of China. This blog is partly born out of my desire to explore, understand, and, frankly, to delight in what makes Dongbei a special place to those of us who consider it our (albeit once removed) home.

As an important note for readers, I use Dongbei interchangeably with the toponym “Manchuria” throughout this website. The reason for this choice is because I deal with a lot of historical materials in which Manchuria as a concept plays an important role. I generally try to use “Manchuria” for pre-1949 texts and Dongbei for post-1949 materials. Please feel free to leave comments or contact me if you have any questions about, or would like to discuss, the terminology used anywhere throughout the blog.