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Zing Tsjeng

Zing Tsjeng

Singaporean journalist

Sep 16, 2026

14:49
On this, let's hear from journalist Zing Tsjeng.
14:53
I think there are some values that are really integral to dating someone, right? Things like a curiosity about the other person's life, an openness to what they have to say about what they bring to your life, about their values and their lifestyle.
15:18
Maybe not.
15:20
The value of being open to someone else has been chipped away by dating apps because what dating apps do rather than present this whole complicated person right in front of you in three dimensions is actually try and distill it into several key traits.
15:37
It was almost like trying to find the one Tetris block that fits into your life perfectly.
15:42
And if someone has a little bit of a jagged edge where you're like, "Oof, I don't think they work for my life.
15:47
No, thanks," you just dismiss them.
KumbaHOST
13:57
Do you think media outlets like Vice shutting down, because it's just one of many magazines that have shut down, do you think it's a part of this wider shift where iconic magazines are no longer as influential as they once were?
14:10
I think a lot of readers and consumers still have a lot of fondness for these brands.
14:17
So when I tell people I used to work at Vice, people are still like, oh my God, wow.
14:21
They'll even name specific things or videos or articles that they've consumed over the years.
14:27
But I think what has happened is the wider media ecosystem has completely changed.
14:31
So the way that these publications made money has been completely upended by the tech industry.
14:36
So, you know, it's so way back, you know, in...

12 MINS LATER

KumbaHOST
27:06
What advice would you give to people who have so many different interests but I don't feel like they want to stick to one traditional pathway?
1:11
So before we go any further, Zing, do you have a cultural highlight that you want to recommend to the world?
1:16
I would love to recommend a book called Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuangji, which won the International Booker Prize.
1:22
I think you featured it on the Arts Hour.
1:23
We did.
1:24
And it's a brilliant story about a almost a proto-Anthony Bourdain type travel writer from Japan, who's a woman who goes on this kind of almost diplomatic trip to Taiwan to sample the country because it's now a Japanese colony.
1:40
And she ends up falling in love with her female translator and interpreter, And it's a beautiful love story wrapped in a kind of old to Taiwanese food.
1:49
I mean, it left me feeling so hungry because some of the descriptions of food in that novel are so brilliantly vivid and realised.

12 MINS LATER

14:14
Are you a fan of the film, Zing?
36:11
How do you feel about that development of a small mention in the original book being taken in a different direction?
36:18
I think it's a really clever way to spin the book out into its own universe.
36:22
And it depicts a really interesting time in women's history, actually.
36:26
Because, and I don't know if many listeners will know this, but the word computer was once mainly associated with women because women who were talented mathematicians, indeed astronomers, astrophysicists, they weren't really allowed to take on those posts in universities and higher education.
36:42
So instead, they were kind of condemned to do the grunt work of all these mathematical calculations.
36:47
that were really complicated, but the men then went on to take the credit for them.
36:51
So if you remember the film Hidden Figures, the women in Hidden Figures were actually called the computers because competing was seen as a woman's job.

9 MINS LATER

45:50
Zing, are you a fan? I

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