yifanwrites.com
A writer, cultural researcher and curator whose practice explores indigenous and ethnic cultures, intangible heritage, oral traditions, ritual practices and the relationship between communities and their environments.
Yifan Wu is a writer and journalist specialising in indigenous and ethnic cultures worldwide. As the editor-in-chief of 他者others, an online platform dedicated to cultural narratives, she has built a global network of artists, scholars, and indigenous and ethnic people.
Her debut book, 《在驯鹿聚集的地方，吟唱》 (Chant, Where the Reindeer Gather, 2023), was praised for its immersive exploration of indigenous and ethnic wisdom, blending anthropology, travel writing, and literary nonfiction.
With a background in travel journalism, she spent years at Travel + Leisure, first as a foreign correspondent in Europe and later as an editor in the Shanghai office. Her practice is grounded in long-term research and sustained relationships with indigenous communities across the world, from Sámi communities in Finnish Lapland and iTaukei villages in Fiji to Native American nations, Tahitian communities, and Aboriginal Australia.
《在驯鹿聚集的地方，吟唱》
Travelling farther afield to meet ancient communities, this debut book moves through ice fields, deserts, oceans and forests, following roads and songs to places where all things are connected.
In Finland, Sámi people live with reindeer on the tundra, and joik, an ancient melody passed from mouth to mouth, binds human feeling to the natural world. In Australia, Aboriginal songlines continue to hold the Dreaming in a time and space modern outsiders cannot fully enter. In Iceland, belief in elves remains part of ordinary life, as familiar as speaking of old friends, childhood companions and helpful neighbours.
The book collects eight field-based travel essays from different communities around the world, with a 32-page colour insert of photographs. Through words, images and attention, it records encounters between humans and nature, and the frictions between modern life and inherited tradition.
“A book to be opened with a playlist: aurora, joik, songlines and farewell songs become part of its rhythm.”
Adapted from a Douban reader review
“For modern readers shaped by science and rationality, its ice fields, deserts, seas, forests, reindeer and songs recover a sense of mystery.”
Adapted from a Douban reader review
Alongside her fieldwork across continents, Yifan remains deeply engaged with the cultural landscapes of her own country. Her sustained relationship with the Qiang community in southwest China has become one of the defining threads of her writing, research and curatorial work.
This ongoing project follows how intangible heritage, oral tradition, ritual practice and ecological knowledge continue to evolve in the face of rapid social change. Rather than treating culture as something fixed or sealed in the past, the work attends to living relationships: between families and villages, mountains and roads, memory and daily life.
The project connects local knowledge with wider conversations on cultural continuity, resilience and the ways communities carry their worlds forward.
Narrative nonfiction, cultural research and field-based essays on belief, memory, landscape and cultural continuity.
A reflective field essay following a Qiang driver, his mountain village and the author's journey through temples, divination, family ritual and everyday contradictions of belief. The piece allows uncertainty to remain visible, treating faith and custom as living experiences rather than fixed explanations.
Moving between the Marquesas Islands and memories of mountain roads in Tibet and Sichuan, this essay considers water, cliffs, tattoo, dance, sacred sites and mana as forms of passage. It asks how islands, ancestors and communities remain connected across distance.
Following Bruce Chatwin into Australia’s Northern Territory, the piece moves through Alice Springs, Kings Canyon and Uluru, tracing songlines, desert knowledge and the uneasy border between literary longing and living Aboriginal law.
A winter journey through Finnish Lapland, Sámi joik, reindeer herding, handcraft and contemporary shamanic practice. The essay listens for the spiritual frequency of fire, snow, language and inherited ways of knowing.
Contact
Yifan welcomes conversations around cultural narratives, long-form nonfiction, field-based research and cross-cultural programming.