Hannah Beech is an American

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

. Since August 2017, she has been the Southeast Asia Bureau chief for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' based in Bangkok. She formerly worked for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

'' magazine; Beech specializes in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

, and was sometimes credited as ''Time'' Southeast Asia bureau chief. Beech graduated in 1995 from

Colby College Colby College is a private liberal arts college in Waterville, Maine. It was founded in 1813 as the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, then renamed Waterville College after the city where it resides. The donations of Christian philanthro ...

. She did undergraduate internships at '' U.S. News & World Report'' and Asian media outlets.What can you do with a Colby degree?
Colby College, Retrieved February 16, 2010 She was the 1994 recipient of the

Harry S. Truman Scholarship The Harry S. Truman Scholarship is the premier graduate fellowship in the United States for public service leadership. It is a federally funded scholarship granted to U.S. undergraduate students for demonstrated leadership potential, academic ...

for

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to it ...

. In 2009, Beech was awarded for Excellence in Reporting Breaking News, Honourable Mention, in the Society of Publishers in Asia Awards for Editorial Excellence (SOPA Awards), for her reporting on

Cyclone Nargis Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis ( my, နာဂစ်, ur, نرگس ) was an extremely destructive and deadly tropical cyclone that caused the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar during early May 2008. The cyclone m ...

Burma Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John Wells explai ...

. She also received a 2007 Honourable Mention for Best Opinion Writing. Beech and eleven other journalists from ''The New York Times'' shared the 2020 Gerald Loeb Award for Breaking News for their article, "Crash in Ethiopia".

Responses

Beech's June 2020 article, "Eating Thai Fruit Demands Serious Effort but Delivers Sublime Reward", attracted widespread criticism in social media platforms and news outlets across Southeast Asia. In the article, Beech describes

mangosteen Mangosteen (''Garcinia mangostana''), also known as the purple mangosteen, is a tropical evergreen tree with edible fruit native to tropical lands surrounding the Indian Ocean. Its origin is uncertain due to widespread prehistoric cultivatio ...

s as "an exercise in disappointment", states that

durian The durian (, ) is the edible fruit of several tree species belonging to the genus ''Durio''. There are 30 recognised ''Durio'' species, at least nine of which produce edible fruit. ''Durio zibethinus'', native to Borneo and Sumatra, is the onl ...

stank of "death", and concludes that many of the region's native fruits hovered "between delectable and decayed". Written approximately half a year into the COVID-19 global pandemic, Beech also likened the shape of

rambutan Rambutan (; taxonomic name: ''Nephelium lappaceum'') is a medium-sized tropical tree in the family Sapindaceae. The name also refers to the edible fruit produced by this tree. The rambutan is native to Southeast Asia. It is closely related to se ...

to coronavirus: "With its crimson skin studded with green feelers, the egg-sized fruit bears more than a passing resemblance to a coronavirus." While the article attracted criticism in traditional and social media platforms across Southeast Asia for its reliance on racist tropes to portray the region's food cuisine, it is also notable for having generated debates amongst journalists about the need for greater diversity in the news industry. Beech's February 2021 article, "No One Knows What Thailand Is Doing Right", was criticized as racist towards Asian people by several writers and professors. In the article, Beech speculates that Thailand's relatively low number of COVID-19 cases can be explained by the Thai people's genetic immunity to the virus rather than first acknowledging the government's pandemic response. Sri Lankan writer Indi Samarajiva argues that such coverage "attributes agency to rich/white nations like Germany or New Zealand but luck to anyone poorer or dark. And it's just not true. Poorer nations have done better than the rich because they had robust public health responses. Because they worked together. Because they reacted early. These are all lessons worth learning, but the west is unable to learn them because they're simply too racist to see." In an article published by the

Social Science Research Council The Social Science Research Council (SSRC) is a US-based, independent, international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines. Established in Manhattan in 1923, it today maintains a he ...

, Professor Jonathan Corpus Ong of the

University of Massachusetts Amherst The University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst, UMass) is a public research university in Amherst, Massachusetts and the sole public land-grant university in Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Founded in 1863 as an agricultural college, it ...

also condemns Beech's article for "perpetuating Orientalist frames". During the

2021 Tokyo Olympics The , officially the and also known as , was an international multi-sport event held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some preliminary events that began on 21 July. Tokyo was selected as the host city during the ...

, Beech sparked controversy again by characterizing China-dominated sports such as

shooting Shooting is the act or process of discharging a projectile from a ranged weapon (such as a gun, bow, crossbow, slingshot, or blowpipe). Even the acts of launching flame, artillery, darts, harpoons, grenades, rockets, and guided missiles c ...

weightlifting Weightlifting generally refers to activities in which people lift weights, often in the form of dumbbells or barbells. People lift various kinds of weights for a variety of different reasons. These may include various types of competition; promo ...

table tennis Table tennis, also known as ping-pong and whiff-whaff, is a sport in which two or four players hit a lightweight ball, also known as the ping-pong ball, back and forth across a table using small solid rackets. It takes place on a hard table div ...

diving Diving most often refers to: * Diving (sport), the sport of jumping into deep water * Underwater diving, human activity underwater for recreational or occupational purposes Diving or Dive may also refer to: Sports * Dive (American football), ...

, and

badminton Badminton is a racquet sport played using racquets to hit a shuttlecock across a net. Although it may be played with larger teams, the most common forms of the game are "singles" (with one player per side) and "doubles" (with two players pe ...

as "less prominent sports" that are "perfected with rote routines", in contrast to more "prominent" sports won by Americans that "involve an unpredictable interplay of multiple athletes". She also portrayed Chinese athletes as factory-like products created by "China's sports assembly line" and concludes that the weightlifter Liao Quiyun has been traumatized by the system. Science writer Ke Nan accused Beech's article of racism and dehumanization, adding that the majority of US gold medals also come from three non-team based sports: swimming, athletics, and gymnastics. Ke also criticized Beech for omitting any reference to the history of sexual violence against women athletes in the US in her comparison between

Simone Biles Simone Arianne Biles (; born March 14, 1997) is an American artistic gymnast. Her seven Olympic medals tied with Shannon Miller for the most Olympic medals won by an American gymnast. Having won 25 World Championship medals, she is the most de ...

and Liao Quiyun.

Personal life

Beech is married to journalist and author and freelance reporter Brook Larmer, and they have two sons.

Bibliography

Articles

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beech, Hannah Time (magazine) people Living people Colby College alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Gerald Loeb Award winners for Breaking News