ABOUT US
Starshiner (擦星星事务所) is a Chinese-diaspora nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area. We grew out of the scattered community of the 2022 White Paper protests — activists who left China and found each other far from home. In the dark, we polish the stars, so we can see one another.
We create the offline spaces where Chinese speakers can remember censored history, watch banned films, record testimony before it is lost, and speak freely without surveillance. Memory is resistance — and no one should have to speak alone.
Starshiner currently has two main teams:
Starshiner Initiative, a youth-led initiative based in Northern California. We are a group of college students and working professionals in the Bay Area dedicated to sharing and creating conversations around content censored in the Chinese-language world. We keep talking, everywhere, and out loud.
Lhasa Spring, a platform for dialogue and exchange between Chinese and Tibetan communities, operated by Chinese Youth Stand for Tibet.
We are also developing two experimental projects:
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Art & Politics: A digital archive of protest and resistance art from the Chinese-speaking world.
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Technology for Human Rights: Using AI and other technologies to provide tools and support for independent media and human rights organizations.
Our work is currently funded entirely by small private donations. Your support helps us sustain independent expression, public discussion, and the spirit of resistance in Chinese-speaking communities.
Help us keep the stars shining. ✨
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Meet the Team
Somebody has to shine the star!
长夜漫漫你我共擦星
Campaign Lead
Gee Guo
Gee is a queer Chinese youth committed to a lifelong fight for collective liberation. They grew up with family elders’ stories striving for freedom and dignity: persevering through the Cultural Revolution as academic workers; hitchhiking by train and joining the uprising at Tiananmen; sitting in to appeal to the Beijing mayoral office for police misconduct, and so on. This familial oral history became Gee’s first lessons of civic duty and civil disobedience.
Gee began their own journey of anti-authoritarian action when they crossed from Mainland to Hong Kong to bear witness to the Umbrella Movement. As Gee continued their political education, they also underwent a queer awakening — the struggle of all oppressed people are all connected, be it for gender, place of birth, ethnicity, class, or whatever else. They have also learned the power of community and solidarity. In their work with Starshiner, they gravitate towards community outreach and resistance arts.
Secretary/ Board member
Katherine Li
Katherine Li is a board member of Starshiner and the organization’s secretary. She was born in Hong Kong and grew up in China. In 2019, she became an intern and freelancer for the New York Times in Hong Kong during the pro-democracy protests that started as a pushback against extradition laws. She was also the chief editor of an English student magazine at Hong Kong Baptist University during that time. As a working journalist, she covered the political turmoil in Hong Kong, from the breach of the LegCo building to the siege of the Polytechnic University. For her work, she was questioned and denied entry into mainland China, and her mother living in China was visited by the police.
Intending to continue her career as a journalist, she came to California in 2021 as a student of UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. Throughout her school years, she participated in student organizations started by Hongkongers to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong, and eventually joined Starshiner upon graduation. She believes Starshiner’s mission to build a diverse civil society amongst those who speak Chinese overseas and push forward the kind of public discourse that may no longer be had where we came from.
Right now, she works as a full time journalist writing about business and technology in the Bay Area, where she lives with her two cats.
Treasurer
Lavo Kwon
Lavo is a tech engineer who brings an engineer’s precision to Starshiner’s operations. Lavo keeps the books in order and helps plan the work ahead, making sure the organization’s resources go where they matter most. Behind every event and campaign is a budget that adds up and a plan that holds together, and Lavo helps make both happen.
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Executive Director
Ginger Duan
Ginger Duan is Starshiner’s co-founder, working to bring the White Paper generation into public life through organized, professional community-building.
Her political awakening began with reading. Growing up in China’s interior in the 2010s, she devoured photojournalism and National Geographic, and saw firsthand the inequality between ethnic groups and between city and countryside. That planted a lasting love of human geography and the social sciences.
Over the past three years, she has built a Chinese-speaking youth community in the San Francisco Bay Area, organizing dozens of events where young people discuss public affairs freely, many for the first time. After founding 擦星星事务所, the Prototype of Starshiner, she founded Chinese Youth for Tibet, which advocates for Tibetan rights and ethnic reconciliation in the Chinese-speaking world. That stance is rare in the diaspora and has drawn wide attention.
Ginger believes a campaign only matters if it keeps bringing in new people. A free flow of information and the rule of law are the foundation, and art and technology are the catalysts that make change happen.
Artist / Designer
Qilu Zhou
Qilu is a freelancer designer and a artist lives in San Fransico.
Legal Support
Dacong Ren
Dacong brings a love of law to Starshiner, where he provides legal support that keeps the organization’s work on solid ground. His curiosity runs wide: he has dabbled in engineering and philosophy, and he approaches problems with both a builder’s practicality and a thinker’s questions. Off the clock, he is an avid gamer, and he will happily tell you that a well-designed game and a well-designed system of rules have a lot in common.