Jennifer 8. Lee
李競
Lee in 2023
Born	Jennifer Lee (1976-03-15)March 15, 1976 (age 49) New York City, U.S.
Education	Harvard University (BA)
Occupation	Journalist
Notable credit	The New York Times
Website	www.jennifer8lee.com

Jennifer 8. Lee (Chinese name:李競;^[1]pinyin:Lǐ Jìng;POJ:Lí Kēng; born March 15, 1976) is an American journalist who previously worked forThe New York Times.^[2] She is the co-founder and president of the literary studioPlympton^[3] and a producer ofThe Search for General Tso, which premiered at the 2014Tribeca Film Festival.^[4]

Lee is a former vice-chair of theUnicode Emoji Subcommittee,^[5] which is responsible for making recommendations relating toemoji to theUnicode Technical Committee. Inspired by the universality of the dumpling across cultures and cuisines (e.g.,jiaozi in China,ravioli in Italy,pierogi in Poland,empanadas in various Latin American countries), she helped to make the dumpling emoji a candidate.^[6][7] She also co-authored the proposals for ahijab emoji, anonion emoji, and aphoenix emoji.^[8]

Lee was born on March 15, 1976, inNew York City, to immigrants fromKinmen, a group of islands off the coast ofChina'sFujian province governed byTaiwan.^[9][10] Lee was not given amiddle name at birth so she chose "8." when she was a teenager.^[11][1] InChinese culture, the number eightsymbolizes prosperity and good luck.

Lee graduated fromHunter College High School inManhattan in 1994. She then graduated fromHarvard University in 1999 with a degree inapplied mathematics andeconomics.^[12]

While a student at Harvard, Lee was the vice president ofThe Harvard Crimson student newspaper.^[13] She interned atThe Washington Post,The Wall Street Journal,The Boston Globe,Newsday, andThe New York Times during college. She worked for theNew York Times for nine years, accepting abuyout in 2009.^[14][2]

Lee wrote a book about the history ofChinese food in the United States and around the world, titledThe Fortune Cookie Chronicles,^[10] documenting the process on her blog.Warner Books editor Jonathan Karp struck a deal with Lee to write a book about "how Chinese food is more all-American than apple pie."^[15] She appeared onThe Colbert Report to promote the book.^[16] Published in 2008, the book was #26 ontheNew York Times Best Seller list.^[17]

Lee attempted to popularize the term "man date" in a 2005New York Times article, which subsequently inspired the 2009 filmI Love You, Man.^[18][19]

Lee has served on the advisory panel for theJohn S. and James L. Knight Foundation's "News Challenge", and has assisted the whistle-blowing siteWikiLeaks dealing with publicity.^[20][21] She helped the organization with its April 2010 release of a video showing theJuly 12, 2007, Baghdad airstrike.^[21] Lee serves on the board of directors of theCenter for Public Integrity,^[22] the advisory board of theNieman Foundation for Journalism,^[23] and theAsian American Writers' Workshop.^[24] She is also an advisor toUpworthy.^[25]

In 2011, Lee and fellow writerYael Goldstein Love founded a literary studio named Plympton, Inc.^[3] The studio focuses on publishingserialized fiction for digital platforms.^[26] Investors includeReddit co-founderAlexis Ohanian,Y Combinator partnerGarry Tan,Delicious founderJoshua Schachter, Hipmunk founderAdam Goldstein,Inkling founder Matt MacInnis,Columbia Law ProfessorTim Wu,Quora co-founderCharlie Cheever, andTony Hsieh's Vegas Tech Fund.^[27] Its first series launched in September 2012 as part of theKindle Serials program.^[28] Its appRooster, launched in March 2014, is a mobile reading service foriOS7.^[29]

In 2012, Lee createdNewsDiffs, a website that archives article revisions fromThe New York Times,CNN,Politico,The Washington Post, and theBBC, with two brothers who were programmers,MIT graduate student Eric Price and Tddium employee Greg Price.^[30][31][32] They built the website in 38 hours (including sleep) during the June 16–17, 2012, Knight-Mozilla-M.I.T. hackathon at theMIT Media Lab.^[30]

Lee is a producer of the documentaryArtificial Gamer and is also involved in running a film enthusiast organization, Goodside.^[33][34]

In 2024, Lee and other Wikipedia contributors foundedWikiPortraits, a group of photographers working to improve Wikipedia's access to freely-licensed photos of notable people.^[35][36]

• Chinese Americans in New York City
• New Yorkers in journalism
• Taiwanese Americans in New York City

• Official website
• Jennifer 8. Lee atIMDb
• New York Times archive of Lee's articles
• Plympton official website

• 1976 births
• American women writers of Chinese descent
• American writers of Taiwanese descent
• Harvard College alumni
• Hunter College High School alumni
• Living people
• People involved with Unicode
• The New York Times journalists
• 21st-century American women journalists
• 21st-century American journalists
• American journalists of Chinese descent
• 21st-century American women writers
• Journalists from New York City
• The Harvard Crimson people
• People associated with WikiLeaks
• Wikipedia people

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use American English from February 2026
• All Wikipedia articles written in American English
• Use mdy dates from August 2025
• Articles with hCards
• Articles containing Chinese-language text
• Articles containing Min Nan Chinese-language text