diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 85ca5e6faa..9a8bdf9040 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: rmarkdown
 Type: Package
 Title: Dynamic Documents for R
-Version: 2.9.6
+Version: 2.9.7
 Authors@R: c(
   person("JJ", "Allaire", role = "aut", email = "jj@rstudio.com"),
   person("Yihui", "Xie", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "xie@yihui.name", comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0645-5666")),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index e92e49a1f4..de216876be 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -11,6 +11,9 @@ rmarkdown 2.10
 
 - Ability to inject additional functions into Shiny prerendered server scope using the "server-extras" context.
 
+- Fixed the syntax highlighting issue with R's pipe operator `|>` (thanks, @edzer, rstudio/bookdown#1157).
+
+
 rmarkdown 2.9
 ================================================================================
 
diff --git a/R/html_document_base.R b/R/html_document_base.R
index 3032fb6328..5504ff0b1e 100644
--- a/R/html_document_base.R
+++ b/R/html_document_base.R
@@ -158,14 +158,20 @@ html_document_base <- function(theme = NULL,
   }
 
   post_processor <- function(metadata, input_file, output_file, clean, verbose) {
+    # read the output file
+    output_str <- read_utf8(output_file)
+
+    # TODO: remove this temporary fix after the syntax highlighting problem is
+    # fixed in Pandoc https://github.com/rstudio/bookdown/issues/1157
+    s1 <- '<span class="sc">|</span><span class="er">&gt;</span>'
+    s2 <- '<span class="ot">=</span><span class="er">&gt;</span>'
+
     # if there are no preserved chunks to restore and no resource to copy then no
     # post-processing is necessary
-    if (length(preserved_chunks) == 0 && !isTRUE(copy_resources) && self_contained)
+    if ((length(preserved_chunks) == 0 && !isTRUE(copy_resources) && self_contained) &&
+        !length(c(grep(s1, output_str, fixed = TRUE), grep(s2, output_str, fixed = TRUE))))
       return(output_file)
 
-    # read the output file
-    output_str <- read_utf8(output_file)
-
     # if we preserved chunks, restore them
     if (length(preserved_chunks) > 0) {
       # Pandoc adds an empty <p></p> around the IDs of preserved chunks, and we
@@ -203,6 +209,10 @@ html_document_base <- function(theme = NULL,
       output_str <- process_images(output_str, image_relative)
     }
 
+    # fix the issue mentioned in TODO above
+    output_str <- gsub(s1, '<span class="sc">|&gt;</span>', output_str, fixed = TRUE)
+    output_str <- gsub(s2, '<span class="ot">=&gt;</span>', output_str, fixed = TRUE)
+
     write_utf8(output_str, output_file)
     output_file
   }