Oracle Bones (51 page)

Although the full picture of what transpired is still unclear, according to our information, our severely crippled aircraft made an emergency landing after following international emergency procedures.

We are very sorry the entering of China’s airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance, but very pleased the crew landed safely. We appreciate China’s efforts to see to the well-being of our crew.

The U.S. embassy translation used two different Chinese phrases for “very sorry.” With regard to the family of Wang Wei, the Americans were
feichang wanxi
, “feel very sorry for somebody about something.” With regard to China’s airspace, the Americans were
feichang baoqian
, “be very sorry; feel very apologetic.” But the Chinese Foreign Ministry released its own translation. “Very sorry” became
shenbiao qianyi
, “deep expression of apology.”

After the letter was released, Colin Powell told reporters: “There was nothing to apologize for. To apologize would have suggested that we had done something wrong and we accepted responsibility for having done something wrong. And we did not do anything wrong. Therefore, it was not possible to apologize.”

The following day, the
Beijing Morning News
ran the front-page headline: AMERICA FINALLY APOLOGIZES.

AFTER THE AMERICAN
crew members left on a chartered flight to Guam, most U.S. newspapers reported that the incident had been ably handled by the new president, who showed flexibility. Analysts also noted that the dominant administration voice seemed to be Colin Powell instead of Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. This was interpreted as a sign that President George W. Bush’s foreign policy would be shaped by moderates rather than hard-liners.

THE
BOSTON GLOBE
published two articles about the reaction of the average Chinese. The first story was by Indira Lakshaman, the Asia bureau chief, who was based in Hong Kong but had flown to Beijing to cover the event. On the evening that the letter was released, she went out into the city and showed people the official U.S. embassy translation. A Chinese assistant interpreted their responses. Lakshaman’s article read, in part:

Younger residents parroted nationalistic sentiments that have been stoked by a government nurturing patriotism among its populace as a substitute for the waning of communist ideology over the past two decades. Older residents nostalgically recalled the rule of China’s founder, Mao Zedong.…Wu Guoging [sic], a 45-year-old laid-off worker, bellowed: “Look at these cowardly leaders! First the embassy in Belgrade was bombed. Then our plane was hit. And what can they do? If I were in charge, I’d put the 24 crew members underground and hide the spy plane, and when the US came asking, I’d say: “What plane? We don’t know anything.”

On the same evening, I reported the second
Boston Globe
article. I went alone to the old dumpling restaurant in Yabaolu, ordered dinner, and talked with people. I did not bring a copy of the American letter. My article read, in part:

“We should attack America,” said Gao Ming, a 24-year-old restaurant owner, shortly after hearing about the release.

But Gao became vague when asked the reasons for this retribution, and less than a minute later he was hedging his words. “This is a problem between the governments,” he shrugged. “The American people are fine, just like the Chinese people. But the American government is very arrogant—why did it take them so long to apologize?”

Like Gao, many Chinese citizens, sorting through often conflicting information from state-run media, the Internet, and word of mouth, are responding to the incident with as many questions as opinions.

While initial comments tend to be angry and unequivocal—especially when addressed to members of the foreign press corps—longer discussions reveal frustration and powerlessness….

After the plane dispute was over, and I read both articles, I decided to stop writing newspaper stories.

I HAD ALWAYS
been bad at daily journalism. I worked slowly; I dreaded deadlines; I failed to cultivate contacts. I knew only three Wang Weis. I quoted everybody that a good journalist doesn’t quote: cabbies, waitresses, friends. I spent a lot of time in restaurants. I avoided press conferences. I loathed talking on the telephone—a crippling neurosis for a news reporter. In particular, I hated staying up late at night to call American academics so they could give me a quote about what was happening in China. I already knew what was happening: normal people were asleep.

I had no infrastructure: no office, no fax machine, no assistant, no driver, no clipper. Officially, I was in charge of the Beijing operation of the
Boston Globe
, but it was nothing more than a paper bureau—
jiade
. I held a journalist license that misspelled the name of the newspaper (
Boston Global
), an official chop (an ink stamp used to certify formal correspondence), and an office registration card claiming the same address that was already occupied by the
Wall Street Journal
. Friends at the
Journal
let me use a room there if I needed it, and I picked up my mail a couple of times a week. Usually, I worked out of my home, a cramped third-story apartment in Ju’er Hutong.

I made three or four hundred dollars per story. It became a decent living only when news broke; if I played the game right, I could file a story at every new development: every official statement, every nuanced word, from “regret” to “sincere regret,” from
wanxi
to
baoqian
to
qianyi
. But sanity has a price, and mine was more than three hundred bucks; if I had wanted to become a professional deconstructionist, I would have stayed in grad school.

Even if somehow I became good at daily journalism—if I acquired a real bureau, and real contacts, and learned to love the telephone—I had little faith in the format. I disliked the third-person voice: it was possible for two journalists to witness an event, interpret it completely differently, but adopt the same impersonal and authoritative tone. Writers rarely appeared in their stories, and they didn’t explain their reporting techniques. In China, many foreign journalists hired interpreters or “fixers”—assistants who tracked down potential interview subjects—but these contributors were rarely mentioned in the story. Even if you worked alone, your identity as a foreigner affected the responses of Chinese people, but it was hard to make this clear in a third-person story.

I had more patience for features, which sometimes ran at length in a newspaper. I had written about Old Mr. Zhao’s courtyard for the
Boston Globe Magazine
, which gave the story plenty of space. But even long features could be limited by certain values of American journalism that didn’t translate well
overseas. In Fuling, during my time as a teacher, I had seen what happened when such information moved in the opposite direction. My students used a textbook called
Survey of America
, which included a chapter about “Social Problems”:

In 1981, in California University, robbery and rape increased one hundred and fifty percent. In a Cathedral school of Washington District, a girl student was raped and robbed by a criminal with a hunting knife while she was studying alone in the classroom. In a California university, a football coach was robbed on campus by someone with a gun. It is said that, in South Carolina University, gangs of rascals have been taking girl students, women teachers and wives of teachers working in this university as their targets of rape, which has caused a great fear.

It was hard to teach from a book like that. The details themselves were probably true—certainly, there were rascals in South Carolina—but that didn’t make this information a useful starting point for a student in a remote Chinese city. They needed context, not trivia; a bunch of scattered facts only confused them.

Probably, these details had been culled from American newspapers, where they had actually served a purpose. In the United States, journalists worked within a community, and often their stories inspired change. This was one of the noblest aspects of the field, as well as the most widely celebrated. Any American journalist knew the history of Watergate: how dedicated reporters helped bring down a corrupt administration. That was the model for a good journalist—if your community had a rascal problem, you exposed it, even if the rascal was the president of the United States.

At big papers, successful journalists became foreign correspondents, and then they brought their work patterns overseas. Usually, they searched for dramatic, unresolved problems; if they didn’t speak the language, they hired interpreters or fixers. Sometimes, their stories made a difference. In African countries, journalists who covered famines or genocide could be instrumental in motivating international organizations to step in. Reporters functioned within an international community because the local community had broken down.

But China was completely different. The country received some international aid, mostly in the form of loans, but the economy had been built primarily through Chinese effort and determination. In the past, the American government had responded to Chinese human rights violations by periodic threats to impose economic sanctions, but those days were gone: trade had
become too important. Essentially, China had outgrown the traditional limits of a developing country. Despite its problems, the nation was stable, functioning, independent, and increasingly powerful. When Americans looked across the Pacific, the critical question wasn’t how they could change China. It was far more important to understand the country and the people who lived there.

But most foreign journalists were stuck in the old mindset, the old file cabinets:

DEMOCRACY

DEMOCRACY

PARTY

DEMONSTRATIONS

DISABLED

DISASTERS

DISSIDENTS

In a typical foreign bureau, Chinese assistants searched local newspapers for potential stories, and they received tips from disgruntled citizens. When something dramatic caught the foreigner’s eye, he pursued it: child-selling in Gansu, female sterilization in Guangxi, jailed labor activists in Shandong. The articles appeared in American newspapers, where the readers couldn’t solve the problems and didn’t have the background necessary to keep everything in context. It was like the Fuling textbook: sometimes the more information you have, the less you know. And there is a point at which even the best intentions become voyeurism.

I didn’t want to write such features, which meant that the main appeal of working for a newspaper was news. And news in China seemed pointless: the country changed every year, but the pace was steady and it moved subtly. There weren’t any great leaders, and supposedly important events like the plane dispute fizzled out; they were like splashes of foam on the surface of a massive sea change. We had escaped history; news no longer mattered. Brave new world.

Anyway, that’s how it looked before September of 2001.

ON MY COMPUTER,
I pulled up old letters and made minor changes:

Dear Press Attaché,

This document certifies that Peter Hessler is a fully qualified journalist whose experience is commensurate with the demands of working as a foreign correspondent….
The New Yorker
wholeheartedly supports Mr. Hessler’s nomination to serve as our Beijing correspondent, and we thank you for your consideration of this application.

Magazine work was a better fit. Stories were longer; you could write in the first-person voice; editors didn’t care so much about news. They paid by the word, which was a lot better than the flat rate for newspaper freelancers. Magazines covered expenses. Because they moved slower, it was possible to research stories without ever using a telephone.

For the past twenty years, China’s economic reforms have resulted in dramatic changes….

It felt as ritualized as an oracle bone inscription: the same well-worn phrases, the same letters and documents.
The New Yorker
had never posted a full-time correspondent in the People’s Republic, so I created an official
New Yorker
bureau, which happened to be located in the same place as the
Boston Globe
, which happened to be located in the same place as the
Wall Street Journal
. The paper piled up, but nobody at the Foreign Ministry seemed to care.

Everything proceeded smoothly until we reached the stage of translation. The Foreign Ministry announced that the magazine’s Chinese name would be
Niu Yue Ren
, which translates directly as “New York Person.” My name cards would read:

New York Person
Peter Hessler

Every time I showed it to a Chinese friend, he burst out laughing. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Chinese-speaking communities in the United States, the magazine was already called
Niu Yue Ke
. That was a phonetic transcription, pronounced “neo-you-ay-kuh”; it wouldn’t cut it in Brooklyn but sounded a hell of a lot better than “New York Person.”

When I mentioned the issue to Sophie Sun, the Chinese assistant at the
Wall Street Journal,
she offered to help. She thought that it would be better for a native to deal with the Foreign Ministry, but after one telephone call she was so angry that she could hardly speak. She told me that it was hopeless; they were as stubborn as only cadres could be.