Apologies to My Censor (9 page)

The state media's take on the Tibet riots was the
polar opposite of international media reports. “The state media has tightly
controlled its coverage to focus on Tibetans burning Chinese businesses or
attacking and killing Chinese merchants,” the
Times
wrote. “No mention is made of Tibetan grievances or reports that 80 or more
Tibetans have died.”

China Daily
, meanwhile,
ran a front-page story under the headline
TIBET RELIGIOUS LEADERS CONDEMN LHASA RIOTS
,
provided by Xinhua, the state newswire service. It quoted the Panchen
Lama condemning the riots as “sabotage acts.” Of course, the Panchen Lama is
handpicked by China. The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan holy leader in exile, was
characterized in state media reports as being little more than the leader of a
gang of petty thugs.

On page three of the same day's paper,
China Daily
published another Xinhua story with the
headline
FEARS AND TEARS IN HOLY PLATEAU CITY
. The story referred to a school
damaged by “saboteurs” and “vandals carrying backpacks filled with stones and
bottles of inflammable liquids” who “smashed windows, set fire to vehicles,
shops and restaurants along their destructive path.” According to an official
quoted, the chaos was “masterminded by the Dalai clique.”

One afternoon, I sat at my desk watching a news
conference given by Chinese premier Wen Jiabao at the National People's
Congress, as it played on a television mounted to the wall beside me. A crowd of
Chinese reporters and editors had gathered. Someone turned up the volume.
Everyone around me was quiet.

During the press conference, questions focused on
Tibet. Wen's answers were stock and predictable.

“The events in Tibet caused by a few people were
meant to undermine the Olympic Games,” the premier said. But he promised the
Games would go off smoothly—a showcase of the new China. “During the Olympics,”
Wen said, “the smiles of 1.3 billion Chinese will be reflected by the smiles of
people around the world.”

As he spoke, I found myself growing irritated with
my colleagues, who nodded along in agreement. I was also ashamed that I worked
at a newspaper that was presenting such a lopsided account of what were truly
horrible events—for both sides. And as I watched the press conference, the
Chinese premier glossing over the chaos that was happening on the other side of
the country, I knew that at
China Daily
, his message
was front-page material.

T
he
riots exposed fault lines between China and the West, fault lines that were
worsened by Olympic torch relay protests. The relay, called the “Journey of
Harmony,” was to last 129 days and span 85,000 miles—the longest relay since the
tradition began in 1936. The torch would be lit in Athens, pass through six
continents, stopping at Mount Everest on the border of Nepal and Tibet, and
ending in Beijing on March 31, 2008.

The name “Journey of Harmony” was becoming more
ironic by the day. The torch relay resulted in “violence and farce” in London
(according to the
Daily Mail
) and “waves of chaos”
in Paris (
New York Times
). In San Francisco,
protesters scaled the Golden Gate Bridge and unfurled pro-Tibet banners before
the torch even touched down in the city.

One wouldn't have known any of this by reading
China Daily
. Whereas the Western media focused
on protests in London that resulted in thirty-two arrests,
China Daily
ran a front-page story titled
WARM RECEPTION IN COOL LONDON
.

“Olympic fever yesterday gripped snowy London—host
of the 2012 Olympic Games—on the latest leg of the torch relay's global odyssey.
. . . Despite the bad weather, the flame received a particularly warm
welcome from crowds in the city.” The story dismissed the protests as a “small
number of criminal attempts to disrupt the safety, security and safe passage of
the torch.”

The next day, in Paris, protesters swarmed
torchbearers, and police made about twenty arrests. Along the Seine, protesters
forced officials in charge of the flame onto a bus, and the flame was briefly
extinguished. Ultimately, the “eternal flame” was forced out four times that
day.

China Daily
painted a
slightly different picture of the Paris leg.
FRENCH PASSION GREETS TORCH IN PARIS
, the headline read. “Tens of thousands of Parisians swarmed the streets
while many waved and cheered, like their ancestors did in 1884,” the story said.
The next day, however, the Chinese reaction to the torch protests turned from
denial to outrage.
China Daily
's story, titled
SEPARATISTS' ATTACK ON TORCH DENOUNCED
, characterized the protests as
“despicable” acts that “defiled the Olympic spirit and defied people who love
the Games.”

With each passing day my temples grew increasingly
raw from rubbing. I was thankful that I didn't work in the news section, so that
I didn't have to edit the stories
China Daily
was
publishing. Some days I was furious at what the paper printed, other days
bewildered, and once in a while I couldn't help but be amused at the differences
between our version of events and the rest of the world's.

As a foreigner at
China
Daily
, it felt like I was straddling an ever-widening gulf between
two different universes. But the events didn't make me want to leave China, as
it did some other foreigners. For me it was the opposite. China was dominating
global news coverage, and I was in the middle of it. I was, in some ways, living
a journalist's dream: I was a part of history.

A
story idea came to mind: an insider's account of working within the state media
during this time of turmoil. I contacted an editor at the
Globe and Mail
and pitched the piece. He expressed interest but
wrote back, “Are you sure you should write this?”

I asked my foreign colleagues for their opinions.
Their advice ranged from “Yes, definitely write it” to a sort of
I'm not so sure
wince. In the end I decided that I
should write it; that my position at
China Daily
could help explain the differences between China and the West on Tibet. Besides,
I had only a month left on my contract.

I wrote the story in a day, from my desk at
China Daily
, and sent it to my editor that night. In
the piece, I talked about my own experiences working at the paper and discussed
the government's censorship efforts. I noted that state media had focused almost
exclusively on how Tibetan rioters had looted and damaged property owned by Han
Chinese and had attacked or killed Chinese civilians, in an attempt to undermine
ethnic unity in the lead-up to the Olympics. Meanwhile, the state media made
virtually no reference to Tibetan grievances or to reports from rights groups
that nearly one hundred Tibetans had been killed in the violence.

I referred to a story published in
Vanity Fair
titled “Beijing's Olympic Makeover.” In
the piece, its author, William Langewiesche, visited
China
Daily
and spoke with several local reporters. “It surprised me that
[Chinese reporters] showed no sign of regret about their roles, or of envy about
the possibilities offered by freedom of the press,” he wrote. “They seemed to
believe genuinely in the need for censorship, and executed most of it themselves
before even beginning to write.”

I wrote about how the
Vanity
Fair
piece reminded me of a number of conversations I'd had with
Chinese reporters over the year, which went a long way in illuminating the
paper's coverage of issues such as the Tibet riots: the greatest form of
censorship at
China Daily
was self-imposed. There
were no shadowy Party agents leaning over reporters' shoulders telling them what
to write, and as far as I knew, day-to-day stories didn't go to some high-up
government official for approval or rejection. As the
Vanity Fair
article pointed out, and as I reinforced in my
Globe
article, there was no “thought police” at
China Daily
. Instead, reporters and writers simply
knew what they could and could not report, and nobody ever challenged those
limitations. In this way, change wasn't coming from the bottom, and it certainly
wasn't coming from the top.

Whenever I asked Chinese reporters about their
thoughts on censorship, their answers tended to meander, but they always
emphasized that change happens slowly and almost always concluded by saying,
“What can I do?” Of course, in a country with no tradition of press freedom,
there was no telling what might happen if reporters did challenge their roles.
As Lois once told me, with eyebrows raised, during a conversation about media
freedom: “This isn't Canada.”

I
was
nervous about how my colleagues would react to the piece, but I knew it was a
good story. I finally felt like a journalist again.

But the day before the article went to print in the
Globe and Mail
, I panicked. I was at a cocktail
bar in Sanlitun drinking a martini with Jeremy when I was hit with worry about
what my editors would do once they found out. I had no doubt they would discover
it, since
China Daily
monitored all mentions of the
paper in foreign media. I tossed back martini after martini, and with each glass
I grew more paranoid. They were going to fire me. Strip me of my visa. I would
never be allowed back in China.

It hadn't been that long ago that I'd fantasized
about being tossed out of China. But now China was where I wanted to be—where I
needed
to be—and getting exiled would be
devastating so close to the Olympics.

On Monday, I came into work early and hid at my
desk. All day I looked over my shoulder, waiting for a furious Mr. Wang to call
me into his office and tell me I had twenty-four hours to clean out my apartment
and leave the country.

Instead, nothing.

Maybe it was because the article was hidden behind
a pay wall. Or maybe they couldn't afford to lose another foreign editor when we
were so short-staffed. Or perhaps they just didn't find out. Or didn't care.

But instead of relief, I felt an overwhelming sense
of guilt. I had betrayed the people who provided me with the opportunity to live
in China, who bought my plane tickets to and from Beijing, gave me a free
apartment, paid my salary, and put up with my terrible attitude for a year.
Mostly, I worried about what Lois would think if she saw the article. I liked
her, I respected her, and I didn't want to hurt her feelings.

The next three weeks went by without incident,
without any mention of the article. My contract ended not with a bang but a
whimper. With each day that passed, I became excited for the summer ahead and
nostalgic for the year I'd had. It had been an enlightening year, and I had
especially enjoyed the last few months. I had met interesting people and had a
life experience I would never forget, one that taught me about China and
journalism and myself.

On my last day at
China
Daily
, I finished the first story I'd written for the paper in
months. I edited a few small pieces for the business supplement. I deleted all
the files on my computer (mostly freelance stories), cleared out my desk (mostly
articles and notes related to freelance stories), said goodbye to my colleagues,
and thanked Mr. Wang and the business editors for the opportunity to work with
them at
China Daily
. They all smiled, thanked me,
shook my hand, and wished me luck.

At 6 p.m., I slung my bag over my shoulder, took a
final look around the dimly lit, pale gray office, and with a touch of sadness,
I walked out for good.

I
spent another week in Beijing before going home for the first time in a year.
China Daily
threw a going-away party for a
colleague and me. We toasted one another and drank until late. Rob didn't even
bother to show up.

I found a small apartment with a roommate from New
Zealand in an old neighborhood close to the center of the city, on the east
second ring road, not far from Sanlitun. The second stage of my China odyssey
was beginning.

But as I packed up my place at the
China Daily
compound, I felt empty. Many of the
friends I'd made that year—Jeremy, Ben, Helena, and others—would be gone from
Beijing when I returned from Canada, some back home, some to Hong Kong, and the
rest to other cities in Asia. The comfort of living and working together with
friends would be gone with them. I was happy to be leaving
China Daily
but also distraught at letting its comforts go.

The months ahead of me, though exciting, were
largely blank, and I was uncertain about what to do after the Olympics. Would I
stay in Beijing? Move elsewhere in Asia? Back to Canada? No clear path had
presented itself. My life was about to change again, and I wasn't sure it was
going to be for the better. I would miss the long lunches, movie nights, and
boozy dinners. I would miss Lois and my Chinese coworkers. I would miss the
comedy, the incompetence, the characters.

I never would have guessed it, but I would miss
China Daily
.

A
few
days before I left for Canada, I met Lois for coffee at the university across
the street from
China Daily
. We took our coffees to
go and sat down on a bench near the school's basketball courts. It was a
comfortable, warm spring day, with a light breeze and clear sky. I encouraged
Lois to apply for journalism school abroad, but she said she was happy to stay
at
China Daily
, which surprised me. She was a
talented reporter, and I had assumed she would want to someday move on to bigger
and better things, to become a
real
journalist.