Apologies to My Censor

by Mitch Moxley

  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 lu
ck.

  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.

  After a lull in the conversation, Lois looked at me with hurt eyes and said, “I read your article.” She paused. “So that’s what you think of us?”

  I felt guilty and struggled to offer an explanation.

  She shrugged. “I understand. It’s just different here.”

  We sat in silence, sipping our coffees and watching the basketball game on the asphalt court in front of us. All I wanted to do was look her in the eye and tell her that I was sorry.

  But I didn’t. I couldn’t. Because even though I felt awful, I knew I wasn’t wrong.

  Was I?

  In the weeks after leaving China Daily, I wrestled over whether I didn’t fit in at the paper because, well, it was China Daily, or if my failed tenure at the paper was because I am, by nature, exactly how I felt after the Globe and Mail article was published: an asshole.

  As much I would have liked to write off China Daily as a ridiculous charade, I concluded that I, in fact, bore the brunt of the blame for being a Failed Propagandist. I never gave it 100 percent—not for one day, not for one minute. I didn’t even give it close to 50 percent. I gave it about 7 percent.

  Day after day, I did no work, made no effort to make China Daily a better newspaper. Lois was right: it’s different in China. I didn’t play by their rules, I complained endlessly about working nights and editing. I bitched my way into a writer’s role and then barely wrote anything. I moaned about every assignment I got. I didn’t aggressively report anything. I blogged about the absurdities of working in Chinese state media. I freelanced, violating my contract.

  But now that it was over I was embarrassed about my attitude over the previous year. I had treated China Daily as a joke from day one, and that wasn’t fair to anyone—not to my employers, not to my editors, not to my colleagues. And it wasn’t fair to my friends, to people like Lois. If I could have lived the year over again, I would have done things differently. I would have tried to maintain a more open mind and I would have worked harder.

  But it was too late for that now. All I could do, I decided, was come back to Beijing with a fresh start and fresh eyes. I wanted to be a better laowai.

  That April, a few days after my twenty-eighth birthday, I returned to Canada for three weeks. As part of my contract, China Daily provided a car to take me to the airport: comfortable, air-conditioned, chauffeured.

  Julia texted me while I was on the way. “Have a great time at home,” she wrote. “I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” I replied, and I meant it. She still wasn’t my girlfriend, but we were getting there.

  I flew to Toronto, on China Daily’s dime, and landed in a blizzard. The air was clean and cold when I stepped off the shuttle bus downtown. Wind and blowing snow whipped my face as I dragged my suitcase to a friend’s apartment.

  I fought through jet lag and went with a few friends to a pub downtown, where I ordered the first decent burger I’d had in a year and drank a few pints of good Canadian beer, not the watery beverage served in China. It felt surreal to be back in Canada. The bar smelled of cleaning products and spilled alcohol, not of cigarette smoke like Chinese bars. I caught up on my friends’ lives, but when it came time for me to explain my life in China, and China Daily, I struggled to convey what I experienced. I pointed out the obvious differences, told them about some of the adventures I’d had, and did my best to paint a full picture.

  The next morning I visited my old neighborhood—a bohemian district east of downtown called Cabbagetown—and read a newspaper at the café where I used to write many of my freelance articles. The streets felt small and deserted compared to Beijing. I walked around reliving the summer of 2006, the worst summer of my life. So much had changed. I thought about the person I was before I left for China, and the person I was only twelve months later. It had all turned out all right. I was happier, more confident, more excited about life—and I had China to thank.

  I took a streetcar to the Chinese consulate, where Falun Gong protesters were gathered outside, as they were a year earlier when I first applied for a visa. It was mayhem inside, a single waiting room that felt similar to the China Daily offices, dated and mute of color, with white sunlight shining in from the windows. People jostled for a place in the line and hollered loud inquiries in Mandarin to the employees behind the glass.

  As I waited in line to apply for a tourist visa, I grew excited about going back to China. I was more excited about the prospect of returning to Beijing than I had been about going the first time. It was becoming clear that I was in no way ready to move back to Canada, that my initial plan to stay until the end of the Olympics would soon have to be augmented.

  It had been only a few days, but I was disillusioned again with Toronto, where most conversations seemed to revolve around organic food, careers, and complaints about public transit. After a week, I traveled to my home province, Saskatchewan, and on to Vancouver. I enjoyed being back in Canada, but it seemed strangely foreign now. Exchanges at restaurants and coffee shops felt awkward and people came across as both absurdly polite and incredibly cold; I missed the honest bluntness of Chinese people.

  There were still things pulling me back, of course. Seeing my parents sparked the guilt I often felt living in China. They had come to visit me in Beijing the previous fall and I was in frequent contact with them, but I knew it was hard on my mom to have her son on the other side of the world, especially in a place that seemed to
be in constant turmoil, at least based on news coverage. It was great to see friends, too, and enjoy all the variety Canada had to offer.

  But when I imagined going back to my old life in Canada, I quickly dismissed any fleeting notion of moving back.

  “So, what’s it like in China?” friends would ask.

  How could I answer that question? It’s amazing and terrible. Beautiful and ugly, thrilling and boring, inspiring and infuriating. I couldn’t find a short, sound-bite answer, so more often than not I would mumble something like “Oh, it’s great. Really interesting. Things are changing so fast.” People at home struggled to relate to my China experience, and I couldn’t blame them. Before I left, China was this big, mostly blank canvas, except for stock images I’d seen on television or in photos: people on bikes, hazy skies, skyscrapers, and peasant villages. But by then I knew that China is one of those places you need to see and feel, and more than one conversation ended with me saying, “You really just need to be there.”

  I felt somehow different and I was anxious to get back to Beijing. It was becoming clear to me that I had made the right decision to go to China. For all the ups and downs of my first year in China, it had made me feel alive.

  8

  The Big Cleanup

  A few weeks later, in mid-May 2008, I was back in Beijing, still without a plan that lasted beyond the summer, living in my new apartment, a boxy but adequate three-bedroom owned by Comrade Wu, my old kook of a landlord.

  A few days after I arrived back in the capital, Comrade Wu showed up at my apartment unannounced, as was his custom, plopped down on the living room sofa, lit a smoke, and farted. He let out a barking cough, paused, and shifted his weight to one side to scratch his ass cheek. Comrade Wu was retired and in his late sixties, from Henan province, thin as a twig with dark brown skin and massive Pete Postlethwaite cheekbones. He took a shine to me after I moved into his rental apartment, even though we could barely communicate. On this particular morning, Comrade Wu puffed on his cigarette and rattled off a bunch of Chinese I didn’t really understand.