13 January 2005
In limbo
Answering China travel queries on The Oriental-List and responding to mail I receive is one distraction from getting any work done, but I often wonder why I bother. Two days ago I received a message from a Frommer's China reader, wondering if I had up-to-date contact information for the former Yamato Hotel in Harbin, now the Gui Bin Lou (VIP wing), of the Longmen Hotel. He said the website information had changed, and the fax number was a voice line.
Looking at the entry in Frommer's China I saw that the fax number ended in 9700, and so was indeed likely to be a switchboard. Likely the fax and voice numbers had become switched round in the entry (which I didn't actually write, and although I'm prone to make such errors as anyone else). I did precisely the same simple Google search as my interlocutor could have done, and found two 'discount' websites which gave the hotel's phone number; both different, but but 9701 and 9702, confirming the switchboard theory. I then entered the name in Chinese into Google, and found the hotel's website straight away. This, too, had been garbled slightly in the guide book entry, which was rather annoying.
Although I was in the middle of finishing off a 2000-word story for an in-flight magazine on taking a (highly enjoyable) tour with Walk Japan, crossing the country visiting sites connected with William Adams (the first Englishman to arrive there, in 1600), I sat down and wrote a reply with the results of my researches, pointing the enquirer to the right web page, providing an email address (although it's highly unlikely any answer would be obtained), and yet another phone number (from the website), along with a paragraph of advice about not booking in advance.
No hint of a reply or acknowledgement. Thank you, beechmk, for making it clear to me I should find other ways to avoid working. Getting those last few bars of K109 finished off, or getting a little further with my translation of Zhongguo Nongmin Diaocha, for instance.
With spring coming on, all of a sudden editors are giving deadlines for various stories researched last year, and inevitably it's at busy times like this that other editors suddenly decide they actually want stories I pitched so long ago that I've forgotten about them. While I'm transcribing tapes from Japan on various trips, and from Belgium on comics and castles, forcing them back into life, I now have to do a story from Hong Kong at short notice, and of course continue with the editing of the new China guide I've been dealing with for a UK publisher, and whipping the fact checkers I've hired in China to get the work finished and back on couriers to London. The there's taxes to sort out, and a major shopping trip for kit needed for the Antarctic next month. Then the arrangements for Australia later in the year are proceeding at a glacial pace and need to be kicked back into life, as do conversations with the Koreans (which are never ending) and with the Taiwanese. It's three months since I was invited to pitch some Japan stories to another HK magazine, and I still haven't done that, and a long-standing need to continue correspondence from last year with The Guardian travel editor, who seems a nice chap.
At this point, too, the Lost in Translation story had suddenly come back to life.
I originally pitched this story to an internationally famous newspaper back on 24 June 2004, and received an immediate, enthusiastic response.
24 June Ed: Can you do it any sooner?
24 June Me: Sorry, the trip's booked for October.
--
22 Aug Me: Here's a repeat of the original pitch and all the possible angles. Can you tell me which appeal?
30 Aug Ed: It all looks interesting. Why don't you see what you come up with?
31 Aug Me: Thanks. Any thoughts on a deadline?
--
9 Nov Me: I'm back with just one 'phone interview to do. When do you want me to file?
9 Nov Ed: 'As immediately as possible [sic], as I'm about to go on leave'. 19 November.
9 Nov Me: 1200 words, is it?
9 Nov Ed: Fine. 'We're flexible about length.' Any pictures?
9 Nov Me: You'll find stills from the film to be better.
9 Nov Ed: Has anyone else run this angle? If not, all the better to run ASAP. [I don't reply to this because she has massive article databases at her fingertips, which she's used to chastise me in the past, and I don't.]
--
14 Nov Ed: Can I still expect your piece by Friday?
14 Nov Me: Yes
14 Nov Ed: Good. By 11am please. [This means considerably earlier the previous day where I'm sitting.]
18 Nov Me: [Files story very early in morning, a working day ahead of schedule in HK.]
19 Nov Ed: [Having declined earlier to give specific direction on angle or length, now gives a detailed description of what she wants, and adds, 'Remember, this only needs to be 1000 words.' Readers with equally short memories may like to scan upwards a few lines to find '1200', and 'flexible'.] 'If you can get revisions to me in a day, I can try to work on it over the weekend.'
19 Nov Me: [Having worked on nothing else because of the hurry for this, files story rewritten to instructions given, and cut by 1/3rd.]
19 Nov Ed: 'Thanks so much Peter! i'll get back to you asap'
--
25 Nov Me: Anything I can do? Long time no hear.
--
6 Dec Me: Can you let me know what's happening?
--
8 Dec Ed: 'Peter, as I mentioned earlier I've been on leave for several weeks [?] I just returned to Hong Kong today. I needed to have all pieces in before I left. Your revisions looked good on first glance, I will be back to you very shortly.'
--
2 Jan 2005 Ed: [Nice note apologizing for the delay, and mentioning that now the tsunami has changed everything, and now there's a backlog of pieces tied to specific events. The piece had already been produced with great urgency more six weeks before the tsunami hit, of course.]
2 Jan Me: Thanks. I'm away for most of February, by the way.
--
10 Jan Ed: 'I'm hoping to edit your piece today, and send it to you today or tomorrow. Could you please do me a favor and look through the final version you sent me and let me know if anything needs updating?'
10 Jan Me: [Quick flurry of email to interviewees.]
12 Jan Me: [Sends one minor change.]
And that is the story so far. I expect it will eventually amble into print.
To do this business you have to become inured to this kind of behaviour, since there are very many editors as dizzy as this, but vastly more people desperate to see their names in the papers at any price. There are many editors who are much, much worse. I remember particularly an extremely inexperienced editor at Time who routinely reneged on agreements, spiked commissioned stories without compensation, asked for an extra story to be added to a package then spiked that, too, and who couldn't even spell very simple English words. In the end it was costing me money to write for Time, so I gave up.
Why bother to travel anyway, when often home seems so alien?
A few days ago I was in a video rental store, renting a DVD, and the assistant who was serving me, said, 'How did you find everything today?'
'It was all in alphabetical order,' I explained, 'so it wasn't difficult.'
This response seemed to open a great gulf between us, and nothing more was said for the rest of the transaction.
Shopping locally is increasingly removing the need to return to China. The dry cleaners is run by people from Heilongjiang; one greengrocer has Taiwanese; another greengrocer has people from Ji'nan, Hangzhou, and Beijing (seems there's someone different every time I go in); and there's a Shanghainese in the bank.
With the sole exception of asking me for my nationality, the conversation is exactly the same as the one had a dozen times every day in China itself. 'You can speak Chinese?' (Facial expression similar to the one which might be expected if I were a talking dog.) 'You speak Chinese very well.' (Not true.) 'Where did you learn Chinese?' 'In London! You can study Mandarin in London?' And when I've asked where each person is from (a personal revenge for the thousands of times that's happened to me in China), complete astonishment that I've nearly always been there and can tell her something about her home town. Then usually delight, and more questions; but today the occasional opposite--a kind of condescension.
Right, I must stop avoiding work, and finish checking practical data (transport, website information, etc.) for a Japan piece and get it off to a Canadian syndicate.
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