29 January 2006
Anniversary
So what am I doing?
Working, of course.
I'm still trudging though the same 2000 words of introduction to a new guide book on Beijing and Shanghai I've been looking at for weeks. It's a long time since I made such heavy going of something. The three local journalists I know best are all equally in a slump, and one of them puts it down to the dismal January weather. But then all three want to get out of journalism.
One gift was Robert Fisk's new book, 'The Great War for Civilisation'. I don't know why I ask for books as gifts, since it will join great towers of others on already overburdened shelves, and remain equally unread for a long time to come, as all I'll have time to read (in brief pre-slumber half hour bursts) will be books related to subjects I'm writing on. Just looking at the piles of unread material depresses me.
But I did quickly read Fisk's introduction, and catch that whiff of saltpetre that's always to be found in his writings, whether because he has spent so much time looking over the edge into the pit of hell or from his own sulphurous anger at what he's seen, isn't clear. Fisk is one of the very few people who represents in reality what we'd like to think foreign correspondents are really like: a man not floating on the surface, not flown in for a five-minute star reporter overview and then off to the next story, not forced by his medium to reduce complicated issues to the news-as-entertainment video clips of shallow and self-indulgent children's television such as CNN, and not someone too busy posing as a star reporter to get any real understanding at all. Probably equally disliked by editors, interview subjects, certainly politicians, and at least half of his readership, for the clarity and forceful expression of strongly held views on matters that may mean life or death to hundreds of thousands of people. His articles change people's minds.
I have no ambition to be any such kind of person, but if there were more like him then I'd become someone who buys and reads newspapers regularly. And if I find time, amidst all the trivia of what I do for a living, to read any books not relevant to what I'm writing, his will be first.
But right now it's back to work. And happy birthday to me.
Oh, and Chinese New Year is really catching on. My wife went out to throw something in the dumpster (skip) behind our apartment building, and some down-and-out rooting through there for items to sell (white Caucasian, of course) said "Gong hei fat choi" to her.
Postscript: In my continuing desperation to avoid work I went over to the EastSouthWestNorth blog, which I really must add to the list of links on the side of this page as it's become regular reading for me, and is a rare, truly worthwhile Chinese blog, offering translations of mainland media and links to the best of other China-related blogging:
EastSouthWestNorth
There was a link to a CounterPunch story about the opposite kind of foreign correspondent, that brainless strutting cockerel Nicholas Kristof, whose articles on China are typical of the worst pabulum produced on the country, and whose China Wakes! might be the most airheaded book on China ever, were there not so much competition; every page an embarrassment. Read on, laugh, and write a letter of complaint to the editor of the New York Times (as I've done in the past):
Nicholas Kristof's Brothel Problem
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