12 February 2006
Writing China guides
Although there's a lot of idle chatter about which is the best series, and to be sure there are preferences to be held for one kind of content over another and for presentation of the information, the single most important factor in the usefulness of an individual title is whether the writer-researcher is actually steeped in local knowledge or not, is diligent enough to triple-check information, and cares deeply about having errors in material which has his or her name attached. Many a series uses any old jobbing writer to tackle new destinations, and some even revel in their contributors' lack of experience in anything except strapping on a backpack. The results are usually profoundly ignorant and misleading.
Although I write guides, there are also occasions on which I hire others to contribute to guides. In general contributors are made to jump through numerous hoops to ensure they have both knowledge and attitude. An ability to write entertaining prose is a plus, but submissions can always be polished if the basic information is there. Certainly those researching in China must be current or former residents, and native English speakers but competent in Mandarin, too. No one without Mandarin can be a credible contributor to a China guide.
But on some occasions what's needed is technical data best supplied by current residents already in the business of compiling that data, particularly reviews and practical details of restaurants, hotels, bars, etc,. needed in volume, at short notice (things are always short notice with publishers,) and on tiny budgets. Unfortunately haste here often makes selecting contributors a problem, as I found last year with someone previously unknown to me, and whose efforts were shoddy enough to require a lot of supplementary checking and rewriting.
Over these last few days I've spent some time polishing and reworking contributions to another guide by people who hadn't adequately absorbed the (quite small) brief, and who seemed to lack the technical mastery needed to get a vivid description into a mere 40 words. While some of us can knock off something adequate in five to ten minutes, it's undoubtedly a tricky job for others, although a bit of prodding finally produced rewrites that came nearer to fitting the bill. I still had to spend quite some time tidying and polishing, muttering to myself as I did so.
Just in case you should ever have the misfortune to work for me on a guide, here is an extract from guidelines I wrote to brief the contributors to the first edition of Frommer's China, which I had the misfortune to mastermind. I should add that none of what's below is part of Frommer's rather voluminous official brief to authors, but merely the standards I applied for writing and research, some China-specific, some not.
As far as I can gather, and particularly from viewing past guides to Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Frommer's authors are a jobbing bunch who might be doing just about any other kind of writing as well, and who are not required to have knowledge of local languages (or, indeed, knowledge of anything much at all, as far as I can tell, especially in the case of the execrable Hong Kong guide). Frommer's China first edition was rather subversive in several different ways in its insistency on at least a hint at polished writing, and that its writers should know what they were talking about.
On style, let’s be clear that our main problem here is to produce lively and readable text in extremely limited space. We want to impress readers with our comprehensiveness (while being, as I’ve said above, selective), so crisp writing is essential.
Do not allow yourself rhetorical flourishes such as ‘taking one thing with another’, ‘on the one hand’, etc., or ‘X is a great place to’—cut straight to why it’s a ‘great place to’. You don’t have space for such ramblings. Avoid meaningless, modish, and soon-to-be-tired descriptions such as ‘cool’ (only for weather and air-conditioning), ‘funky’, ‘awesome’, and ‘worth checking out’, and slangy contractions (‘kinda’, ‘gonna’ etc.). We don’t ‘nosh’, or ‘chow down’, and we don’t ‘boogie’. People are not ‘dudes’, ‘like’ is only used to compare two things, and ‘Not!’ does not appear by itself after a sentence we wish to negate.
Keep it literate, and use adjectives which actually assist the reader to conjure up a place or experience in his or her mind’s eye. In general sentences will contain a subject, verb, and object. ‘Frommer’s. Your guide to a world of travel experience,’ is wince-inducing but in a style commonplace in advertising, which often mistakes the spoken word (and especially the broadcast spoken word) for something which can be written down, and doesn’t care anyway as long as the sales message is successfully put across. While much of the readership also couldn’t care less about such matters, we won’t be driving away those who do by introducing this kind of sloppiness to our prose. Be readable, and be amusing; but be grammatically correct, too.
Don’t try to imitate the spoken word in other ways; all our words ending in ‘-ing’ keep their final ‘g’, and we never drop our ‘h’s.
Avoid self-conscious infantilism. We don’t ‘get the munchies’, or carry ‘veggies’ in our ‘baggies’. Avoid recent ghastly mutations of nouns into verbs wherever you can. Acceptable as these are in the US, I only have so many teeth to grind.
Avoid slang in general (unless you’re explaining some entertaining piece of Chinese slang—hou men piao, da kuan, xiao mi), and (non-US authors) turns of phrase likely to be confusing or very obviously foreign to Americans (‘guy’ if you must, not ‘bloke’ or ‘chap’—‘man’ better, something more descriptive better still).
American authors, please remember that while the rest of us are more familiar with your culture than you are with ours, we’re a bit alienated by references which imply that it’s the norm and that we must know what you’re talking about. Usually we do, but a casual reference to ‘spring training’ might confuse us as much as cricketing metaphors would you.
We couldn’t care less who David Letterman is (and when we know who he is don’t find him funny), or what he’s paid, or by whom. Non-American authors please note that although this document is written with UK English spelling and punctuation standards it doesn’t avoid the necessity of using US standards of both in the book itself. Note, for instance, ‘accommodations’, ‘elevator’ rather than ‘lift’ and all the other usual substitutions, and the preference for double over single quotation marks. But you are at liberty to ‘write to me’ rather than ‘write me’, and if you find Apple Computer’s ‘Think different’ campaign an abomination I won’t ask you to think differently.
Do use your knowledge of Mandarin to brighten up your descriptions. Don’t overdo the inserted phrases, but do throw them in where they are particularly relevant, colourful, amusing in translation, revealing of the Chinese mind-set, or are something that people are likely often to hear in a particular situation. Don’t be afraid to include a hint of your personal experience or a particular conversation you may have had with staff at one sight, say. Frommer’s style allows this, and it gives the reader the feeling that you really have been there and done the work, and that they are travelling with a friendly and helpful companion.
We do not subscribe to the ‘5000 years of culture’ hokum, and we are not about to blindfold ourselves with beliefs in the impenetrable mysteriousness of the East, or swallow everything we are told. We give credit where credit is due to China’s remarkable cultural achievements and the grubby vibrancy of modern life there. But we are sceptical about claims as to the infinite charm of every corner of the country, very sceptical about historical claims, and sceptical beyond words about political claims. We will be delighted to give readers the facts to compare with what the limited English signs at sights tell them, and to point out where the Chinese and English signs differ from each other, as often happens.
We do not recommend Chinese medicine, moxibustion, chiropractors, acupuncture, weige or other snake oils with potential for damage to our readers. We are neutral on Falungong and other weird alien religions such as Christianity, merely commenting on religious buildings with architectural merit, the battles between various sects or the role of missionaries where these have shaped the history of a place.
We do not believe what we read in China Daily or other sources published in China, particularly materials sold or handed out at sights and dealing with their histories. We never quote statistics without caveats.
We do not believe word of mouth. We go and look for ourselves and we cross-check with published sources overseas wherever possible. We assume that everything we are told is at best mistaken until we’ve seen it for our own eyes. We recognise that almost no one in China knows what’s going on in the next street from where he or she lives, and we never believe flat denials that a place exists, or that something can’t be done. We do not believe there is no public transport—there always is.
We see the pollution, the spitting, the insane driving, the push-and-shove, the inept service, the overcharging, the discourtesy, and the fakes, and issue warnings. We question whether the Yangtze Cruise is all it’s supposed to be, and we note the filthiness of the water and the narrow strip of blue in the grey sky overhead. We do not dwell on these things unless we particularly want to warn our readers off something (food markets in Guangzhou, for instance?), but we do not overlook them.
We want to stress China’s many strengths as a destination, while preparing our readers for what to expect. To a certain degree visitors are self-blindfolded by their desire to find everything immensely charming and Fu Manchu-ish, and to a certain degree Frommer’s structure forces an American view of the world onto the places it covers. For some developed nations this metaphor isn’t so far-fetched, but it doesn’t work too well in China. By slightly adapting the Frommer’s structure, as above, and by choosing our words carefully we can give our readers better service.
The key to enjoying the country is to arrive with the right set of expectations, and our job is to make sure readers have them, and to offer them a tool which enables them to get themselves around the country making the best of it as they go. We give them the information on the best feather beds, but we also lure them into the real China wherever we can, and share our own fascination with it.
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