Magazine work was a better fit. Stories were longer; you could write in the first-person voice; editors didn’t care so much about news. They paid by the word, which was a lot better than the flat rate for newspaper freelancers. Magazines covered expenses. Because they moved slower, it was possible to research stories without ever using a telephone. For the past twenty years, China’s economic reforms have resulted in dramatic changes…. It felt as ritualized as an oracle bone inscription: the same well-worn phrases, the same letters and documents. The New Yorker had never posted a full-time
Magazine work was a better fit. Stories were longer; you could write in the first-person voice; editors didn’t care so much about news. They paid by the word, which was a lot better than the flat rate for newspaper freelancers. Magazines covered expenses. Because they moved slower, it was possible to research stories without ever using a telephone. For the past twenty years, China’s economic reforms have resulted in dramatic changes…. It felt as ritualized as an oracle bone inscription: the same well-worn phrases, the same letters and documents. The New Yorker had never posted a full-time correspondent in the People’s Republic, so I created an official New Yorker bureau, which happened to be located in the same place as the Boston Globe, which happened to be located in the same place as the Wall Street Journal. The paper piled up, but nobody at the Foreign Ministry seemed to care. Everything proceeded smoothly until we reached the stage of translation. The Foreign Ministry announced that the magazine’s Chinese name would be Niu Yue Ren, which translates directly as “New York Person.” My name cards would read: New York Person Peter Hessler Every time I showed it to a Chinese friend, he burst out laughing. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other Chinese-speaking communities in the United States, the magazine was already called Niu Yue Ke. That was a phonetic transcription, pronounced “neo-you-ay-kuh”; it wouldn’t cut it in Brooklyn but sounded a hell of a lot better than “New York P...
...more
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
