China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism

(with apologies to WS, Twelfth Night II:5) This is a wonderful book - a testament, really, to karma, commitment, compassion, and surrender to the personal tao. It is also an easy and engaging read - easy, that is, when one is prepared for the flood of evocations inevitable when such universal stories are recounted so intimately. The book comprises a well-orchestrated score of lively reminiscences by Chinese journalists in diverse positions and media (from Finance & Economics Magazine to call-in radio), each a unique and yet broadly applicable path to service. Since the personal dramas are set on the largest of national stages, the dynamism of recent Chinese decades naturally infuses and enriches the subject matter. This volume could be read profitably as a book on the startling evolutions in expression and other freedoms, turmoil in power politics, subtle and gross international relations and influences. For the non-historian (and non-journalist), there emerges a portfolio of powerful recountings of the one Hero's Journey: variously driven by intention, led by happenstance, entrained in strange eddies and whorls as the energies of empire expand into capitalism and post-Confucian self-determination, all following the ancient pattern of Separation from swaddling role - Initiation - Existential challenge - Transformation - Return with gifts to the tribe. In every case, the subject-speakers tell nakedly honest stories (eliciting them is only part of the genius of the author) of how speaking for the many happened to and through them, rather than something admitting of solipsistic or egotistic ownership. The power of this narrative is both greater and more subtle than that of narrator or subject. Is this a guide to good journalism? I wouldn't know; I aren't a journalist, and don't even take the papers. Is it a guide to great story-telling, in the sense of unadorned truth told warmly and compellingly? Unexceptionably. More than both, and the magic of its universality, it is an engaging guide to trusting both inner wisdom and evanescent opportunity in honor (not pursuit) of life and meaning that could not even be imagined in anticipation. It calls itself a book about Change, China and Journalism. Like the I Ching, it is also a book about Being, Life and Humanity.