The president expressed concern that U.S. embassy personnel had not been allowed to meet with the American crew: “Failure of the Chinese government to react promptly to our request is inconsistent with standard diplomatic practice and with the expressed desire of both our countries for better relations.”
Earlier, Admiral Dennis Blair, of the U.S. Pacific Command, had told reporters in Honolulu that there had been a “pattern of increasingly unsafe behavior” by Chinese pilots above the South China Sea.
AT THE BEGINNING, no high-ranking Chinese leaders made a public statement. That was typical: just as American values demanded a leader to act quickly, the Chinese generally waited for the wheels of bureaucracy to turn. And the plane incident had occurred at a particularly sensitive time. Beijing still awaited a decision on its Olympic bid, and the country was in the final stages of its application to join the World Trade Organization. Unlike in 1999, the government did not encourage or allow student demonstrations.
On April 4, President Jiang Zemin made his first statement, carried by the official Xinhua news agency: “The United States should do something favorable to the smooth development of China-U.S. relations rather than make remarks that confuse right and wrong and are harmful to the relations between the two countries.”
In Beijing, the Chinese foreign minister issued an official demand for an apology. Later that day, a high-ranking American official used the word “regret” for the first time. Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “We regret that the Chinese plane did not get down safely and we regret the loss of life of that Chinese pilot but now we need to move on and we need to bring this to a resolution.”
On April 4, the Beijing Youth Daily ran a page-one headline:
PROOF OF BULLYING
On April 5, the New York Times ran a page-one headline:
BEIJING STEPS UP ITS WAR OF WORDS OVER
AIR COLLISION
On April 6, an American official announced that the two sides were drafting a formal letter that would end the crisis.
CHUANG TZU:
Writing is that means by which the world values the Way, but writing is no more than words and words, too, have value. Meaning is what gives value to words, but meaning is dependant on something. What meaning depends on cannot be expressed in language, yet the world transmits writing because it values language. Although the world values writing, I, for my part, do not think it worthy of being valued, because what is valued is not what is really valuable.
ON APRIL 9, President Bush said that “diplomacy takes time.”
The Chinese foreign minister said, “The U.S. side must apologize to China and adopt measures to ensure this sort of event will not reoccur.”
The media of the two countries continued to describe the incident in completely different ways. The Chinese claimed that the American plane had swerved to collide with the F-8; American military officials claimed that the smaller Chinese craft had initiated the contact. For months, the Americans said, Chinese pilots had flown close to the surveillance planes, in an apparent attempt at intimidation.
Chinese military and commercial craft continued to search for Wang Wei in the waters of the South China Sea.
Reportedly, the letter was still being written.
ON APRIL 10, the Reverend Jesse Jackson offered to fly to China and assist in negotiations.
DURING THE CRISIS, as neither government said much of substance, the media of both countries used numbers to fill out stories. Each followed its own national obsession: Americans conducted polls; Chinese accumulated statistics. An ABC/Washington Post-sponsored survey asked the question: “Should the U.S. apologize?”
% YES
% NO
Men
33
61
Women
46
47
Age 18-30
44
54
Age 61+
31
62
Xinhua reported that the search for Wang Wei involved 115 planes, more than one thousand ship patrols, and covered more than three hundred thousand square kilometers of ocean. That was more than eleven times larger than the Beijing city surface area that had been repainted for the I.O.C. inspection.
I KNEW ONLY three people named Wang Wei. One was an artist; another was an archaeologist; the third ran a bookstore. I should have known more. Wang Wei, my artist friend, knew five Wang Weis, and each of those Wang Weis probably knew five more, and each of them probably knew another five. Somebody named Wang Wei could be a man or a woman, urban or rural, rich or poor. The character for Wei could be People in China do not use phonebooks in part because of names like Wang Wei.
CHUANG TZU:
A fish-trap is for catching fish; once you’ve caught the fish, you can forget the trap. A rabbit-snare is for catching rabbits; once you’ve caught the rabbit, you can forget about the snare. Words are for catching ideas; once you’ve caught the idea, you can forget about the words. Where can I find a person who knows how to forget about words so that I can have a few words with him?
ON APRIL 11, both sides finally agreed on the letter. It had taken nearly a week to write 236 English words. Reportedly, the letter had passed through at least four drafts, and the final day of negotiations had resulted in the addition of a single adverb: “very.” Off the record, some U.S. officials described it as “the letter of two ‘very sorrys.’”
The American ambassador in Beijing signed the letter. It read, in part:
Both President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have expressed their sincere regret over your missing pilot and aircraft.
Please convey to the Chinese people and to the family of pilot Wang Wei that we are very sorry for their loss.
Although the full picture of what transpired is still unclear, according to our information, our severely crippled aircraft made an emergency landing after following international emergency procedures.
We are very sorry the entering of China’s airspace and the landing did not have verbal clearance, but very pleased the crew landed safely. We appreciate China’s efforts to see to the well-being of our crew.
The U.S. embassy translation used two different Chinese phrases for “very sorry.” With regard to the family of Wang Wei, the Americans were feichang wanxi, “feel very sorry for somebody about something.” With regard to China’s airspace, the Americans were feichang baoqian, “be very sorry; feel very apologetic.” But the Chinese Foreign Ministry released its own translation. “Very sorry” became shenbiao qianyi, “deep expression of apology.”
After the letter was released, Colin Powell told reporters: “There was nothing to apologize for. To apologize would have suggested that we had done something wrong and we accepted responsibility for having done something wrong. And we did not do anything wrong. Therefore, it was not possible to apologize.”
The following day, the Beijing Morning News ran the front-page headline: AMERICA FINALLY APOLOGIZES.
AFTER THE AMERICAN crew members left on a chartered flight to Guam, most U.S. newspapers reported that the incident had been ably handled by the new president, who showed flexibility. Analysts also noted that the dominant administration voice seemed to be Colin Powell instead of Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. This was interpreted as a sign that President George W. Bush’s foreign policy would be shaped by moderates rather than hard-liners.
THE BOSTON GLOBE published two articles about the reaction of the average Chinese. The first story was by Indira Lakshaman, the Asia bureau chief, who was based in Hong Kong but had flown to Beijing to cover the event. On the evening that the letter was released, she went out into the city and showed people the official U.S. embassy translation. A Chinese assistant interpreted their responses. Lakshaman’s article read, in part:
Younger residents parroted nationalistic sentiments that have been stoked by a government nurturing patriotism among its populace as a substitute for the waning of communist ideology over the past two decades. Older residents nostalg
ically recalled the rule of China’s founder, Mao Zedong.…Wu Guoging [sic], a 45-year-old laid-off worker, bellowed: “Look at these cowardly leaders! First the embassy in Belgrade was bombed. Then our plane was hit. And what can they do? If I were in charge, I’d put the 24 crew members underground and hide the spy plane, and when the US came asking, I’d say: “What plane? We don’t know anything.”
On the same evening, I reported the second Boston Globe article. I went alone to the old dumpling restaurant in Yabaolu, ordered dinner, and talked with people. I did not bring a copy of the American letter. My article read, in part:
“We should attack America,” said Gao Ming, a 24-year-old restaurant owner, shortly after hearing about the release.
But Gao became vague when asked the reasons for this retribution, and less than a minute later he was hedging his words. “This is a problem between the governments,” he shrugged. “The American people are fine, just like the Chinese people. But the American government is very arrogant—why did it take them so long to apologize?”
Like Gao, many Chinese citizens, sorting through often conflicting information from state-run media, the Internet, and word of mouth, are responding to the incident with as many questions as opinions.
While initial comments tend to be angry and unequivocal—especially when addressed to members of the foreign press corps—longer discussions reveal frustration and powerlessness….
After the plane dispute was over, and I read both articles, I decided to stop writing newspaper stories.
I HAD ALWAYS been bad at daily journalism. I worked slowly; I dreaded deadlines; I failed to cultivate contacts. I knew only three Wang Weis. I quoted everybody that a good journalist doesn’t quote: cabbies, waitresses, friends. I spent a lot of time in restaurants. I avoided press conferences. I loathed talking on the telephone—a crippling neurosis for a news reporter. In particular, I hated staying up late at night to call American academics so they could give me a quote about what was happening in China. I already knew what was happening: normal people were asleep.
I had no infrastructure: no office, no fax machine, no assistant, no driver, no clipper. Officially, I was in charge of the Beijing operation of the Boston Globe, but it was nothing more than a paper bureau—jiade. I held a journalist license that misspelled the name of the newspaper (Boston Global), an official chop (an ink stamp used to certify formal correspondence), and an office registration card claiming the same address that was already occupied by the Wall Street Journal. Friends at the Journal let me use a room there if I needed it, and I picked up my mail a couple of times a week. Usually, I worked out of my home, a cramped third-story apartment in Ju’er Hutong.
I made three or four hundred dollars per story. It became a decent living only when news broke; if I played the game right, I could file a story at every new development: every official statement, every nuanced word, from “regret” to “sincere regret,” from wanxi to baoqian to qianyi. But sanity has a price, and mine was more than three hundred bucks; if I had wanted to become a professional deconstructionist, I would have stayed in grad school.
Even if somehow I became good at daily journalism—if I acquired a real bureau, and real contacts, and learned to love the telephone—I had little faith in the format. I disliked the third-person voice: it was possible for two journalists to witness an event, interpret it completely differently, but adopt the same impersonal and authoritative tone. Writers rarely appeared in their stories, and they didn’t explain their reporting techniques. In China, many foreign journalists hired interpreters or “fixers”—assistants who tracked down potential interview subjects—but these contributors were rarely mentioned in the story. Even if you worked alone, your identity as a foreigner affected the responses of Chinese people, but it was hard to make this clear in a third-person story.
I had more patience for features, which sometimes ran at length in a newspaper. I had written about Old Mr. Zhao’s courtyard for the Boston Globe Magazine, which gave the story plenty of space. But even long features could be limited by certain values of American journalism that didn’t translate well overseas. In Fuling, during my time as a teacher, I had seen what happened when such information moved in the opposite direction. My students used a textbook called Survey of America, which included a chapter about “Social Problems”:
In 1981, in California University, robbery and rape increased one hundred and fifty percent. In a Cathedral school of Washington District, a girl student was raped and robbed by a criminal with a hunting knife while she was studying alone in the classroom. In a California university, a football coach was robbed on campus by someone with a gun. It is said that, in South Carolina University, gangs of rascals have been taking girl students, women teachers and wives of teachers working in this university as their targets of rape, which has caused a great fear.
It was hard to teach from a book like that. The details themselves were probably true—certainly, there were rascals in South Carolina—but that didn’t make this information a useful starting point for a student in a remote Chinese city. They needed context, not trivia; a bunch of scattered facts only confused them.
Probably, these details had been culled from American newspapers, where they had actually served a purpose. In the United States, journalists worked within a community, and often their stories inspired change. This was one of the noblest aspects of the field, as well as the most widely celebrated. Any American journalist knew the history of Watergate: how dedicated reporters helped bring down a corrupt administration. That was the model for a good journalist—if your community had a rascal problem, you exposed it, even if the rascal was the president of the United States.
At big papers, successful journalists became foreign correspondents, and then they brought their work patterns overseas. Usually, they searched for dramatic, unresolved problems; if they didn’t speak the language, they hired interpreters or fixers. Sometimes, their stories made a difference. In African countries, journalists who covered famines or genocide could be instrumental in motivating international organizations to step in. Reporters functioned within an international community because the local community had broken down.
But China was completely different. The country received some international aid, mostly in the form of loans, but the economy had been built primarily through Chinese effort and determination. In the past, the American government had responded to Chinese human rights violations by periodic threats to impose economic sanctions, but those days were gone: trade had become too important. Essentially, China had outgrown the traditional limits of a developing country. Despite its problems, the nation was stable, functioning, independent, and increasingly powerful. When Americans looked across the Pacific, the critical question wasn’t how they could change China. It was far more important to understand the country and the people who lived there.
But most foreign journalists were stuck in the old mindset, the old file cabinets:
DEMOCRACY
DEMOCRACY
PARTY
DEMONSTRATIONS
DISABLED
DISASTERS
DISSIDENTS
In a typical foreign bureau, Chinese assistants searched local newspapers for potential stories, and they received tips from disgruntled citizens. When something dramatic caught the foreigner’s eye, he pursued it: child-selling in Gansu, female sterilization in Guangxi, jailed labor activists in Shandong. The articles appeared in American newspapers, where the readers couldn’t solve the problems and didn’t have the background necessary to keep everything in context. It was like the Fuling textbook: sometimes the more information you have, the less you know. And there is a point at which even the best intentions become voyeurism.
I didn’t want to write such features, which meant that the main appeal of working for a newspaper was news. And news in China seemed pointless: the country changed every year, but the pace was steady and it moved subtly. There weren’t any great leaders, and supposedly important events like the
plane dispute fizzled out; they were like splashes of foam on the surface of a massive sea change. We had escaped history; news no longer mattered. Brave new world.
Anyway, that’s how it looked before September of 2001.
ON MY COMPUTER, I pulled up old letters and made minor changes:
Dear Press Attaché,
This document certifies that Peter Hessler is a fully qualified journalist whose experience is commensurate with the demands of working as a foreign correspondent…. The New Yorker wholeheartedly supports Mr. Hessler’s nomination to serve as our Beijing correspondent, and we thank you for your consideration of this application.
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:
Oracle Bones Page 36
