Apologies to My Censor Read Online Free PDF

“You and everybody else,” one scoffed.
    At work, I went through the motions, but it was difficult to take the job seriously. A regular feature in the paper called China Scene gathered unusual stories from around the country. Many of them were obviously exaggerated, and some days I was asked to edit these on top of the business pieces. China Scene could be highly entertaining, but editing these puzzling little blurbs was certainly not what I had in mind when I embarked on a career in journalism.
    Speaking, Dancing Parrot Wins Bird Skills Competition
    A thirty-six-year-old parrot that can speak and dance won the all-round title at the first China Bird Skill Competition in Yuelushan, a scenic spot in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, on Tuesday.
    The parrot can also push a cart, do sums, distinguish the denomination of renminbi and play on a swing.
    Participants included babblers, quails, mynahs and doves.
    Something had to change.

3
    Foreign
Friends
    T all Rice
was born on a business card.
    A month after I started at China Daily , I went to the business editor—a tiny, middle-aged woman
with graying hair named Ms. Feng—and asked to be moved to the day shift as a
writer. “I’m a writer,” I told her. “I was hired as a writer. I want to be a
writer.”
    Before granting my request, Ms. Feng wanted to test
my reporting chops. She assigned me to accompany a Chinese reporter to an
interview with a foreign executive of a major American company. (It would be a
fateful interview, though I didn’t know it at the time.) For the meeting I
needed business cards, which are essential for formal interactions in China,
handed over proudly with two hands at every introduction. But before I could get
business cards, I needed a Chinese name.
    I enlisted one of my cubicle neighbors, a Chinese
reporter who went by the English name Lois, to help me. Lois was a lovely
twenty-seven-year-old who accepted my request with vigor and spent the better
part of an hour scribbling different characters on a piece of paper, trying to
create my perfect Chinese name.
    As I edited a story, she slipped the paper on my
keyboard. There were two characters written on it.
    â€œThat means rice. That means tall, or high. It’s Mi
Gao,” she said.
    â€œRice Tall?”
    â€œTall Rice is better.”
    Harry peaked his head over the cubicle wall. “Ha!
That’s a stupid name.”
    â€œNo it’s not!” Lois insisted. “ Mi , because your name’s Mitch. And Gao because you’re tall. And the characters are beautiful.”
    They were beautiful characters. “Mi Gao. Tall
Rice.” I thought for a second. “It’s great. I love it.”
    Although when said aloud it could be confused for
the Chinese word for “rice cake,” my new name was fitting, since as far as I
could tell I was the tallest employee at China
Daily . Introductions to members of the Chinese staff I had not yet met
usually included compliments about my height, and word traveled quickly that
there was a tall guy working at the paper. Basketball is massive in
China—millions play and it’s the NBA’s second-biggest market. Since Yao Ming’s
emergence as an international star, China had fallen in love with basketball,
and the folks at China Daily were no exception. The
paper hosted a game on Saturday at nearby courts and put a team together to play
against other media companies and government departments around the city.
    Not long after I started working at the paper, a
member of the Chinese staff came by my desk to recruit me. I told him I’ve
played my whole life, and I would be happy to play with the team. That Saturday,
I went to the outdoor courts at the university across from China Daily with a dozen or so members of the staff, mostly Chinese
and a few foreigners who hadn’t played much basketball. I am six foot three, and
other than Rob, who was about my height, I was several