Read Apologies to My Censor for Free Online

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time, did what was required of me, and hadn’t heard any complaints up until
now.
    I pulled up a chair in Mr. Wang’s office as he
leaned over his keyboard and browsed the document he’d sent me. “Everything is
okay . . . editing skills are fine . . . headlines
. . . attitude . . . We are happy.” He said the editors had
decided to make me a writer in the features section.
    â€œBut why is my score so low?” I asked.
    Mr. Wang dodged the question. “I can tell you’re a
bright young man and I look forward to seeing more of your stories.” He played
with his glasses. He looked nervous and I decided to press him.
    â€œBut fifty percent. I’m just curious to know why
the editors ranked me so low. What are they unhappy with?”
    Mr. Wang hesitated for a moment. “There is some
concern,” he said, “that you walked out of an interview.”
    I shook my head. “Excuse me? Walked out of an interview?”
    â€œYes, with a foreign business executive.”
    â€œWhat? No. I mean, I left the interview early,
yeah, but I had cleared that with the reporter in advance.”
    â€œThe reports I have been given indicate that you
walked out of the interview. I will look into it, but for now we look forward to
seeing more of your good stories in the paper.”
    The next day I approached Lu, the reporter I had
accompanied to the interview, and told him about my evaluation. “They’re upset
because I left the interview early,” I said.
    â€œYes.” He smiled sheepishly. “Some people thought
that was”—lowering his voice to a whisper—“quite rude .”
    â€œRude? I cleared it with you before we went! What
did you tell them?”
    He waved me off. “I will talk to them,” he said,
continuing to type on his computer.
    A few days later, I attended a meeting with the
features editor and writers. The features editor took me into his office.
“You’re being moved back to the business section,” he said.
    â€œBut they just moved me here.”
    â€œYes, there’s some concern you walked out of an
interview. But the editor in chief said you have to stay in business.”
    For the next week, I was moved between the business
and features sections a total of thirteen times. One editor would tell me I was
in the business section; fifteen minutes later another editor would say
otherwise, and so on.
    Nobody bothered to tell me what was really going
on, so I sat at my desk and did nothing. By now word had spread around China Daily that I had “walked out” of an interview,
and both the Chinese reporters and foreign staff were asking me what was going
on. I had no clue.
    â€œI heard you walked out of an interview,” Jenny,
who took me to my medical exam on my first day, wrote to me one day on instant
messenger.
    I explained the situation and insisted I wasn’t at
fault.
    â€œHee-hee. You’ll never understand China,” she
said.
    It wasn’t until a few weeks later, once I had been
resettled into the business section, that I found out what really happened. Over
drinks at a bar one night, Ram, an Indian editor who had the most influence of
any foreigner at China Daily , pulled me aside. Ram
had been at the paper for years and had built up significant guanxi —“relations” or “connections,” hugely important
in Chinese culture and business—with the bosses. He told me that most of the
editors and reporters at China Daily were angry that
there were so many foreigners at the paper and that we were being paid starting
salaries triple that of Chinese reporters. They were especially livid that there
were now foreign writers at China Daily , something
entirely new at the paper. The business editors, who viewed their section as
superior to the others, were especially displeased. When the opportunity arose,
Ram said, certain editors deliberately