【中文标题】我和我的监察员
【原文标题】Me and My Censor
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】EVELINE CHAO
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/26/me_and_my_censor?page=0,1
在北京上班的第一天，我的老板问我知道不知道什么是“3T”？
我不知道。那是2007年2月，我是一个刚从纽约来到中国、一无所知的26岁小姑娘，下飞机之后的新鲜东西还让我目不暇接呢。
游客，本帖隐藏的内容需要积分高于 3000 才可浏览，您当前积分为 0 我的老板就是台湾人，从中国最早对外部世界开放以来，他已经在这里工作了30年，见多识广。他说这句话时带着一种困惑和嘲讽的表情。
他说：“你会从我们的监察员那里了解到更多的内容。”他在给我灌输了没头没脑的几句话之后，就安排我开始接触新工作了。
后来的两年时间里，我在一家英文商业杂志《国际商报》担任编辑，后来是总编。编辑部里有2到4个美国和英国编辑、2到3个中国作家和研究助理，各个办公时段的人数不同。我们的发行量为45000份，但是我所遇到的人似乎都没有听说过这本杂志。理论上，我们也有一个网站，但总是处于维护状态。而且即使开放，内容也让人难以读懂，因为负责网站的人不懂英文。我们的杂志报道一些当前要闻、中国的企业介绍、在国内从事经营的跨国公司高管访谈，比如Crocs和Calvin Klein，还会对各类产业做长篇分析报道，从煤炭、女士内衣到冷冻食品。读者大部分是在中国居住的海外商人，所以我们除了接受订阅，还会在外国人出没的酒店、国际学校等地免费派发杂志。
严格意义上说，我们是中国大陆唯一一家官方批准的英文商业出版物。市面上还有很多其它英文杂志，大多是和《TimeOut》摆放在一起的娱乐杂志。这些刊物大多由外国人创办，他们和中国的私人公司合作，以便可以得到监管中国所有出版物的新闻出版总署的批准。我们与这些刊物不同，我们不但受私人新闻公司的庇护，还与商务部有合作关系。换句话说，政府邀请我们做这个刊物。
和美国的编辑一样，我为文章绞尽脑汁、与销售部水火不容、想尽办法从无聊的采访对象口中挖掘有趣的语言。但也有与他们不同的经历，比如，在记者招待会上我会收到塞满现金的红包；有时候会在卫生间的马桶上发现脚印；无数次地告诉中国助理他们不能一字不差地照搬网上的文章。我还负责与政府监察员的联络。
对于一个年轻、踌躇满志、恰好英文流利（又不愿意做英语教学这项所有西方人在亚洲都会被默认从事的工作）的作家来说，这样的工作是一个既定的流程。先是在国有报纸，比如《中国日报》担任文字编辑，负责纠正中国记者的英文错误，挣每月1500美元的工资——这个标准足以在二十一世纪前十年的北京过上舒适的生活（而且是已经具有几十年工作经验的本地同事收入的两到三倍）。我最开始的职位就是文字编辑，因为我没有任何杂志编辑经验（尽管我在纽约的书籍出版公司工作过）。两个月后被提升为编辑，八个月后我发现自己在28岁高龄时已经变成了总编。这样的职业发展轨迹在中国再正常不过了。尽管名片上是这样印的，但我实际上只是一个“英文顾问”——外国人不会被允许决定中国媒体上的内容。我们的监察员的职位也是总编，但她得以荣登头版头条。
游客，本帖隐藏的内容需要积分高于 3000 才可浏览，您当前积分为 0
我们的监察员是新闻出版总署的员工，她是一个神经兮兮、反复无常的40多岁女人，留着一头卷曲的长发，说话声音像儿童一样又高又尖。她的名字叫Snow（她只允许我在文章中使用她的英文名）。今年9月底，我得知Snow离开了我们的杂志社，这样我才可以无所顾忌地说说她的故事，而不用担心影响到她的工作。
Snow的名字成了办公室里午夜档喜剧的主要话题，比如“天啊，整篇文章都被铲雪机清扫掉了”，或者“唉，我猜这篇文章肯定会招致暴风雪”。我第一次见到Snow是在办公室里的入职仪式上，那是北京市中心一个污渍斑斑的六层楼，地下室是台球厅，一个看起来也就14岁的保安站在前门。正如我的老板所说，Snow详细说明了3T的含义，她还讲述了一个在她的记者朋友身上发生的事。她的朋友非常喜欢照片，有一次把一张在台湾拍摄的照片放在一篇文章旁边，但是没留意照片的背景上有小小的一面台湾国旗。结果是，报社的所有员工都被立即开除，编辑部关门了。
尽管她言之凿凿，但我们并没有把监察员真正当作一回事，至少在我开始工作的前几个月是这样，避免Snow的删改成为了一种游戏。当时的形势还没那么严峻，距2008年奥运会开幕还有一年半的时间，中国认为这是一个好机会来展示它的开放程度。而且，Snow并不怎么参与我们的日常工作。她不到办公室来，在第一次会面之后，她从未出席过我们的编前会议。每个月，我们把下一期杂志中的文章标题列表发邮件给她。这些文章编辑完成之后，我们把详细内容发给她，她注明修改意见后发回给我们。最后她还会审核一遍文章的排版，如果满意，就会通知印刷厂开工。
商业文章在中国不像其它内容那样受到严格的监管，这似乎也可以理解，因为中国必须保持更大程度的开放，才能推进经济发展，而且也不大会涉及中国政府最为敏感的政治话题。英语文章也不会被严格监管，因为只有少部分中国人可以读懂英文。游客，本帖隐藏的内容需要积分高于 3000 才可浏览，您当前积分为 0 在刚开始的时候，Snow修改的内容很少，甚至我们都没有妥协的感觉。游客，本帖隐藏的内容需要积分高于 3000 才可浏览，您当前积分为 0 我们不能说“文化大革命”，但是可以说“60年代末和70年代初”，以免让人联想到共产党主席毛泽东发动的灾难性运动，把数百万知识分子发配到农村。说一家公司计划向“台湾和韩国等外国市场”扩张是不被允许的，因为这会暗示台湾是独立的国家，但是我们可以说“海外市场”，因为据Snow说，台湾和大陆实际上只是一水之隔。
中国周边的海域总是敏感话题。2007年5月，我们编辑了一篇有关风力发电的文章，请人绘制了一张中国地图，以便在上面标注风力涡轮电机的位置。Snow警告说，如果我们要展示中国地图，就一定要确保其中包括台湾和无数有争议的领土，比如目前甚嚣尘上的无人居住的群岛，中国称为钓鱼岛，日本称为尖阁列岛。她说：“在地图下方点一些黑点就可以，不管你做什么，别抹去这些黑点。”可是在交付印刷时，这些黑点的确被抹掉了。在Snow看来，绘图师无意中用PS软件修掉了中国东部沿海那些含义不明的黑点，只是为了美观。从制图学上说，那些小点的位置并不十分准确，但显然我们的姿态已经足够了。Snow很满意，文章风平浪静地发表了。
有时候，Snow修改文章，是让一个非英语母语的人审查英文这种荒唐安排的必然后果。我们曾经给她一篇文章，标题是“Mo Money, Mo Problems”（译者注：美国黑人饶舌歌手Christopher Wallace的单曲名称），Snow问我们是否想说“No Money, No Problems”。12月那期杂志封面有一句话“Tis the Season”（译者注：西方圣诞赞歌中的一句歌词），Snow给改成“It's the Reason”。
有一次，我们的文章说香港股市“受中国大陆公司新一轮巨额（monster）公开募股的影响，直线上升”，Snow把“monster”删掉了。总编Gwynn Guilford说：“我猜这是因为政府想要低调处理巨额首次募股的行为，股市的投机行为很容易失控。”那天下午，我路过Guilford的办公室，听到她对着电话说：“不，不是monster，不是啊呜……”她把手指蜷曲成一个熊爪的模样。然后她挂上电话，说：“我们可以留下‘monster’了。”
很多删改都会让人摸不着头脑。有一次，我们被告知不可以在封面使用“天命”这个词，Snow在邮件中用她特有的行文风格写道：“这是反政府敏感词之一。”这让我们突然兴奋起来，大家纷纷询问Snow能不能和我们分享这个“敏感词列表”。我们曾经听说有的编辑部每星期都会收到一个传真，列出所有的禁忌话题，我们也迫切地想见到类似的东西。但她一直没有回复。
在2007年12月期的杂志中，有一篇文章讲中国石油天然气巨擎中石油在海外积极并购、扩张。那一年早些时候，中石油收购了哈萨克斯坦石油公司67％的股份，而且还有计划在非洲、北欧、东南亚收购更多的石油天然气公司。Snow在邮件中写道：“这一段最好删掉，上边有口头指示，说不鼓励报道能源企业的海外并购行为。”换句话说，我们没有任何书面的指示告诉我们能写什么、不能写什么，只能依靠内幕人士提供的信息。
所有这些事情都让监察这件事带有一些人为色彩。从上层公开的指示来看，Snow所提出的问题基本上都算不上禁忌的话题。在我看来，她似乎认为某些内容会冒犯到其它政府部门，那些部门或许会因此报复她的部门。或者，即使Snow个人不认为这是敏感话题，但是他担心她的老板，或者老板的老板认为这是。每个人都在猜测界限究竟在哪里，多留一些缓冲的空间是最安全的。
我们不知道Snow什么时候会指出我们的越界行为，她的意见中有那些是真正来自上层的政治精神，所以每次删改都会引起办公室里各种各样离奇的阴谋猜测。有一次，我们刊登了一篇简短的新闻，其中提到从2007年开始中国大陆游客到美国旅游的人数，Snow让我们把这个数字删掉。我们在想这个数字又触动她哪根神经了？哪个政府部门在监控游客的数字？他们试图隐瞒什么？最后，我给Snow打了一个电话，原来我们引用的数字是中国游客到所有海外国家旅游的人数，而不是赴美旅游的人数。
别在炮制阴谋论了。我沮丧地告诉大家，我们的确犯了一个错误。
我们知道，如果我们无论如何要有一个监察员，Snow算是我们的运气了。Snow对我们的各种问题极为耐心，尽管她不需要这么做，但还是不厌其烦地解释为什么会做这样的删改。我们曾经编辑过一篇有关中国医疗卫生制度的重要文章，Snow花了几天的时间仔细研读，长篇大论地解释我们应当做怎样的修改才能通过审查。这些删改其实都是在不起眼的地方。她把副标题“中国举步维艰的医疗卫生制度——和政府的改善计划”改为“中国政府改善举步维艰的医疗卫生制度的计划”。她把指出体制缺陷的文章核心摘录（用大字体安放在文章旁边的主要语句），比如“中国贫困人群中有30％是由高额的医疗费用导致的”改为强调中国对体制进行改革的努力这种比较正面的语言——“医疗卫生制度的改革一直是政策制定层面上最重要的问题”。但是Snow对文章中相关的内容没做任何改动。
她解释说，我们必须要小心，避免冒犯卫生部的人，但其实任何部委的人都不太会有机会读到这篇文章。我们还要确保版面中的大字体内容（比如标题和内容核心摘录），以及某些人匆匆浏览时有可能会注意到的明显位置的段落，不具有任何潜在的冒犯性。我们接受了她的修改意见，文章正常发表了。
Snow甚至还曾经协助我们做调查工作。当我们准备发表一些她也拿不准是否包含敏感话题的文章时，例如，有一篇文章提到，由于签证政策收紧的原因，北京奥运会游客数量会低于预期，Snow给我们找来了官方媒体的数字。她说：“这样才能保证我们不犯错误，即使这个数字不正确，我们也是这个错误来源的受害者，不会直接承担责任。”
她的反应还能让我们理解某些问题的政治敏感度所在。有一篇文章介绍世界食品价格飞涨的现象，引用经济学家的话说，中国人生活质量的提升，以及伴随而来的肉类消费的增加，或许是其中的一个因素，因为越来越多的耕地被用来种植动物的饲料。Snow给我打电话说明她的修改意见，她对影射中国食肉人群与世界粮食价格有关的语言非常不满，在电话里尖叫：“西方人都是吃素的吗？不！美国有那么多胖子，他们还敢说中国应当为此负责？”
有时候，当我们把一些修改当作笑话来看，并且说服自己这没什么大不了的时候，总会发生一些真正令人沮丧的事情。有一篇题为《合资公司在中国为何会失败》的文章被砍掉了。另外一篇文章提到一家外国公司无法买进一家中国钢铁企业的股票，副标题“外国公司的兴趣遭遇挫折”被改为“外国公司的兴趣依旧高涨”。偶尔，Snow也会省略那些激情四射的评论和解释，用“观点错误”作为理由打回一些文章。
在我担任主编之后，我发现自己不知怎么竟然赢得了Snow的心——别误会，没有特别含义。有一次，我找Snow要一个人的联系方式，我本来以为这个人是个自由作家。Snow告诉我，他其实是商务部的一名高官，之所以发表文章其实是为了帮她一个忙。我的前任Guilford有一次在一篇文章上，把我们自己的一位记者与一位官员共同署名，没多想就把记者的名字放在了前面。Snow说，她的老板和同事对她大发脾气，她不得不写了一份检讨书。我们署名的原则仅仅是根据姓名的字母顺序，但我还是给她回信表示歉意。
我们以前一直用英文沟通，因为Snow的英文要比我的中文好得多。但是这次，她用中文给我回信，说她知道我并没有参与此事。接着她又打电话过来，祝贺我的升职。她降低了音量，用密谋式的语气说：“说实话，我觉得〔你的前任〕不是一个非常好的主编，我觉得你更好，因为你是中国人。你能理解中国，也能理解我们为什么要做这些事，因为你身上流着中国人的血液。”
我不知道该怎样回应才好。我理解她话里的含义是，因为我是中国人后裔，所以我要比我的（白人）前任更欣然地接受监察。无论她到底是什么意思，从那以后，我发现自己处于一个奇怪的位置，我竟然与一个中国政府的监察员结成了盟友。
这根本不是我期望与Snow达成的关系。我笃信言论自由，我曾经在美国公民自由协会做过一夏天的实习生。在一个我不认同的体制中扮演任何角色，即使是多么的无意和巧合，也会让我质疑我领取这份薪水的资格。把她当成敌人，我还可以感觉到在与这个体制做斗争，但是我的敌人竟然想和我做朋友！
她发给我的邮件越来越少，电话越来越多，先是关于稿件的修改，然后就是聊天。她告诉我，她喜欢辛辣的食物，她的丈夫总是在出差。我一直猜不透他是做什么的，但经常听说他在打高尔夫球，在和日本客人吃饭。她很喜欢在奥林匹克体育馆鸟巢附近的老房子，但是不得不搬到城市西边，照顾孩子上学。
有时候如果定稿比较晚，我会乘坐出租车亲自把排版交给Snow。我曾经在她儿子的游泳课和周末“奥数”班课堂外与她见面，她会找各种话题和我聊天：她儿子的打鼓课每小时要22美元；她上次违章停车被罚款30美元；所以他们改乘出租车，单程只要5美元；但是孩子课后总想吃麦当劳，这还要5美元；她对这个课程根本不感兴趣，但是有人说音乐能提高孩子的学习成绩。
她叹了口气说：“这个世界竞争太激烈了，花这么大力气仅仅是为了儿子不掉队。”
随着电话越来越多，她的邮件内容也逐渐无所不包。她有一次告诉我，杂志封面不能出现中国国旗（到现在我也不知道为什么）。于是我发邮件问她我们是否可以把国旗图案抽象化，比如红色背景上几颗黄色的星星。她用中文给我回信：
亲爱的小东西：
星星也绝对不可以，请千万不要冒这个险。
我曾经在一份报纸上推介一本德国大使馆出版的书，内容是有关中国和德国的投资合作。书的封面有一个迎风飘扬的图案，一半是德国国旗的颜色，另一半是红色背景和黄色星星。我觉得这毕竟不是国旗，所以应该没问题，于是交付印刷。结果，我们的报社因此被罚款18万元人民币（今天的罚款额是2.8万美元），我不得不写了一份检讨书，还被减薪。
教训沉痛，是吧？唉，我们一定要记住。
还有一次，2008年的秋天，我接起一个电话，Snow听起来十分兴奋。
“嗨，Snow。”我尽量让自己的语气显得疏远又专业。
“你忙吗？”她问。
“呃，实际上，我有点……”
“噢太好了。我在想，12月份是‘改革开放’30周年纪念，这是件大事，媒体上会有很多庆祝活动。你要不要准备一些相关的文章？因为，我想，你或许可以采访一些人，问他们30年前的生活是什么样的。比如说我。我年轻的时候，没有那么多肉吃，我们和很多家庭一起住在一个大楼里，整栋楼只有一部电话。电话如果响了，会有人接听，然后大声喊你的名字。那时候，电话大多是找我的。那个人接起电话，大喊：‘Snow，又是找你的！’他高兴地笑起来。”
有时候，Snow会找我一起吃饭，我总是拒绝她。随着接触的时间越来越长，我的失望程度越来越高，和Snow保持距离变得越来越容易了。奥运会火炬在全球传递时引发了支持西藏的抗议风潮，媒体被控制得极为严格。各地的反抗情绪让中国猝不及防，于是产生了强烈的反应。政府收紧了签证的标准，很多不符合新的工作经验条件的年轻外国人被迫离开中国。《TimeOut北京》6月份的期刊因为执照问题被全部下架（它并没有自己的出版资质，而是一直使用其中文版本的执照），尽管以前从未出现过这样的事情。对我们杂志内容的删改，尽管从前我并不认可，但大多都基于一些理由，并且可以让人理解，但是现在完全没有道理可讲。
我被告知，有一小块文章不能使用“权力失败”作为标题，因为粗体字“失败”与有关奥运会的文章距离太近了，有可能会让人联想到奥运会是失败的。一篇以“痛苦与狂喜”为标题的足球比赛文章被砍掉了，因为“痛苦”是一个贬义词，不能用贬义词来形容体育运动。为了衬托一篇介绍连锁餐饮企业发展的文章，我们在封面上使用了一张空碗的图片，结果被告知不可以。Snow告诉我，这会让人们联想到饥饿和大饥荒（从1958年到1961年，数千万中国人被饿死，至今依然不可以讨论这个话题）。当我把修改要求传达给中国的设计师，让他找一个满满一碗肉的图片时，连他都冲我翻白眼。
最后，在奥运会开幕前的2008年7月，我提交了辞职申请。我知道自己或许不会再见到Snow了，所以接受了她的一次邀请。她来到我的公寓接上我，开车横穿整个城区，来到她最喜欢的餐厅——海底捞。她不停地抱怨北京糟糕的交通路况，我觉得一个监察员不应该有这种想法，因为这里面有批评政府的含义。
一辆车突然插到她前面，她气愤地摇摇头，大声说：“看看！即使看到你在前面，他们还是不让你过去。这就是中国人。”她问我美国是不是也有这样的事情，我说是的。她说：“真的吗？我以为在美国所有人都遵守交通规则，不像这里的人那么落后。我真是这样听说的。”
吃饭的时候，她问我有什么计划，打算做什么工作。我说我想试着当一个自由作家，如果发展不顺利，或许会再找一份全职工作。我有可能回到美国，也可能去另外一个国家。
她说：“哈，年轻人，真自由啊，想做什么就做什么。实话和你说，我也想换工作，但是不行——我有家庭，我在那里工作了很久，岁数大的人和你们不一样啊。”
她凑过来，充满热情地看着我说：“你有没有想过在中国开一家咨询公司，为想在中国投资的外国公司提供服务？你肯定会做的不错，因为你也是中国人。虽然你出生在美国，但你了解中国人的思维。你当上这家咨询公司的头之后，就可以聘请我，这样我就不用再做我现在的工作了。我是说真的——如果有一天你想做这件事，一定要想着我。你真应该考虑考虑聘请我。”
她兴致勃勃地说着，虽然边说边笑，但也好像是真有这个意思。我突然怀疑这是不是这顿饭的目的。我觉得她的主意太没谱了，我是一个在中国毫无目的闲逛的小孩，可是这个老女人竟然能在我身上发现一丝极为渺茫的新生活的希望。
我现在理解她所固守的工作有多么乏味，她不喜欢这份工作，但不得不拼命保住它。这种制度永远不会奖励她出色的成绩，只会惩罚她的错误。以此换来奥数老师、交通拥堵和昂贵的打鼓学费。所有人、所有的事情都被这种制度牢牢地栓住，也正是这些一成不变、毫无激情的生活让他们难以对付。
饭后，Snow问我有没有参观过奥运会体育馆，我说没有，于是她调转车头，向北行驶。有一条路被封闭了，一个穿黄色马甲的警察指示我们走向另外一条路。Snow说，随着奥运会的临近，北京的街道越来越像美国的街道了，到处都是警察。“在美国电影里，只要发生犯罪行为，警察总是立即会出现。真是这样吗？他们真这么快吗？”我说我不确定美国警察到达犯罪现场的时间比中国警察更短，但绝对没有电影里宣传的那么快。
当鸟巢逐渐出现在视野中时，我暗暗地赞叹“哇”。我编辑了无数宣传这个建筑物的文章，但从未想到过自己竟然真的会为其折服。
Snow问把我放在最近的一个地铁站可以吗，我说没问题。在我们往回走时，我问他丈夫有几个兄弟姐妹，因为在吃饭时，她曾经抱怨他们夫妻经常要资助这些人。
“12个，但一半已经死了，所以现在总共有6个。”
“听到这个我很难过。”我说。
“用不着，那时候所有人都是这样。因为你知道，毛或许是疯了，鼓励每一个人都做能生5个孩子的‘英雄母亲’。他们说这是大饥荒的原因。毛太疯狂了……”
她停止说话，大笑起来。
“你看，我们现在可以说这些话，只有你和我，可是在杂志上就不能说。”然后，她用英文大声说：“这就是中国。”
我们到了地铁站，我下车后和她再见，然后她开车去接儿子了。
原文：
My first day of work in Beijing, my boss asked if I knew the "Three Ts."
I did not. It was February 2007, and I was a wide-eyed 26 year-old fresh off the plane from New York, struggling to absorb the deluge of strange information that had hit me since arriving.
The Three Ts, he informed me, were the three most taboo topics to avoid in Chinese media -- Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen. My boss was Taiwanese himself, and delivered this information with a wry tone of bemusement. He had been doing business here for nearly 30 years, he had said, since China first began opening its economy to the outside world, and had witnessed a lot.
"You'll hear more about it from our censor," he said, and then, having inserted that tantalizing fragment into my head, sent me off to begin my new job.
For the next two years, I served as an editor, then managing editor, of an English-language business magazine called China International Business. The editorial staff was comprised of, at various times, two to four American and British editors, and two or three Chinese writers and research assistants. Supposedly, we had a print circulation of 45,000, though nobody I talked to had ever heard of us. In theory, there was a website too, but it was perennially under construction and, since the guy in charge of it didn't actually speak English, never quite readable. We ran briefs on current events; profiled businesses in China; interviewed executives of international companies with a presence in the country, like Crocs and Calvin Klein; and also did long analytical pieces spotlighting industries ranging from coal to lingerie to frozen foods. Our audience was mostly expat businesspeople in China; hence, in addition to being available by subscription, we were distributed in five-star hotels, international schools, and other expat enclaves.
Technically, we were the only officially sanctioned English-language business publication in mainland China. There were a handful of other English-language magazines in town, mostly listings and entertainment mags along the lines of Time Out. These were usually founded by foreigners who'd partnered up with private Chinese companies to secure a license from the General Administration of Press and Publications (GAPP), which oversees print publications in China. Unlike them, we were published not just under the umbrella of the publisher's private media company, but also in cooperation with the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOMM). In other words, the government wanted us there.
Like any editor in the United States, I tweaked articles, butted heads with the sales department, and tried to extract interesting quotes out of boring people. Unlike my American counterparts, however, I was offered red envelopes stuffed with cash at press junkets, sometimes discovered footprints on the toilet seats at work, and had to explain to the Chinese assistants more than once that they could not turn in articles copied word for word from existing pieces they found online. I also liaised with our government censor.
Jobs like this are practically a rite of passage for young, aspiring writers in China who also happen to be native English speakers (and who are trying to avoid teaching English, the default job for most Westerners in Asia). Most start out as copyeditors at state-owned papers like China Daily, correcting the English on articles by Chinese reporters, and often making $1500 a month -- enough to live comfortably in Beijing in the first decade of the 21st century (and two or three times the amount of native colleagues with decades' more work experience). I myself was hired as a copyeditor with no prior magazine experience (though I'd worked in book publishing in New York), promoted to editor two months later, then another eight months later found myself running the show as managing editor, at the ripe old age of 28. This was a fairly normal career trajectory in China. Despite the title on my business card, however, I was always technically an "English language consultant" -- no foreigners are allowed to direct editorial content in Chinese media. Our censor got pride of place on the masthead, with title of managing editor.
Every legally registered publication in China is subject to review by a censor, sometimes several. Some expat publications have entire teams of censors scouring their otherwise innocuous restaurant reviews and bar write-ups for, depending on one's opinion of foreigners, accidental or coded allusions to sensitive topics. For example, That's Shanghai magazine once had to strike the number 64 from a short, unrelated article because their censors believed it might be read as an oblique reference to June 4, 1989, when the Chinese government bloodily suppressed a pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. Many Chinese-run publications have no censor at all, but their editors are relied upon to know where the line falls -- i.e., to self-censor.
Our censor, an employee of MOFCOMM, was a nervous, flighty woman in her forties with long, frizzy hair and a high, childlike voice, whose name was Snow. (Snow requested I only use her English name for this article.) In late September of this year, I learned that Snow left the magazine, enabling me to finally write this story without fear that it would affect her job.
Snow's name made for much late-night comedy in my office, along the lines of: "God, that article totally got snowplowed," or "Uh-oh, I predict heavy snowfall for this one." I met Snow for the first time during our inaugural editorial meeting at the office: the top two floors of a six-story, spottily heated building with a pool hall in the basement and what appeared to be fourteen-year-old security guards at the door, in central Beijing. Here, just as my boss had promised, Snow elaborated on the Three Ts, relaying an anecdote about a journalist friend of hers. A photo enthusiast, he once ran a picture he'd taken in Taiwan alongside an article, but had failed to notice a small Taiwanese flag in the background. As a result, the entire staff of his newspaper had been immediately fired and the office shut down.
Despite these words of caution, we didn't take the fact that we had a censor very seriously, at least for my first few months on the job, and evading Snow's changes became a game of sorts. This was easier back then; the August 2008 Beijing Olympics were a year-and-a-half away, and it behooved China to demonstrate that it was an open country. Besides, Snow was a small presence in our daily work routine. She did not come to our office, and aside from that first encounter, didn't attend our story meetings. Each month, we emailed her our list of article topics for the upcoming issue. After we had edited those articles, we emailed them to Snow, and she sent them back marked with her changes. She reviewed them again in layout, and, once satisfied, would give the printer the order to start the presses.
Business content is not censored as strictly as other areas in China, since it seems to be understood that greater openness is needed to push the economy forward and it doesn't necessarily deal with the political issues Chinese rulers seem to find the most sensitive. English-language content isn't censored as much either, since only a small fraction of the Chinese population reads English. (As foreigners reporting on non-sensitive subjects in English, we could worry much less about the dangers -- threats, beatings, jail time -- that occasionally befall muckraking Chinese journalists.) And, in the beginning, most of Snow's edits were minor enough that we didn't feel compromised. We couldn't say that a businessperson came back to China from the United States after "Tiananmen," but we could say "June 1989," knowing that our readers knew the significance of the month. We couldn't say "the Cultural Revolution" but could write "the late 1960s and early 1970s," to allude to then Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong launching his disastrous campaign that sent millions of intellectuals to the countryside. Writing that a company planned to expand into "foreign markets like Taiwan and Korea" was forbidden because it suggested that Taiwan was a separate country from China, but we could say "overseas markets," since, according to Snow, Taiwan literally is over a body of water from the mainland.
The waters around China were always touchy. In May 2007, we ran an article about wind power, and had an artist create a map of China dotted with wind turbines to illustrate it. Snow cautioned that if we were going to depict a map of China, we had to make sure it included Taiwan and various disputed territories, including the now hotly contested small chain of uninhabited islands that China calls the Diaoyu and Japan the Senkakus. "Just put in a couple dots around the bottom, but whatever you do, make sure they don't get cut off," she said. In lay-out those islands did, indeed, get cut off; but at Snow's advice, the designer haphazardly Photoshopped a few stray dots around the bottom of China's eastern coast. The small gray blobs were not terribly accurate from a cartographer's standpoint, but apparently they were good enough. Snow was satisfied and the illustration ran without incident.
Some of Snow's changes arose from the inherent absurdity of having English-language content reviewed by a non-native speaker. We gave an article the subtitle "Mo Money, Mo Problems," and Snow asked if we'd meant "No Money, No Problems." A December issue included the subtitle "'Tis the Season," which Snow corrected to "It's the Reason."
Once, Snow deleted the word "monster" from a piece that said the Hong Kong stock market had been "boosted by a trend of monster IPOs" from mainland Chinese companies. "I bet the government is trying to downplay these huge IPOs because speculation on the stock market is getting out of control," said our then executive editor, Gwynn Guilford. Later that afternoon, I walked by Guilford's office and heard her saying into the phone, "No, it's not monster, like, grrrrr," while she curled her fingers into a claw and pantomimed an angry bear. Then she hung up and said, "We can leave in ‘monster.'"
Many changes were enigmatic. We were told not to use "Manifest Destiny" in a subtitle because, as Snow wrote in her somewhat offbeat English, "this is an anti-government sensitive words group." This provoked a flurry of excited calls from our end, exhorting Snow to tell us more about this "words group" -- ideally in the form of a full, emailed list. We had heard that some publications received a weekly fax outlining what topics were taboo, and were dying to see something similar. But she never explained further.
In our December 2007 issue, we had a paragraph saying that the Chinese oil and gas giant PetroChina had been pushing forward aggressively in its overseas acquisitions. Earlier that year it had bought a 67 percent stake in PetroKazakhstan, and it had plans to buy more oil and gas assets in Africa, Northern Europe, and Southeast Asia. Snow wrote, "Better to delete, it is an oral request that the energy sector's overseas acquisition is not encouraged to report." In other words, we wouldn't find any overt directives in writing anywhere, but those in the know understood that this subject was touchy.
All of this pointed to the petty human dynamics that underscored the censorship. The things Snow flagged were rarely taboo because of any overt directive from above. More often, it seemed to me that she thought it might offend another government ministry, which would bring retaliation upon her own ministry. Or, if Snow personally didn't find a statement sensitive, she worried that her boss might, or her boss thought that his boss might. Everyone was guessing where the line fell, taking two steps back from it to be extra safe, and self-censoring accordingly.
Since we never knew when Snow was guessing about what might be off-limits, and when her comments stemmed from real political directives from above, every correction spawned wild conspiracy theories around the water cooler. One month, we ran a short news brief with figures on the number of mainland Chinese tourists that had visited the United States in 2007, and Snow flagged the number for deletion. We wondered what dirt we had unwittingly stumbled upon. Which government bureau oversaw tourism figures? What were they hiding? Finally, I called Snow, and learned that the numbers we had cited were for the number of Chinese tourists worldwide, not just in the United States.
So much for the would-be plot. Chagrined, I had to announce to my colleagues that we'd made a mistake.
We knew we were lucky to have the censor that we did, if we had to have one at all. Snow was patient with our push-backs, and, though she didn't have to, often went to great lengths to explain the "why" of her changes. When we wanted to run a piece that was somewhat critical of China's healthcare system, Snow spent days poring through it, typing up lengthy explanations for how we could rearrange the piece to pass muster. The changes were surprisingly minor. She reworded the subtitle "China's ailing healthcare system -- and the government's plan to fix it" to "The Chinese government's plan to fix the ailing healthcare system." She replaced pull quotes (excerpts from the stories displayed in larger text to the side of the article), pointing to flaws in the system, like "High medical expenditure is the main cause of poverty in China in 30 percent of cases," with more positive ones that highlighted ways China was working to reform the system - "Reform of the healthcare system has been at the top of the political agenda for some time." But Snow allowed the more critical statements to remain within the body of the article itself.
She explained that we had to be careful not to offend anyone at the Ministry of Health, but also that nobody at any ministry was likely to ever read the piece. We just had to make sure there was nothing potentially offensive in large print (i.e. the headlines and pull quotes) or in the opening paragraphs that someone important might skim in passing. We made her changes, and ran the piece.
Snow even helped us with our research. When we wanted to write about something she felt was sensitive but doable -- for example, a piece suggesting that tourism figures during the Olympics would be lower than expected due to tightened visa restrictions -- she provided figures from official state media. "This way," she wrote, it "guarantees we won't make a mistake -- even if we're wrong, it's following their error, and we won't be directly responsible."
Her reactions also provided a reliable marker of the political touchiness of an issue. One article about skyrocketing food prices around the world quoted economists saying that the rising quality of life in China, and the attendant increase in meat consumption, might play a role, because more arable land was being used to grow feed for animals. Snow called me to relate her changes, and grew so angry over that particular line suggesting a link between Chinese meat-eaters and worldwide food prices that she began to shriek, "Are they all vegetarian in the West? No! So many fat people in America, and they dare to say this is China's responsibility?"
Sometimes, just when we felt this was all a joke and had convinced ourselves that the censor changes were no big deal, something truly dispiriting would happen. A column titled "Why Joint Ventures Fail in China" got axed. The subtitle in a piece that mentioned a foreign company's failed attempt to buy a stake in a Chinese steelmaker -- "Interest from abroad stymied" -- was changed to "Interest from abroad still high." Occasionally, Snow would send something back with none of her colorful commentary or explanations, and simply write: "Wrong opinion."
After I became managing editor, though, and without particularly meaning to, I somehow won Snow's heart. I asked her for the contact info of someone I had assumed was a freelancer; Snow explained he was actually a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Commerce, who'd been contributing as a favor to her. My predecessor, Guilford, I learned, had once double-bylined one of the official's articles with one of our own reporters, and without thinking about it had listed that reporter's name first. Snow said her boss and her colleagues reprimanded her, and she had to write a self-criticism as punishment. We'd merely been listing the writers' names in alphabetical order, but I wrote back apologizing for the misunderstanding.
Until then we'd almost always communicated in English, because Snow's English was much better than my Chinese; but now she responded in Chinese saying she knew I hadn't been involved with that incident. She followed this up with a phone call, congratulating me on my new role. Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial hush and she added, "To tell the truth, I do not think [your predecessor] is a very good editor. I think you are much better, because you are Chinese. You can understand China, and why we must do things the way we do, because of your Chinese blood."
I was not sure how to take this. The implication to me seemed to be that, because I was of Chinese extraction, I would accept censorship more readily than my (white) predecessor had. Whatever her meaning, from that point onwards, I found myself in the odd position of having acquired an ally who was a censor for the Chinese government.
This was not the relationship I wanted to have with Snow. I believed in free speech. I‘d spent a summer interning at the ACLU. I was beginning to question the morality of my paycheck, of playing any part, no matter how incidental, in a system of which I disapproved. Thinking of her as my adversary allowed me to feel I was fighting the system. But my adversary wanted to be friends.
She started to call more, and email less, about changes, then wanted to chat on the phone. She loved spicy food, Snow told me. Her husband was often away on business trips. I never figured out what he did, but it often seemed to involve playing golf, or wining and dining Japanese clients. She missed her old neighborhood up near where the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium now stood, but had moved to the west side to be closer to her son's school.
Sometimes, when the issue was running late, I took a cab to deliver the layouts to Snow myself. I'd meet her outside her son's swimming lessons or his weekend "Olympic math" tutoring, and she would prattle: Her son was taking $22-an-hour drum lessons. She'd gotten a $30 parking ticket the last time she drove, so now they took taxis, which were $5 each way. He always wanted McDonald's afterwards, so that was another five bucks. She was tempted to halt the lessons, but she had heard that music improved academic performance.
"The world is getting more and more competitive," she would sigh. "It takes so much work just to keep up, to make sure your child will be able to keep up."
In addition to the uptick in phone calls, her emails, too, grew more expansive and personal. She had told me once that we couldn't put a Chinese flag on the cover (I still don't understand why), and so I wrote her to ask if we could run a cover image that suggested a flag more abstractly, with yellow stars against a wash of red. She wrote back in Chinese:
Dear Little One,
Stars are definitely not okay either, please please do not take the risk.
I once published, in a newspaper, a picture of a book put out by the German embassy, introducing China and Germany's investment cooperation. The book's cover had a big stream on it, half of it the colors of the German flag, half of it red with yellow stars. I decided since it wasn't a flag it was okay, and sent it to print. Our newspaper office was slapped with a fine of 180,000 yuan [today, around $28,000] and I had to write a self-criticism and take a big salary cut.
Quite a lesson, yes? Sigh -- we must remember it well.
Another time, in the fall of 2008, my phone rang and I picked up to find Snow in an excitable mood.
"Hi Snow," I said, trying to sound distant and professional.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
"Well, actually, I am a little..."
"Oh good. I was thinking: December will be the 30th anniversary of ‘Reform and Opening.' It will be a big deal and there will be many celebrations in the media. Are you planning any articles about this topic? Because, I think, maybe you can interview people about their experiences from 30 years ago. Like me, for example -- when I was young, we did not have meat to eat. And we lived in a building with many other families, and we had only had one phone for the whole building. If it rang, someone would answer it and shout your name. In those days, it was always for me. The man who answered the phone would yell, ‘Snow, the phone is for you again!'" She laughed delightedly.
On a few occasions, Snow asked me to lunch, and I always said no. Keeping my distance became easier as the year progressed and my disillusionment increased. Media restrictions began to tighten severely in the wake of pro-Tibet protests that were following the Olympic torch around the globe. China had naïvely been caught off guard by the expressions of anti-Chinese-government sentiment, and had reacted strongly. Visa regulations tightened, and many younger expats who did not meet the new work experience requirements had to leave the country. The June issue of the English-language version of Time Out Beijing was, due to a licensing technicality (it did not have its own separate publishing license but was piggybacked onto the license of their Chinese-language edition), abruptly pulled from the presses, though their license structure had never been an issue before. And the changes at our magazine, which had always seemed generally comprehensible and rooted in logic even when I disagreed with them, veered into the realm of absurdity.
I was told that we could not title a coal piece "Power Failure" because the word "failure" in bold print so close to the Olympics would make people think of the Olympics being a failure. The title "The Agony and the Ecstasy" for a soccer piece was axed because agony was a negative word and we couldn't have negative words be associated with sports. We couldn't use the cover image I had picked out for a feature on the rise of chain restaurants, because it was of an empty bowl, and, Snow told me, it would make people think of being hungry and remind them of the Great Famine (a period from 1958 to 1961 when tens of millions of Chinese starved to death, discussion of which is still suppressed). Even our Chinese designers began to roll their eyes when I related this change to them, and set them to work looking for images of bowls overflowing with meat.
Finally, in July 2008, one month before the Olympics, I gave my notice and, knowing I might never see her again, accepted one of Snow's invitations. She picked me up from my apartment, and drove us across town to her favorite restaurant, Haidilao, a Sichuan hotpot chain. She complained about Beijing's terrible traffic, which I had somehow thought a censor wouldn't do, because it constituted criticism of the government.
A car cut her off, and she shook her head angrily, and exclaimed, "Look at this! They won't let me pass even though they can see I was in front. See, this is how Chinese people are." She asked me if this would happen in the United States. I said yes. "Really?" she replied. "I imagine in the United States everyone obeys the traffic rules. People are not so backwards there. That's what I hear."
Over lunch, she asked me about my plans. How would I support myself? I said I wanted to try freelance writing. If it didn't work out, I'd start looking for a new full-time job. I might move back to the United States, or maybe to a new country.
"Ah, you young people," she said. "So much freedom to do what you want. To tell you the truth, I would love to change my job too. But I can't -- I have a family, I've been there too long, it's not the same for us old people."
She leaned forward, and looked intently into my eyes. "Have you ever considered opening your own research firm for foreign companies that want to invest in China? You would be very good at this, because you are Chinese, too. Even though you are born in America, you understand our Chinese thinking. You can be a big important consultant. And then you can hire me so I don't have to work at my job anymore. I'm serious -- think of me if you ever do this someday. You should. And then you can hire me."
She was speaking lightly, and laughing, but she also seemed to mean it, and I suddenly wondered if this was the purpose of our lunch. I found this idea utterly depressing. I was a lost, aimless kid, drifting around China, and yet this older woman could look at me and see the possibility, however tenuous, of a lifeline.
I understood then the mundane nature of all that kept her in place. A job she didn't like, but worked hard to keep. A system that would never reward her for good work, only punish her for mistakes. And in exchange: Tutors. Traffic. Expensive drumming lessons. They were the same things that kept anyone, anywhere, in place -- and it was the very ordinariness of these things that made them intractable.
After lunch, Snow asked me if I'd seen the Olympic stadium yet, and I said I hadn't, so she turned north to drive by it. A road was blocked off, and a traffic cop in a neon yellow vest waved us towards an alternate route. Snow remarked that with the Olympics imminent, the streets of Beijing resembled the United States, with cops everywhere. "In U.S. movies," she said, "whenever a crime happens, the cops always show up immediately. Is that true? Are they really so fast?" I said that I wasn't sure whether American cops arrived at crime scenes more quickly than Chinese cops, but that they definitely weren't as fast as they seemed in movies.
When the Bird's Nest stadium loomed into view, I murmured "Wow." I had been editing blurbs about the thing for so long, it had never occurred to me that I would be impressed by it in person, but I was.
Snow asked if she could drop me off at the nearest subway stop. I said it was no problem, and as we turned I asked how many siblings her husband had. She had been complaining towards the end of lunch that she and her husband had to support them.
"Twelve, but half of them died. So there are six of them, total."
"I'm sorry to hear that," I said.
"Oh don't be. It was like that for everyone back then. Because you know, Mao had probably gone crazy, and encouraged everyone to be a ‘hero mother' by having five kids. They say that's what caused the famine. But Mao was crazy and..."
She broke off and laughed.
"You see," she said, "we can say this here, just you and me; we just can't say it in print." Then, suddenly, switching to English, she exclaimed, "That's China!"
We had reached the subway stop. I got out, and said goodbye, and then she went to get her son.
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狗仔卡
发表于 2012-11-1 17:27
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变色卡
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千斤顶
显身卡
发表于 2012-11-1 19:02
