Excerpted from "Apologies to My Censor". There are three kinds of work for a foreign journalist in Beijing: state media, such as China Daily; international bureaus, which are sparsely staffed and tough to crack; and freelancing.
With no desire to reenter the state media and no job offers in international media, I reluctantly resumed my career as a freelancer. The staff of Asia Weekly continued to go into the office after the magazine folded, a way to provide us newly unemployed a semblance of routine. We had met through friends on my first weekend in Beijing, a year and a half earlier. Tom had arrived in the city in early and, like me, had put in his time in state media before joining Asia Weekly.
Tom and I got along well and had become good friends over the summer. Only minutes after Jasper told us he was closing the magazine, as the staff absorbed the news in silence, Tom popped his head over his computer and called my name from across the office. I was in. We decided we would report a few stories while on the road, but which stories, and where, we had no idea.
After a few brainstorming sessions, we were still without a plan. Tom and I realized this trip would have to be more than just an adventure. We were both in our late twenties and not where we wanted to be in our careers. Tom wanted to be in broadcasting; I wanted to be writing features for international publications. We both knew that to take our careers to the next level we needed to establish names for ourselves, and we felt like we were running out of time.
Whatever stories we were going to report, they needed to be good. A week after he shuttered the magazine, Jasper took the Asia Weekly editors for lunch. He apologized for what had happened and said he was confident we could all make it as freelancers if we resold our stories in different markets.
