Rediscovering the Middle Kingdom: A Reporter’s Decadal Homecoming through Beijing, Xi’an, and Chengdu

what kind of China would we encounter when a Westerner with a deep thirst for the Orient met a Chinese journalist who had been away for over a decade?

As a long-time foreign correspondent, I have spent the better part of the last 14 years observing, reporting, and deciphering China from the banks of the Thames in London and the Potomac in Washington DC. I returned to our Beijing headquarters late last year, but I found myself quickly swept up in the relentless pace of office life, never truly getting …