China should be a reporter's dream: more than one billion people, a rich history, and extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity. And yet China-reporting these days resists the profile. Rarely do journalists based there get enough material to write up convincingly full-bodied portraits.
There are obvious obstacles to reporting that humanizes, such as the constant surveillance and the threat of state retaliation taken against foreign and Chinese reporters. The state often intimidates sources for speaking to journalists as well, and a nervous interviewee will not divulge enough detail to create an intimate rendering of a person's life.
