Reporting in China

Last summer I had the opportunity to go to China for two and a half weeks on a journalism trip in which we traveled the famous Silk Road. We did all sorts of reporting on the trip for a class blog that we were later graded on. As a relatively naive Irish girl from Queens who has only ever been to Canada, it goes beyond saying that I was completely out of my element. And yet, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Not because of the different food (and when I say different, I mean different) but because of the fact that I can say that I did things most people cannot even dream of saying.

During that summer, I shot a bow and arrow off of the Great Wall of China, I rode a horse through the Gobi dessert, I saw ancient temples thousands of years older than the United States, and I did serious journalism reporting in a communist country that is vastly misunderstood by most Americans.

The most interesting thing about the trip to me was comparing Chinese news reporting to American news reporting. While we were there there were several riots happening throughout the country for religious reasons. Because of this, for two days we were without internet because the government had basically shut it down. When we were finally able to get back on, we were not able to access certain websites, like the New York Times. We were able to hear loosely translated Chinese broadcasts, but we got most of our news when parents began e-mailing copied texts from American newspapers. It was a surreal experience being in a country so far from home and knowing that something big was happening there, but never being quite sure what it was.