13 Days in China
A Reporter's Diary

By GREG STEPANICH
City Editor, The Stuart News

American journalists are no strangers to that ancient romance known as fascination with China, a condition that has affected observers from Marco Polo on down to Bill Clinton. If anything, interest has only grown in the years since the Tiananmen Square uprising of June 1989.

So it was with a sense of historic mission and pursuit of a local story that The Stuart News ­ a newspaper with a daily circulation of 39,465 ­ sent a reporter to China in the company of a hometown entrepreneur.

 

	Stuart News reporter Andrew Conte, left, at the Great Wall near Beijing with Henry ``Skip'' Clements, a Stuart businessman who traveled to China on a mission to sell Florida citrus and fruit juices.

The reporter we chose for the assignment, Andrew Conte, has been with the newspaper for about a year. He's a graduate of Dickinson College, where he edited the college newspaper, and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Before joining our staff, he worked as an associate for Washington columnist Jack Anderson.

Andy accompanied Henry "Skip" Clements, a one-time CIA operative who's taken up the citrus business. Clements was meeting with Chinese officials about bringing his fruit into their country.

Florida's orange and grapefruit growers have been trying for years to find new markets for their produce, which in supply far outstrips demand, keeping prices too low for them to make a profit. An entree into China, with more than 1 billion potential customers, could mean for some citrus merchants the difference between prosperity and selling off their grovelands to home builders.

But the trip to China earlier this year was not all that easy to organize. To begin with, there was the seemingly simple question of filing copy. Although there was no technological barrier to sending stories, there was another, more serious impediment, having to do with politics and bureaucracy.

Sam Mok, one of the businessmen joining Clements on his trip, broke it to Andy: You can't file any stories while you're there. You have to wait until you get back. Mok told us there were a limited number of journalist visas available, and to apply for one would take months. Without one, we wouldn't be allowed to file.

But there was a way out.

In order to go, Andy would have to travel as a member of Clements' entourage, and send a letter to the Chinese Embassy telling them that although he was a journalist working for the News, he did not plan to conduct official interviews for publication while he was there.

Mok's news almost scuttled the trip. We were the only local paper going to China for this event; why should we agree to hold back?

We wrestled with this for a couple of anxious days, finally deciding that Andy's reports would have value to our readers regardless where they were filed.

So Andy got his passport and he practiced shooting photos (we could send a reporter, but couldn't afford a photographer, too). Almost before we knew it, he was airborne, on his way to an unprecendented story for the News.

The China itinerary included stops in Beijing, Chengdu, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jintang and Hong Kong. Andy called the desk each day to tell us how things were going. It was a thrill to talk to him over all those miles and hear about what he was seeing.

 

	Chinese fruit vendors sort through a box of apples that were probably brought into the country through the Hong Kong black market.

The trip began well. By the second day, Clements was talking about sealing a deal with the Chinese for importing some of his citrus. He was going to have to send juice, not fruit, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. Although Andy had to wait until he got back to report the good news, we had a scoop.

Or so we thought.

The next morning (our time; China is 12 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time), everything changed. Morning listeners to a Stuart radio program heard the host talking to his friend, Skip Clements, by phone from Beijing, about the citrus deal he was cutting with his Chinese hosts. The program didn't last long, but it was long enough to scoop us. Quickly, we contacted Andy in Beijing and told him all agreements were off: We needed a story.

Andy got to work. But how would we get a story when he couldn't file anything? Mok came up with a solution: Write a letter home and fax it. So Andy faxed a "letter" to our lawyer that began like an ordinary missive home: "Dear Rob ­ Everything's fine. Beijing is a wonderful city ..." and then segued to the real story a couple paragraphs later.

That's the routine we followed for the rest of the trip. Andy would let us know if he had a story for the day, and then fax us a "letter." Andy also sent us some photos while he was in China, popping a couple dozen rolls of film into a pouch in Beijing for DHL to fly over to us. His photos turned out well, and we had art to illustrate his work while he was still there.

What we didn't know until Andy returned was how carefully he had been watched on the trip.

"I found out that in Beijing they were actually watching me in my bathroom," Andy told us.

The reports Andy sent back were fascinating for fans of Chinese history and culture. He talked to a wide spectrum of Chinese, from ordinary urbanites to farmers, from ex-Communist cadres to government officials. He gave his readers a compelling picture of a China in the midst of an economic revolution, its people shed of Mao coats and toting cellular phones, making deals and dreaming of making a killing in stocks.

All told, he filed about a dozen lengthy stories, most of which we later ran as a special package (China: Opening the Door) in the paper and on our Web site. Several of the stories were breaking news about an important business deal, but more than that, the China trip showed our readers that their newspaper was willing to pursue a special story if need be, and give them something truly out of the ordinary to read.

It remains one of the most exciting journeys the News has ever taken.