Seeing: A Memoir of Truth and Courage from China’s Most Influential Television Journalist

In this gripping debut memoir, Chinese TV journalist Chai fights to find the truth—and her own voice—as she covers stories on topics including youth suicides and pollution in a country determined to hide bad news. Born in 1976, Chai fell in love with stories as a child, and took a brief radio reporting gig at 16. Later, she began working for state-run CCTV as a host and reporter. Here, she mixes episodes of sexism and censorship from higher-ups with accounts of her professional triumphs. In the book’s most moving sections, Chai recounts her interviews with victims of domestic violence imprisoned for killing their husbands (“During their interviews, the women all said, ‘The final night, he was especially strange’ ”), which helped bring about China’s first restraining order laws. Elsewhere, Chai details how returning to her home province of Shanxi to discover the coal industry had transformed the sky into “a burnt wok covering the earth” moved her to report on pollution throughout China despite pushback from her superiors. Though the prose is sometimes rocky (“Sleeping at night, it was quiet in the mountain; so quiet that it was hard to sleep”), Chai’s pursuit of truth in the face of adversity is deeply inspiring. Budding journalists and readers looking for a window into a changing China will be riveted. (Aug.)