When Washington’s first Chinese language bookstore opened this year, D.C.-based investigative reporter Fu Ting found a deeper story and spent months peeling the layers, resulting in an exclusive for AP that revealed a crackdown on independent bookstores in China. She showed that at least a dozen bookstores in China have been shuttered or targeted for closure in the last few months alone, squeezing the already tight space for free expression in the world’s second-largest economy.
After Fu first brought up the bookstore story, Nieman fellow Elsie Chen sent a picture of a closed bookstore in China seen on social media. It piqued Fu’s curiosity: Was this shuttered bookstore an isolated case? She began digging and found hints that it wasn’t — many more closures were found with vague but emotionally charged announcements made on social media. She reached out to dozens of bookstores on social media, only a few responded with most declining to be interviewed.
One owner did agree to speak. Their first conversation lasted two hours, and the owner Zhou Youlieguo shared a hair-raising story: how the authorities had interrogated him, how his business partner had been arrested, and how he had given Fu his wife’s contact details in case he too was taken into custody. Zhou told her he trusted her because she had covered China from abroad and understood the situation.
Twelve time zones away from D.C., Chief Investigative Correspondent for Greater China, Dake Kang, in China traveled to Shanghai and Ningbo where Fu Ting had identified bookstores that were recently forced to shut down. There, Kang encountered one bookseller, Wang Yingxing, who happened to be in the middle of bundling up his books for sale — and if not, for pulping. Kang was able to shoot compelling, poignant images of the closure, providing compelling visuals for the story.
Others stepped in to assist. Richard Lardner, who had been mentoring Fu Ting, reviewed the draft with her and coached her on reporting and writing. Andy Wong, photographer in Beijing, who was on a tennis shooting assignment in Shanghai, went shooting the closed bookstore in Shanghai. Kaito Au, an intern on the video team in Washington, traveled to film the bookstore with photographer Ben Curtis. Kaito then gathered all the footage and managed to deliver beautiful videos for both the newsroom and their audience, despite the challenge of working on the project right before the election.
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