By Michael Miner
That was life in Beijing. “I had the best job I’ve ever had,” she says. “I loved jumping on my bike every day. I loved that work. There are 13 million people in that city, and they all want to know what movie’s playing.”
Except that a couple months after she took over, those officials showed up. They pulled up in a black Mercedes and trooped into the Beijing Scene office. As they came in the front door, every Chinese member of the staff disappeared out the back. They’d all come to Beijing from the provinces looking for work, and none of them had residence permits. Davis didn’t have one either, which is why she lived furtively in a tenement, but to her, being sent home didn’t seem quite so terrifying.
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One day the usual faces arrived at the newspaper accompanied by an imposing-looking man in a blue uniform. When they left, Savitt called a meeting. “He said, ‘In 24 hours we’re out of here. Don’t even show up tomorrow. Take your computer’–we all had these little Apple PowerBooks. ‘And we’ll call you with our new address.’”
She’s now an editor for a law firm in Portland, Oregon, and life’s less exciting than it was. There was the night when Britain had just turned Hong Kong over to China, and Tiananmen Square filled with people from all over China waving flags and taking pictures. Colonialism was dead, the West had pulled out, and jubilation reigned. But one man came up to Davis and said softly, “These people don’t know what happened here. But we Beijingers remember what happened, and our hearts hurt.” Then he vanished.
When cops die in the line of duty the Hundred Club calls on their family with a check. These presentations make good photo ops at the very least, and the Hundred Club announces them beforehand. News desks knew early March 10 when and where the Hundred Club would visit Opal Camp that day, because the visit was listed in the daybook of Chicago’s new local wire service, New City News.
