Soyonbo Borjgin’s career at The Inner Mongolia Life Weekly began with an editor’s embezzlement scheme and a murder investigation, and ended when the Chinese Communist Party’s Discipline Committee shuttered the newspaper for “extreme political wrongdoing.” For the inaugural issue of Equator, Borjgin recounts his five years at Inner Mongolia Life Weekly, from a calamitous early reporting trip to his unlikely rise as a feature writer, detailing the mundane and harrowing pressures that shaped his journalism—and, eventually, his decision to leave China.
The *Weekly *mostly stayed away from politics. Our subjects were sports, business, youth, arts, and above all, ‘human interest’ (the changing lifestyles of herders and farmers was a favoure…
Soyonbo Borjgin’s career at The Inner Mongolia Life Weekly began with an editor’s embezzlement scheme and a murder investigation, and ended when the Chinese Communist Party’s Discipline Committee shuttered the newspaper for “extreme political wrongdoing.” For the inaugural issue of Equator, Borjgin recounts his five years at Inner Mongolia Life Weekly, from a calamitous early reporting trip to his unlikely rise as a feature writer, detailing the mundane and harrowing pressures that shaped his journalism—and, eventually, his decision to leave China.
The *Weekly *mostly stayed away from politics. Our subjects were sports, business, youth, arts, and above all, ‘human interest’ (the changing lifestyles of herders and farmers was a favoured topic). At the Monday meeting, you would pitch a story; Tuesday and Wednesdays were for tracking down your subject and interviewing them; and on Thursday, you filed your copy. Week after week.
For my part, I profiled a fair number of interesting characters. Let me list some: a group of Iron Girls – a more accurate translation would be ‘Iron Maidens’ – who had been mobilised to do hard labour during the Cultural Revolution (imagine the Chinese version of Rosie the Riveter); an enforcer of the one-child policy who conducted forced abortions on pregnant women; a shepherd who had converted his yurt into a hotel room – like AirBnB – for rich people from Hohhot; an inventor who patented an automatic iron gate for a sheep’s pen, which shepherds could control from their car; employees of a government bureau for stamping out religious belief; a 106-year-old lady searching for her son, who was kidnapped by Kazakh bandits during the civil war. I even ran a series on the dating lives of young Mongolians – an idea I copied from The New York Times’* *‘Modern Love’ column.
Possibly my biggest hit was a piece about the tails of Mongolian sheep. This part of the animal is widely used in local cooking, and even given to babies to suck on. People used to think that it was unhealthy, since it was largely made up of fat. But then a scientist at Inner Mongolia Agricultural University proved that it contained nutrients usually found in fish. I profiled him. After reading my story, a man set up a business selling preserved Mongolian sheep’s tails. It still exists and is doing well.
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