ANNA FIFIELD

From the Bay to Beijing

The pandemic put many people in positions and places they thought they’d never be. For Anna Fifield, Washington Post bureau chief in Beijing, and former Hastings girl, it saw her back home with her mother Christine, devouring the local newspaper just as she used to do, and giving her young son a fortuitous insight into her formative years.

Fifield and Jude, 9, have been based in Beijing for the past 18 months. She has covered the coronavirus story from its origins in Wuhan.

In January, when China effectively shut down, and foreigners evacuated, Fifield took Jude to live with Christine in Havelock North, and enrolled him in a local school. ‘‘It was going to be a very boring time for Jude being stuck at home in Beijing, and I wouldn’t have been able to do my job.

‘‘Plus he’s very close to his grandmother and it seemed a great chance for him to enjoy New Zealand for a bit,’’ she says. ‘‘He’s never lived in New Zealand. He has an American accent. I’d love him to learn rugby.’’

By early March she was missing him greatly, so flew over to visit him. She spent two weeks in isolation at a bach on Waiheke Island then flew to Hawke’s Bay.

Before leaving her Beijing apartment she left her dog with a friend, saying she’d be back in a few weeks. The day after she reunited with Jude, New Zealand entered alert level 3. China closed its borders, and what was to have been a short visit became a long stay. And she’s pleased it did.

Fifield was raised in Hastings. From early on she hankered to see the world. When the bedroom walls of her Hastings Girls’ High classmates were adorned with posters of pop stars, hers were home to pictures of far-off places. ‘‘I’d go to travel agents and beg them for old posters. The Eiffel Tower, a castle in the mountains in Germany, that sort of thing.’’

She wasn’t averse to pop music of the 80s but, given the choice between Ready to Roll and Foreign Correspondent on the TV, and she’d pick the latter every time.

‘‘I always knew I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. In the 90s I was watching [TV reporters] Liam Jeory and Cameron Bennett running around Yugoslavia during the Balkans war. I thought, how amazing is it that they get to go to these places and talk to people and report what is happening out in the world.

‘‘In sixth form we had a journalism class and I wrote for the school paper. I remember as a high school student I would read the Hawke’s Bay Herald-Tribune non-stop. I mean, all of it. I recall going to the newspaper and watching as they put the hot metal typesetting . . . Now I’m really ageing myself.’’

The aspirations of the teenaged Fifield have been fulfilled. Due in large part to singular determination and motivation, but perhaps mostly to a yearning to always know more. At 17 she went to Victoria University to study English. That was followed by a post-grad year at Canterbury University studying journalism.

Her first reporting job was as Whakata¯ ne branch reporter for the Rotorua Daily Post (where she woke up every morning to a view of Whakaari). Stints in Rotorua, then Wellington with NZPA were followed by a fellowship to London in 2000, where she spent three months volunteering at the Financial Times.

‘‘It was such an opportunity. I knew I couldn’t come back.’’ Three months became 13 years, including stints in several continents and coverage of wars, uprisings, and the rise and fall of nations, dictators and presidents. After four years as the Financial Times’ White House correspondent, she spent a year at

Harvard on a Nieman fellowship, then joined the Washington Post as its Tokyo bureau chief.

North Korea became a particular fascination. Its secretive leader was the subject of her first book, The Great Successor: The Secret Rise and Rule of Kim Jong-un, published last year. ‘‘It started as personal project because I’d been there a bunch of times when [Jong-un’s father] Jong-il was in charge. I thought there’s just no way this system can survive into a third Kim.

‘‘Then I returned for the first time in six years in 2014, and I was astonished. No longer was it still existing, it was getting stronger. It’s a puzzle and I’m never going to solve the puzzle . . . I’m not done with North Korea. It’s got to end one day and I want to cover that.’’

The book was largely written in Tokyo, where she, Jude and Christine were based for four years before going to Beijing. It was no easy undertaking, and it may be some time before her next book.

‘‘What I discovered from this one is that you really have to want to write it. For two years I was getting up at 4am, writing for two hours before getting my son up and off to school and starting my day job. I’d love to write a book about China, but I have to seize on the right idea.’’

Foreign journalists walk a thin and awkward line in China, where local journalists ‘‘basically have to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party’’, and where transparency and accountability are not high priorities.

‘‘A lot of what we know about the early missteps and cover-ups in the coronavirus outbreak has actually come from foreign journalists. Or a few fearless independent Chinese journalists. But almost every one of them has been detained or disappeared. Some times they’ve re-appeared after a couple of months expressing their regrets at not toeing the party line.

‘‘They see us as very, very pesky. We tell a version of events that doesn’t agree with theirs. That’s why they’re expelling so many journalists. Sixteen were expelled in March, including my colleague. They expel them with impunity. It’s totally normal for me to be accosted by police in the course of doing my job. It comes from the top.

‘‘There is a strongman president now and the space for discussion and freedom of speech has shrunk remarkably since he came to power in 2013, but particularly in the past couple of years.’’

Her experiences in China, combined with the dwindling state of the industry the world over, has made Fifield as committed as ever to journalism.

‘‘Democracy dies in darkness,’’ she says.

Now is a very paradoxical time. All our websites are getting an astronomical number of clicks because there is so much desire for information and to find out what’s going on, yet all the advertising is drying up. If our business model was unsustainable before, it’s even more so now.

‘‘This is a really dire situation. There have been a lot of layoffs in the American media industry in the past few weeks. It’s a very tricky time to be a journalist anywhere.’’

For the past two months Fifield has been working to Beijing time, filing stories nightly from a small granny-flat she has rented as an office in Havelock North. It’s her first decent spell in New Zealand in more than 20 years, and she’s been struck by some changes. Two stand out.

‘‘The income disparity is quite striking. It feels much worse than it used to be. When I was at university there was one homeless man in Wellington. Now there are loads.

‘‘The other thing is the everyday usage of te reo, which I think is amazing. To see it so widely used in everyday conversation is just beautiful.’’

When China opens up again, Fifield and Jude will return to Beijing.

In the meantime she’s making the most of being home, including reading the newspaper cover to cover every morning.

‘‘They [Chinese authorities] see us as very, very pesky. We tell a version of events that doesn’t agree with theirs.’’