Sometimes nothing can mean everything

Most of the time, a talkative interviewee is a boon for journalists looking to provide as much detail as possible in their reports. However, when it comes to disasterrelated stories, I think less is more.

My most memorable experience of 2018 was visiting Sichuan province to interview survivors of the magnitude 8 earthquake that devastated Wenchuan county on the afternoon of May 12, 2008, killing more than 70,000 people.

It was there I realized that “the more, the better” is sometimes not true.

Ten years ago, I watched television as Xue Xiao was being rescued. Then a school student, he became known as “Coke Boy” after telling emergency workers that he wanted a Coke as he was being pulled from piles of rubble.

At the time, I thought he was outgoing.

But in May, when Xue, whose right arm was amputated after the disaster, sat in front of me, I found it hard to open a conversation with him, even though I was careful not to reopen old wounds and avoided asking questions related to the quake.

When the temblor hit, Xue was a 17-year-old high school student. In 2003, as a university senior, he worked as an intern at Coca-Cola China in Shanghai, and after graduation, he returned to the company’s branch in Sichuan.

He repeatedly stressed he had accepted what had happened in the past, but he said very little about his experiences or job.

The 28-year-old often wore an unnatural smile and frequently looked out of the window during our hourlong chat.

I got so few details from Xue that, initially, it seemed like a failed interview.

But I got much more because his evasive replies were the best expressions of his experiences and illustrated the present reality of his life and work.

An over-talkative interviewee almost never results in a good report for a journalist because details don’t only exist in words. Silence or gestures sometimes convey more information.

In my first years as a journalist, I urged people to say a lot, thinking I would be a failure if my interviewees said nothing. Now I realize that observation is the magic key. “Nothing” can also mean “everything”.