海角大神

Start with your family. Add friends, neighbors, colleagues at work or school, and the serendipitous encounters you have while walking your dog, shopping for dinner, or filling your gas tank. You probably have dozens of acquaintances. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar hypothesized that you probably top out at about 150.

New acquaintances arise; old ones recede. Beyond 150 or so 鈥� and even with Facebook and other digital wonders 鈥� we pretty much see strangers.

The point of good journalism is to help us understand what we can鈥檛 really know beyond our 150.聽Now, imagine your job is to make sense of a country of 1.4 billion people 鈥� 10 million times the Dunbar number 鈥� and that that country is changing at hyperspeed. That was Peter Ford鈥檚 assignment for the past 10 years as the Monitor鈥檚 China correspondent.

Actually, it was only part of his assignment. He had to keep an eye on all of East Asia. Other correspondents contributed. Still, Peter鈥檚 beat was roughly one-third of humanity. 聽鈥淚 felt daunted every day when I woke up,鈥� he told me recently.

His advantage, though, was where he woke up. He was based in China, living there day to day, feeling its rhythms, breathing its not always pleasant air. A visiting journalist, businessperson, scholar, or tourist questions, listens, observes, and comes away with a reasonable sense of the who, what, when, and where of a nation that has risen from dire poverty to become a world-beating economic power in two generations. A resident correspondent like Peter aims for the why. He does that via both careful journalism and the osmosis that is part of living and working in a culture. The small gesture a person makes over tea; the banter in a taxi; the comments, asides, and jokes heard more than once 鈥� these rarely get into a news report, but put flesh on a people and a nation.

What鈥檚 the biggest change he鈥檚 seen聽in 10 years? 鈥淭he growth of self-assurance,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he Chinese people feel that their country should be taken seriously in the world.鈥� I鈥檒l stop there and ask you to go to Peter鈥檚 valedictory cover story (click here). In 2,000 words, you鈥檒l get a sprawling, intimate, serious, lighthearted, and, above all, honest account of the China he knows.

Peter鈥檚 new assignment is senior global correspondent. If anyone has the background to try to tackle that, he does. Besides his stint in Beijing, he has been based in Rome, Sri Lanka, New York, Central America, Buenos Aires, the Middle East, Moscow, and Paris.聽

Succeeding Peter in Beijing is Michael Holtz, who has reported for the Monitor from China and elsewhere in Asia and is immersing himself in language studies this summer. Soon, he鈥檒l be waking up in China every day. I鈥檓 guessing he鈥檒l feel daunted. He鈥檒l learn directly and by osmosis and he鈥檒l share what he learns with us. And in the years ahead, we鈥檒l come to a better understanding of 1.4 billion people we can鈥檛 possibly know but we definitely need to know about.