Changing the guard
China may have changed since Mao's death but it still benefits from his Revolution, argues Chris Brazier.

CHINESE VOICES - The retired worker

I was a teenage Red Guard
Mo Bo looks back on the furious years of the Cultural Revolution.

Of rice and riches
The communes disbanded, peasants setting up in business - Stephen Endicott reports on the changes in a village he has known for five years.

View from the village
An illustrated NI guide to the shifting shape of rural China.

The beckoning kitchen
The swing away from communal living is putting the burden back on women claims Marie-Ange Donzé.

CHINESE VOICES - The blind woman

CHINA - THE FACTS

Ghettoblasters and foreign devils
Politicians' edicts about Western influence can cause great confusion, as Jay Lawrence found when he taught in Beijing.

CHINESE VOICES - The tailor

CHINESE VOICES - The unemployed teenager

Bamboo curtains of the mind
Anuradha Vittachi explains how our view of China tells us more about ourselves than about the Chinese.

SIMPLY... Modern Chinese history

Barefoot business
Mao's China was famous for its health care. Now the barefoot doctors are setting up in business, as Sheila Hillier reports.

Thanks to Terry Cannon and China Now for their help in constructing this issue.

We have been worrying a bit about these editor's letters. In recent issues they have tended to focus on the subject of the month - to be a more personal extension of the Keynote article which offers 'the NI line'. But our original intention was somewhat different. In a way we designed the letter as a companion to the Second Look column in which every month one of our contributors is challenged about some of the journalistic tricks they use to get their message across. By stimulating thought in this way we hoped to make a small contribution to readers' awareness of bias in the other media they encounter.

The editor's letter, meanwhile, seemed a good way of helping to break down the mystique and air of authority which much of the media wrap around themselves. Naturally we do our best to offer an authoritative, in-depth account of whatever subject we tackle - we want readers to trust our view of things. But we felt we would merit the trust much more if we allowed them a glimpse of the process which ends in a magazine flopping onto your doormat - instead of appearing to give The Word from on high, an immaculate conception in a full-colour cover.

The problem was that editors started to wonder what else there was to say - where does telling you about the NI stop being useful and start being self-indulgent? My own feeling is that there is a lot more which would be of interest about the way the magazine is put together but that the process is simply too familiar to us for it to seem worth revealing.

Take the mention of my visit to China in the Keynote article on Page 4. Were I not about to tell you differently here, you might well assume that this was a journey undertaken specially for the magazine, a long and in-depth field trip which formed the basis of what specialist knowledge I possess. And perhaps it would be in our interests to let you carry on thinking that, since it conveys more authority upon us.

In fact I was there for a month's holiday, much of it spent in the far-flung reaches of Tibet. And I had no idea at that point that I was to be editing an issue about the country just a few months later. As we've said before, the NI is too modest a concern to be able to finance such research trips very often.

But all experience on the ground is invaluable, whether on holiday or doing the research that various United Nations organizations contract from us. And the taste of China that I had in August fanned the flames of an old fascination - launching me into the talks with experts, the devouring of books and articles, statistics and photographs, which is the prelude to any issue of the NI taking concrete form.

At the end of it all I feel I have much more understanding of what is going on in China - and I hope I've managed to pass some of that on.

Letters
Letter from Mawere
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Carol Fewster
Reviews: including Chinua Achebe classic
Country profile: Gabon

COVER PHOTO: Claude Sauvageot
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER