How Can You Get Back to Basic Reporting on a Story Like That?

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The story was called born red because in Chinese there's a term that if you were born red it meant that that was your essential nature and that turned out to be the defining characteristic about Xi Jinping. He used to wear green military pants sometimes even when he was wearing his civilian top on his outfit was like suddenly like a wonderful little tell so I just was sort of harvesting all of these details from these old Chinese interviews. At the time Hong Kong was still a more navigable place it's now more dangerous to quote people and to talk to people in Hong Kong you have to be more careful about it.

Evan Osnos is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury.

“I'm always trying to get inside a subculture. That's the thing that I think has been the most enduring, attractive element for me. Is there a world that has its own manners and vocabulary and internal rhythms and status structure? And who looks down on whom? And why? And who venerates whom? Who's a big deal in these worlds? And if I can get into that, it doesn't even really matter to me that much what the subculture is. I'm fascinated by trying to map that thing out.”

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