How to Write a Great Story in China

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The first story I did like could not be more in some ways been out but also as you'll see kind of enduring I suppose which is I wrote about the popularity of basketball in China it had just begun to take off. Another story came upon really sort of in the same way which is I was walking home and there was a crowd of people standing at the base of the building and I went up and I said what's going on and they said oh there's a there's a guy up there who's going to jump, so I looked up and I was like why is he going to jump? And everybody in the crowd had a different explanation for why he was threatening suicide.

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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