When I moved to Beijing in 2005 to write, I was accustomed to hearing the story of China's transformation told in vast, sweeping strokes - involving one fifth of humanity and great pivots of politics and economics.
Fact-checking can wreak havoc on Chinese political mythology.
Lei Feng is reported to have died in a freak accident in 1962 - struck by a falling telephone pole.
The fastest way to get around the southern Chinese city of Foshan is on the back of a motorcycle-for-hire.
By the Nineties, so many people were moonlighting and creating their own professional identities that China generated a brisk new business in the printing of business cards.
Walking, it turns out, is a sublime way to get to know people in China. They're used to meeting strangers on the road. Many here understand what it feels like to walk a long way.
Valuing the road over the goal was a Taoist goal in itself.
For all that we can see from the road in China, there is a lot that we cannot see. We miss what's behind the trees, the cover-ups, the darker side of things - the ingredients that so often drive a reporting trip.
China's Communist Party is wary of independent-minded movements.
We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions.
In Chinese, there are an impressive number of ways to describe saying nothing at all.
It can take the uninitiated a minute to realize that 'Gangnam Style' is satire.
