China

Best Story Opening Of the Year?

By Simon Elegant | March 17, 2009 | +

Story openings –ledes in reporter jargon–have to grab, whether they be for a five hundred word news piece or a thousand page novel (“I was in bed with my catamite when Ali the butler knocked on the door to say the bishop had arrived for tea” –or something along those lines would probably keep you reading on, wouldn’t it? And, yes, it is from a real novel. Not quite a thousand pages but not far off. A free China blog t-shirt for the first correct ID.) Anyway, as other bloggers have pointed out, fellow journalists can only stand back and gape in envy at this spectacular specimen on a recent Reuters story by Emma Graham-Harrison:

BEIJING (Reuters) – Only two memories brought tears to Sun Yaoting’s eyes in old age — the day his father cut off his genitals, and the day his family threw away the pickled remains that should have made him a whole man again at death.

(Here’s the link if you want to read the rest of the piece.)

 

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  • davidrr1

    Anthony Burgess – Earthly Powers :) Classic opener!

  • http://thegulfblog.com/2009/03/17/best-opening-line-ever/ Best opening line ever « The Gulf blog

    [...] Palace, Pickled genitals, Reuters, Time Magazine trackback Time Magazine’s China Blog quotes what has to be the most gripping and intriguing opening line for a story. It is taken from Emma [...]

  • maesong


    This is the best story for u guys forcasting the collapse of ur god damned country. God got where you start and where you end. Enjoy it with tremble and shiver.

  • m5smith

    If you’re serious about the free t-shirt, then James Joyce’s Ulysses?

  • dunklerlord

    interesting story.

    The Chinese eunuchs, however, have always had great influences on the Chinese emperors before the foreign rule of the Manchu dynasty, thus often very power-hungry.

    They were responsible for the deadly innter struggles of the Chinese government of the Ming-Empire, the last Han-Chinese Empire.
    The most infamous eunuch at that time was Wei Zhongxian, who became the second most powerful “man” in the Chinese Empire because of his personal bond to the Chinese Emperor.He was even called the “Nine Thousand-year-old”, meaning that he would become Nine Thousand-years old, where the Chinese Emperor was called “ten Thousand-year-old”.
    The eunuchs were stronly disliked by the confucian mandarines.The government was thus splitted into “pro-eunuchs” and “pro-mandarines”

    This greatly weakened the national unity of the Chinese Empire, which was finally ruined by the peasant-rebels and Manchu invaders in 17.century.

    The Chinese (Han), who had always been proud of the Chinese civilisation, were forced to shave their hairs and wear pigtails like the nomadic Manchu-conquerors.

    The beginning of the end of the Chinese Huaxia civilisation has begun since.

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