The author of this article celebrates the successful installation of the solar panels with the children. [Photo by Erik Nilsson]

Sleeping next to yak dung in a Tibetan nomad's tent beneath a glacier in an isolated swath of Qinghai province's Yushu.

Catching bees in my mouth — that is, deep-fried bugs that "buzz" between chopsticks pinched by ethnic Miao women in Guizhou province. Hosts sing, accentuating Z sounds, and wave the "flying" insects in front of guests' faces as they snap at the air until they successfully seize them with their teeth. That's after guzzling rice moonshine from an ox horn.

Eating horse intestines on the floor of the house of an elderly ethnic Kazak nomad, who hunts with golden eagles on horseback in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region.

Covering the Beijing Olympics, including reporting from the Paralympics' opening ceremony in 2008, and working for the Games' official publication again in 2022.

Creating and hosting innovative award-winning new media videos with hundreds of millions of views for such events as the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, the two sessions (China's legislature and top political advisory body) and the 19th Party Congress.

China has so much to offer, especially to journalists covering what is appropriately often called "the story of the century."

I never imagined I'd end up doing any of these things when I first arrived in China in 2005.

Somehow, along the way, I've not only documented what I've seen but also became involved in the story.

The Rebirth of Hope

On May 12, 2008, a magnitude-8 temblor unleashed fierce seismic violence in southwestern China. In just over a minute, starting at 2:28 pm, the Earth's crust split and a portal to hell opened in Sichuan province.

The Wenchuan quake is one of the most extreme temblors ever measured. It left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing, annihilated millions of buildings and left millions of people homeless. It traumatized tens of millions more.