News Is My Job

One of the first women journalists in China, Edna Lee Booker arrived in 1922 and threw herself into the story, snagging a number of exclusive interviews with warlords and also with Sun Yat-sen and Mao Tse-tung. She worked on the Shanghai newspaper China Press, and was also the Shanghai stringer for the International News Service, InterNews. Her book was a bestseller on publication in 1940 and was hugely influential in strengthening American support for the Chinese government of Chiang Kai-shek.