So this is our exciting day because we are officially starting the Gay Talese journalism course. Traditionally we've understood journalism and research as this method of just collecting information, organizing it, and then expressing it. But then along came a man named Gay Talese and he transformed journalism. He transformed the way we understood... Okay, so we created something called... which is the idea that journalism can by itself be literature. The Gay Talese method is going to teach us how to be creative, how to be imaginative, and how to engage with reality and engage with people, because we don't teach you this in school. In fact, we teach you the opposite: don't explore, just do what the teacher tells you to do.
We need to learn this. Well, he learned this at home. The reason why is that his father was a tailor, and he had a tailoring business in New Jersey, and his... took care of the business. Well, his father made the clothes, okay? So what does it have to do with exploration and reflection? His mother was responsible for the business aspects. So these very wealthy people would come to the shop and order very nice suits, and her job was to deal with them. But it's...
Actually very hard to deal with rich people. They make me very demanding. So her strategy was to become their... and how to become someone's friend. What do you do in order to become someone's friend? What must you do? Not talk. They have to pay... listen. Okay? You understand, a family living room, the mother would just sit down on the couch talking with these very wealthy people, and she would talk just by listening, okay? So her strategy for this is that I am interested. So that's how she became friends with all these very wealthy people, even though she herself wasn't that wealthy, because she had a mindset that whoever came into her living room, whoever was a client, was first and foremost a friend, and she was interested in this person. She was interested in people. So she would spend hours and hours just listening to that person talk and talk. And so you can say that this is, okay, exploration.
But in the other room the father would by himself sit and work on the clothes, right? I'm not sure if you've seen tailors' work, but they are very precise, they are very exact, they're very disciplined, they're very patient. So you could spend days and days in his room just working on a piece of...
Right? This is the idea of reflection, of perfection. So exploration is the pursuit of... and reflection is a pursuit of... This is the Gay Talese, this is the Gay Talese research method. This is what I'll be teaching you. This is something that will not just help you become a better writer but someone who will be much more creative and a much more effective researcher. So even if you are going into the sciences, I guarantee you that the skills you'll be learning in this class will help you wherever you go.
I want you to go around Beijing and take pictures. Again, the idea is contrast. Remember that here he says New York is a city of things unnoticed. New York is a city of contrast. I want you to do the same thing for Beijing. Take your camera and take pictures of things that other people would not notice, okay? And take pictures of things that are contrast of each other.