Bajo la mirada del dragón despierto

China is far. It is the first thing a journalist stationed in a corner of the world learns that we have never paid much attention to. When Mavi Doñate arrived in Beijing in the summer of 2015 with vertigo nestled in her stomach, she fulfilled a dream that had accompanied her since she was a child: to be a correspondent. What she could not imagine then is that she was about to star in one of the most informative stages of this first part of the century. Mavi Doñate has an innate gift, a mixture of intuition and subtlety, to tell stories. Her personal account of the six years she lived in the Asian giant, elaborated from the memories and voices that were left out of daily information, offers us a valuable portrait of China today. These pages go through the contrasts of a country in constant reinvention and take us from international politics to daily life; from unbridled modernity to the most deeply rooted traditions; from the hustle and bustle in the streets for the New Year celebrations to the silence of the worst days of the pandemic, and they remind us that, for decades, we have lived with our backs turned to that ancient dragon that was waiting for its moment to wake up.