How to Write a Long-form Narrative for The New Yorker
An interview with Jiayang Fan about “The Accused,” a story on a Chinatown community bank.
In January 2015, Jiayang Fan, a writer for The New Yorker, heard from her colleague that a small, family-owned bank in Chinatown was brought to trial by the government. It was an unlikely target: in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, Abacus Federal Savings Bank — with less than 280 million dollar in assets — was the only bank indicted for mortgage fraud.
After 10 months of research, Fan pieced together a 6816-word story, titled “The Accused”, that illuminated more than the trial — the entire Chinese enclave’s financial way of life was under siege. In court, Abacus was accused of selling “fraudulent mortgages” to Fannie Mae by falsifying job titles, income and assets for its clients. But the bank had a surprisingly low default rate: In 2009, only 0.36 percent of the loans was in trouble, well below the national average. It turned out that in Chinatown, the borrowers, mainly fresh-off-the-boat immigrants, lived in a cash-only world. They lacked a credit history or documented income. But Abacus was confident that its clients — who could be selling vegetables or running a nearby restaurant — would pay back the loans. Eventually, the bank was acquitted.
To start the reporting, Fan visited the bank’s office in Manhattan’s Chinatown and the New York state court house. Then she took a circuitous journey to interview members of the family that owned the bank, former employees, academics, and lawyers. At one point, she tracked down a hair salon in Bensonhurst, run by Jie Chen, an immigrant who reported to the police that Abacus stole his money during his loan application, which triggered the mortgage fraud investigation. But Chen was reluctant to talk. To get him to open up, Fan got a haircut.
“Sometimes as a journalist, you have to be creatively flexible,” Fan said. “As long as you are upfront about your identity, why not? You get a haircut and blend in a little bit.”
Fan grew up reading The New Yorker, the bible for long-form narratives. After moving to the U.S. from China at eight, she studied Philosophy and English at Williams College and landed a job as a fact-checker at The New Yorker. Fluent in Chinese, she tracked down sources for Peter Hessler and Evan Osnos, both established writers on China for the magazine, which taught her reporting skills. Today, she is a staff writer based in New York, reporting on China, American politics and culture.
This fall, I met Fan at a cafe in Harlem on a Saturday afternoon, a year after I came across the community bank story from The New Yorker. As a Chinese student, I was intrigued and encouraged by the reporting behind the piece: it was clear that the writer could slip between two worlds and meld English and Chinese sources into one story. Such bilingual and bicultural fluency is something I admire and try to cultivate in my own journalism.
I was also curious about the secrets behind a good long-form narrative. At The New Yorker, the editors have one key criteria for a story idea — something that hosts a large “sociocultural residence,” Fan said. For instance, one rural Chinese woman’s suicide will not likely make it into the publication, but repeated cases of suicides in villages in the region will do. In her piece, rather than focusing on an individual case of bank fraud, Fan presented how Chinese immigrants, lacking a credit history and often paying in cash, navigated their personal finances once they arrived in a new country. As she fleshed out the details, the story went beyond the trial and shed light on the entire financial way of life for an immigrant community.
Fan also portrayed the childhood of the bank’s owner Mr. Sung, which played into his ambition and austerity. “In long-form journalism, you want to give a sense of the character’s motivations and the conditions of their life, and why they became to be what they are,” she said. Sung’s family left their home in Sichuan, China, and arrived in the United States in 1951, after his father, owner of a brush-bristle manufacturer, received a “Treaty Trader visa.” Although Sung’s family was wealthier than most immigrants, he had to take care of the family, earned tuition for his law degree, thus learning to live frugally.
Furthermore, Fan tried to replicate a character’s perspective by explaining the “pressure that are being exerted upon a subject, in a way that the subject feels it,” she said. When Chen, the owner of the hair salon, applied for a loan at Abacus, his bank teller Ken Yu, who came from the same hometown, stole Chen’s down payment. Even though Yu had confessed to the crime under oath, Chen still trusted his countryman and blamed the bank. Fan let readers hear his voice: “It was all the bank,” he said. “Lawyers, bankers — they are all certified crooks.” To help readers understand Chen’s irrationality, Fan further explained the importance of property ownership to immigrants, the difficulty of their lives and their general distrust of government and large institutions.
Lastly, history helps illuminate the present. Fan interviewed professors who explained the evolution of banking. In the past, loans were issued based on trust, reputation and one’s exposure in the community. Dishonest borrowers can face threats or ostracism in a close-knit community. Abacus, one of the few banks available to immigrants in Chinatown, essentially ran an old-fashioned lending model. In modern banking, however, lending has become faceless transactions. Referencing the history highlights the irony that Abacus was put on trial when complex derivatives products led to the collapse of housing market in 2008.
Fan also traced parts of American history that shaped the isolated and inward-looking nature of Chinatowns in the U.S. today. For one thing, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 deterred Chinese immigrants from getting jobs in the mainstream society. “You need to sip through and see what are really relevant to the story,” she said, “and how do they illuminate the story.”
