In the course of a rather long career in journalism – much of it as a foreign correspondent – I have had a few unusual experiences in making sure my reports arrived on deadline. I found myself reflecting upon this a few weeks ago as I emerged from Beijing’s famous Tiananmen Square in a trishaw at around 10 p.m., headed for my hotel a mile or so away so that I could file a story for my newspaper.

The occasion was a speech by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker in the Great Hall of the People in which he had acknowledged that China’s concerns over the future of the dollar as an international currency were justified. It was an important speech but rather on the long side (as Volcker himself admitted), and did not wind up until near 10 p.m.

Sacrificing the final courses of a banquet (organized by the Institute of International Finance and the Bank of China) in the Great Hall, I stumbled into the night in search of a taxi, only to be directed by guards to Tiananmen Square. I was not confronted with tanks there, but the taxis made it pretty clear with flashing lights and blaring horns that they had no intention of stopping.

With less than an hour to go to deadline my anxiety was mounting, when an aging trishaw pedaled by an equally elderly man appeared as if out of nowhere, and I climbed aboard, with just enough Chinese to tell him the name of the hotel where I was staying. Our progress was, shall we say, rather stately -- myself in evening suit and he in shorts, baggy pants and open shirt.

My “chauffeur” seemed to have inexhaustible stamina as he pedaled stoically along Jianguomenwai toward the hotel. He also appeared intent on dicing with death as we swung precariously through crowded intersections, and when I was not wondering whether disaster would arrive before my deadline, I was being subjected to a bone-jarring jolting.

We made it with just half an hour to spare and, by virtue of some fast typing, I was able to get the story to Singapore on time. It was only later that my sense of achievement gave way to feeling rather foolish as I learned that I could have taken the subway – and that I’d paid the trishaw driver well over the odds in my anxiety to sprint to my hotel.

This was not my most bizarre filing experience. An earlier one qualifies better. The occasion was the 2000 annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Prague, where self-proclaimed anarchists had infiltrated the ranks of anti-Bretton Woods lobbies. Their favorite tactic was tearing up cobbled streets with iron bars and hurling stones at police or bystanders.

I had attended an official evening function where I managed to buttonhole a couple of visiting finance ministers and needed to get back and file a story (this time to the Emerging Markets newspaper). But when I tried to leave the building, I learned that police had locked us all in as a safety precaution due to a massive demonstration outside.

Anxious to return to the paper’s office and meet my deadline, I began looking around for side exits and found one that gave onto a dark square outside the building. It looked safe enough, if eerily deserted, and seeing what I took for empty beer bottles strewn around the square, I thought that the protesters with whom the police had been clashing must have been in a party mood.

It was only when my eyes and nose started streaming and my throat began to burn that I realized that the empty “bottles” were in fact canisters still dispensing tear gas. The door through which I had exited had managed to lock itself, and I had to foot it rapidly across the square to a mercifully placed hotel where I splashed water liberally to get rid of the tear gas. But I did meet the deadline.

Sometimes filing problems can be overcome with a little “persuasion,” as was the case in the early 1980s when I needed to send a report urgently from Jakarta to the Far Eastern Economic Review. In those days we filed via the offices of an international news agency which telexed reports to its Hong Kong office, from where they were relayed to the FEER.

I handed my copy to a telex operator, who nodded toward an “in” basket. I indicated that it needed to go quickly but he looked doubtful and said, “Very busy, lah.” Only when I noticed that the other copy waiting to be sent was yellow with age did I cotton on. Retrieving my story, I slipped something with more than a passing resemblance to a banknote between the pages. The operator took the story eagerly from my hand and began sending right away.

Sometimes persuasion doesn’t work. In the early 1970s I found myself in East Germany – Leipzig to be precise – having been invited to cover the famous trade fair there (on behalf of The Times of London). Officials had briefed me on a new initiative by the then-German Democratic Republic to gain diplomatic recognition from Britain, and I was anxious to file the story.

In those days, we still filed by phone to headphone-wearing copytakers in London, who took down and typed every word, letter and comma with loving care. I was advised that I needed to book a call well in advance to be sure of getting a line to London, and so I placed my order at 1p.m. for a 6 p.m. call – leaving me ample time to transcribe notes and read documents before writing and dictating the story.

The telegraph clerk who took the order suddenly called my name and shouted “Kabine nummer drei (kiosk number 3),” and when I protested that the call was five hours early, she barked that if I didn’t accept it right away it would be canceled for the day. I took it and, juggling with notes and trying to get my thoughts together, managed to get a story out. It actually read rather well the following day – proving the value of deadline discipline. ❶