Giovanna Botteri, a leading woman from China

From the reports for Samarkand to the wars followed as an envoy, Giovanna Botteri has always been used to being at the center of the uncomfortable news, but in the passage from the US to China last December she could not imagine what she would have to face. Hers is a historic year, rightly recognized by the Ischia Award and by the Luchetta presidency, which even sees her portrayed by street art. It is also important for the controversy and solidarity sparked by her image which put her at the center of the debate on women's freedom. For all of this she was definitely the journalist of the year. '' Everything is related in some way. I told about China where it all started and all this controversy about hair and t-shirts exploded when the Italians were all at home in their pajamas, with the hairdressers closed, with the computer near the bed I anticipated something that belongs to everyone '', he says in an interview with ANSA. What has changed in her after all that has happened? '' Nobody leaves this year without having changed, it's impossible. For me it sure was much more traumatic. I settled in China in August, I arrived from America in Beijing and around December the first strange things began. We started seeing news of the mysterious pneumonia on we chat, with Wuhan doctors talking. Then in January the acceleration, the first deaths but practically nothing was known. With the first holidays of the year of the Rat, very symbolic in Chinese history, everything fell apart. In Italy when it arrived you had somehow already seen it, while for us in China it was something you had no idea what it was. There were moments of panic and we experienced fear. I had only two technicians who alternated between home and office without ever seeing anyone, in a foreign country, while they organized the lazarets. It was hard. Then after two months it arrived in Italy in Europe ''. Yet she has often found herself in dangerous situations, in war zones. '' I was a war correspondent many times, from Sarajevo to the former Yugoslavia, but you covered the service then returned home to your normalcy. This time there was no corner of earth to return to your normalcy, and this is the first time this has happened. With distances that are impossible to travel, borders that close and true isolation ''. Then as the world was falling apart, the controversy exploded over her way of dressing, her natural hair, her image. '' I'm not on social media. I was very far away, I was working, I did not have the perception of what was happening. Then at a certain point men and women, young and old, wrote to me, talking not about me but about themselves, about what they saw at stake in that precise situation. I have almost nothing to do with this story that simply happened when a society questions itself and the models that reveal themselves, the cages in which it no longer wants to be. You are locked in the house, people are dying around you, you don't want to know anything. It's time to discuss ourselves and feel accepted. '' Did what happened change anything in her perception of herself? '' What does change mean? I haven't colored my hair and I don't wear designer clothes. I believe that it is the right of each of us to express ourselves at our best, to be who we are. I have brilliant and prepared colleagues who wear stiletto heels and always have perfect hair, It doesn't even have to be the opposite model but only how best you feel. I am a journalist, I am not a showgirl, and I try to be dressed in a civil and decent way but as a working professional. I am a journalist, I write, work, reportage, my job is all here: going on television, being in my place. People don't expect Hollywood hairstyles from me, they expect to hear the news, to know what's going on. '' Which means for her looking forward to 2021, given that she has a daughter, even thinking about her daughter. '' I think that this of young people is the big part that perhaps we have missed as a narrative in 2020 because in some way we have told a pandemic on the side of the weak and seen young people as strange entities, those who do not get sick, the criminalized infectors . In reality it is a generation that has experienced a historical moment of enormous importance, they found themselves closed at home without school together with their parents in smart working. I believe that in 2021 this generation that represents a segment of society so affected will come out with its needs, its anger and we will have to deal with it, to be paid in a brutal way. 2021 does not promise much easier, at least until the summer the road is all uphill. We must appeal to the white heart, the best there is in all of us to overcome this moment. It takes altruism, generosity, ability. I believe that this 2020 will bring us all the disasters in 2021 and there we will play our ability to be a country, citizens, parents and be a society capable of summarizing the values ​​of the past and the future for a very difficult present '' '' what strikes me a lot is that when the Chinese press talks about the fact that the East has not had a second wave, it says that too much freedom in these cases ends up being a handicap, because the invasiveness necessary to avoid it in a free West does not can be applied. Here I think we will have to deal with the price we pay for freedom and democracy. I claim the right to be free and also healthy and it is true that individual freedom is a great issue. We are striving for the good of all, and young people feel on their shoulders the weight of the future of an entire society ''. On a personal level, what are you asking for in 2021? '' At work I feel the need to get closer to home, at a time when it becomes so difficult to be apart. I have always lived the world and distances as a fun challenge now seem penalizing for affections, for isolation. For 2021 I would look for a path that takes me not so far from home ''.