Every year, members of China Daily's Cover Story team travel extensively across China and the world, reporting on the issues and challenges confronting people from all walks of life in the most populous nation on earth.

Following on from Voices from the Ground, this is the second collection of reports from a team that has earned high praise and many awards for its outstanding, in-depth reportage.

The scope of subjects is wide. Healthcare and social issues, working conditions, the environment, technological advances, culture and the arts, and the ongoing changes in the world's second-largest economy form the backbone of Unheard Voices, Unseen Lives.

What emerges from the reports included in this collection is a real sense of the disparate forces at play in China today, all told in the words of people for whom these issues are everyday realities. In this way, the team's reporters convey a sense of the grassroots life that exists in this vast and geographically diverse country, one far removed from the apparently effortless ease and sophistication of increasingly internationalized centers such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Within the pages of this book, the reader will find the "real" China, a land where closeknit village life rubs shoulders uneasily with its antithesis, the sprawling megatropolises, such as Chongqing, that are home to populations far in excess of some nation states.

Some of the stories are uplifting, others less so.

Some deal with the benefits bestowed by the country's rapid rise to global economic prominence: The rags to riches success stories, the improvements in healthcare and education, the rise in living standards and the resurgence of national pride felt by many Chinese citizens.

Other stories focus on the downside: Heart-rending tales of loneliness among the nation's many millions of migrant workers, the environmental challenges that have become a major cause for concern among the nation's leaders, and the changes to family life that are a seemingly inevitable part of the process of urbanization and development.

The reports in Unheard Voices, Unseen Lives provide a view of the country that is both panoramic and microscopic as the lives of individuals and the communities in which they live come into focus. The macro picture emerges from the micro in a way that is never judgemental or prescriptive. The reporters present their stories without personal comment or interjection and, as with all the best journalism, simply allow the facts to speak for themselves.

Zhu Ling

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of China Daily