"Talking about peace and human rights is easy," says Cheung, sitting in coffee shop on Taipei's Yungkang Street. "You can talk about them over coffee, or in a university classroom. But this kind of discussion is pointless; there's no engagement. In contrast, those friends are putting their ideals into practice by putting their lives on the line," she adds in reference to two Japanese friends, forgetting for a moment that she is the one being interviewed.

Among the stories Cheung has chronicled over the course of her many years in the Middle East are those of Nahoko Takato, a long-term relief worker in Iraq, and Takashi Morizumi, a photographer documenting the realities of the war, both of whom are there in opposition to the wishes of their families and government. "One works under flame-filled skies to bring relief to the war's victims," says Cheung. "The other uses raw images to make people understand the calamitous consequences of the war. In my mind, their efforts are the true 'war on terror.'"

The happy moment Cheung shares with these smiling women and children, Palestinians living in the Jenin refugee camp, provides them with a moment's respite from the war.

Doing by writing

As a reporter who records and evaluates the events in a war zone, Cheung well understands that the pen is her weapon. Her clinical-yet-heartfelt writing has allowed her to be more than a journalist and stake out a distinctive niche in the Chinese-language media.

When talking about the Middle-Eastern conflicts that most absorb her, the normally fast-talking Cheung begins to speak even more rapidly. But, unlike most reporters, she rarely speaks aggressively; even when the conversation hits fever pitch, she remains sensitive in a way that lets you know she truly cares about the topic at hand.

Like the vast majority of Hong Kong people raised under British rule, Cheung grew up reading Louis Cha's chivalric novels and getting a British-style education. After completing high school and university in the UK, she earned a Master's degree in sociology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She also spent a period of time living the typical part-time-worker life. But then the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June 1989 occurred, an event that was no less shocking to her than it was to countless ethnic Chinese within and without China.

"As Hong Kong's 1997 return to China drew near," recalls Cheung, "people began to fear that China would make a mess of it once they took over. There was a mass exodus from the territory. My parents never considered emigrating until Tiananmen; it changed the way we thought." Seeing the bodies of the young students being carried out of Tiananmen Square, her parents, who had previously been optimistic about China's takeover of Hong Kong, were enraged and disheartened. Soon after, they emigrated to Canada.

"Tiananmen caused my family to emigrate," recalls Cheung. "It also showed me people's weakness when faced with power and violence. For the first time, I began to give these issues serious thought. My life changed largely as a consequence of Tiananmen, and I began thinking continuously about how to help the weak and persecuted be heard."

In 1991, Cheung returned to Hong Kong from Toronto and began her career as a journalist. Over the next few years, she reported on Asian and international affairs for the BBC and other international news agencies. She also worked as a correspondent for France's Reporters without Borders and a columnist for Hong Kong's Yazhou Zhoukan magazine.

In 1994, she made her first trip to the Middle East for the BBC. "For many years, the Chinese-language media had relied on foreign wire-service reports for information on these areas in conflict," explains Cheung. "But the reporters filing the reports were always under the sway of one side in these conflicts; the other side's voice was never heard. I began to wonder whether we were getting a balanced picture."

Cheung realized that a week's worth of on-location reporting wouldn't be enough to let her develop her own perspective on the conflicts. She therefore soon gave up her full-time position and began to work on a freelance basis.

Without a regular income, Cheung tightened her belt and began making many trips to war zones. She traveled alone through the always difficult and frequently war-wracked nations of the Middle East. She reported on Afghanistan before it was bombed by the US, and on the Kosovo conflict. She interviewed Xanana Gusmao, who became East Timor's first president after it regained independence from Indonesia; Cambodia's first prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, in the run-up to 1998's elections; and the ethnically Chinese women who were ignored after being raped during Indonesia's May 1998 riots. She even walked the route followed by the 17th Karmapa Lama when he fled Tibet in 1999.

Cheung's inner child shines through in the relative calm of El Salvador, where she took a break from work to pose for this photo with local children.

War-zone scares

Reporting from a war zone is a risky business, and Cheung has faced death many times as bullets and artillery shells have zoomed around her. Her career has taken her into danger in East Timor, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, and she scored a coup when she landed the first exclusive interview with Yasser Arafat in the Chinese-language media. The process of setting up and conducting that interview also provided her readers with a glimpse of the dangers and luck that are part and parcel of war reporting.

In 2002, Israeli units retaliated against a series of suicide bombings by Palestinian radicals by entering the West Bank, surrounding the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah with tanks, and implementing a round-the-clock curfew.

Cheung, who had been watching the situation in the Middle East very closely for some time, recognized that things were likely to escalate and began making preparations for a trip. When the news came out that Arafat was surrounded, she hopped on a flight to Palestine to cover the story.

"I covered fragments of the conflict while keeping a close eye on the news," recalls Cheung, who believes good things come to those who wait. "I thought that I might get a chance to interview Arafat, who was then besieged in his compound."

However, as the conflict intensified, the streets of Jerusalem emptied. With the heavy Israeli military presence keeping everything locked down, an interview became less likely.

But just as her travel funds were running out, the owner of the hostel in which she was staying (long popular with foreign journalists and peace workers), told her that he thought the curfew was about to be lifted.

"He said that the atmosphere had stabilized over the preceding couple of days," explains Cheung, "and that if I wanted to visit the Palestinian Authority compound, now was the time." She and two French journalists she had met at the hostel decided then and there to take the bus to a hospital 20 minutes from the headquarters and see how things developed.

"It was pretty much an open secret among the journalists who wanted to get to the Palestinian Authority," laughs Cheung. "When faced with an Israeli military lockdown, you had to somehow persuade a driver at this hospital to take you into the compound in an ambulance."

But once she got to the hospital, she found herself stuck--there were so many casualties there that the drivers were exhausted. After a difficult day spent waiting with almost nothing to eat, she decided to take a huge risk--she would violate the curfew and walk to the Palestinian Authority building.

All the businesses in bullet-riddled downtown Ramallah were locked up tight as Cheung and two others skulked along. Arriving at the gates of the Palestinian Authority building, they found an Israeli tank parked under a large tree by the side of the road.

"Usually, when I cover a war zone, work's the only thing on my mind; I have no fear and don't think about death," says Cheung, who considers herself a lucky person. "But being so close to Arafat and suddenly seeing a tank.... We were violating the curfew, and it was very possible that the Israeli military would shoot us on sight. I felt a chill run through me."

Former Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat's struggles to create an independent Palestine have become legendary. For a time, many hoped he would bring peace to the Middle East. Though he died in 2004, his still lives on in the hearts of Palestine's children.

Church of the mind

But here was an opportunity to interview a nearly legendary figure she had admired since childhood. She mustered her courage and walked towards the shattered building. Much to her surprise and in contrast to the devastation outside, the atmosphere inside was relatively relaxed. Perhaps because they were well acquainted with such standoffs, the soldiers standing watch were killing time by playing ping-pong, their rifles leaning against the walls.

"They saw me walking over, but were totally unconcerned," says Cheung.

Once she had explained why she was there, a guard went through her documents and the items she was carrying, then introduced her to a member of Arafat's staff. Having spent a couple of weeks confined to the compound, Arafat's people seemed to take heart from the sight of her Asian features, which told them that the world had noticed the events taking place in this small corner of it. The staffer quickly set up Cheung's interview with Arafat.

"I shuttled around the wrecked building with them and spent a night on a blood-spattered mattress," she says. "The next day, I interviewed Arafat."

Cheung's talk with Arafat left such a strong impression that her memories of it almost seem to carry her back to that day. Though he was kind, this old man whom the Israeli military despised to their core often ignored her questions, suiting himself by repeating his positions.

"He had aged," she says. "It was a little hard to recognize in him the powerful man who would stop at nothing to build a nation."

In spite of having lucked into a nearly impossible interview, there is a hint of disappointment and regret in her voice.

"There was another time in Afghanistan under the Taliban when I got lucky while virtually looking down the barrel of a gun," says Cheung. She explains that the Taliban government didn't permit anyone to take photos of anything "animate." Unaware of this, she went walking through the streets of Kabul just after she arrived, carrying a camera and interviewing people she met.

Before long, the "religious police" noticed that there was an Asian woman taking pictures everywhere, and arrested her.

"Later," says Cheung, who has dual Canadian and Hong Kong citizenship, "the Canadian diplomat who bailed me out told me that the religious police had the authority to execute people on the spot in those kinds of situations. Hearing that, I felt like I'd just received a get-out-of-Hell pass."

Though Cheung is braver than most and will risk nearly anything to get a story, she is also absolutely scrupulous about the finer points of a reporter's duty.

"Some people think that since I've been to so many places, I must have loads of souvenirs and war memorabilia," says Cheung. But she has declined all offers of war-related items, whether shell casings offered by the Israeli army or Palestinian guerillas, or broken fragments of sculptures presented by Iraqis. "I try hard not to bring back anything except stories and pictures," she explains.

Keeping a cool head

In 2002, she published Walking through Fire, a collection of her many years of war reporting and photography, thereby cementing her reputation as an independent war correspondent. In 2005, she published a second book, World Traveler, a more personal work that delved into what she'd seen and felt while reporting from around the world. In her third book, The Middle Eastern Scene, she has changed gears, opting for a well-researched, somewhat clinical take on the situation in the Middle East from the standpoint of international politics.

Her years of experience covering wars have made her the most prominent contemporary war correspondent in the Chinese-speaking world, and the bravery and heartfelt concern that fills her prose has made it enormously popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

For a time, it looked like her books might be released in mainland China, too. "But during the negotiations the mainland publisher tried sounding her out on the prospect of cutting chapters that would probably have offended the Israeli government, so she turned them down," says Kuo Pao-hsiao, editor-in-chief at Marco Polo Press, Cheung's Taiwanese publisher. "She stuck to her principles and gave up the opportunity to be published in China."

The battlefield perils she's faced have transformed into entertaining fodder for her readers. Always well-reviewed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, Cheung smiles constantly in public. Only a very few friends know how much exhaustive preparation, as well as loneliness and heartache, underlies each tough interview she's gotten.

"For a freelance journalist paid by the article and without the support of a media outlet," says Cheung, "the first challenge is raising travel expenses." She explains that in contrast to Western independent journalists, whose work is often funded through donations, "My travel expenses come out of the savings I've slowly hoarded from my writing income."

Back in her early days in the business, money wasn't her only difficulty--before she had made a name for herself, few people supported her career choice. "Even friends would often tell me to quit running around the world looking for stories. They didn't understand why I would go to places where mainstream media outlets were already covering events."

"It's ridiculous. I'm a journalist, and I expect myself to communicate. Yet I couldn't make the people around me understand what I do or persuade them to support me in it," laments Cheung, suddenly speaking more slowly. Whenever she goes back to Canada and talks about her travels in war-torn countries, her mother bursts into tears. She can scrimp on her travel expenses and bear the mocking looks from others, but she has a very hard time dealing with the concerns of her elderly parents.

But her parent's opposition hasn't stopped her. To cover her expenses, she constantly takes on new assignments and speaking engagements. After The Middle Eastern Scene came out early in 2006, she turned her attention to Latin America, where the leftists are regaining strength and the political situation is in flux. She recently visited Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Venezuela doing research for a new book on the region.

"In the years since Simon Bolivar liberated the nations of Latin America, the region's greatest problem has been that its wealth is concentrated in the hands of its leading officials and great families," explains Cheung. "When I visited these countries in 2006, everyone was talking about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez because he had proclaimed that he wanted to return his country's wealth to its people."

"But every reform challenges vested interests," she continues. "And these vested interests include most of Venezuela's wealthy ethnic Chinese." For many years, the wealthy have had only to cozy up to officials and offer them a little something to avoid paying income tax. But when Chavez took office he demanded that they pay their income taxes from the preceding 15 years. The wealthy struck back immediately, using the media to disseminate unflattering stories about Chavez.

After finishing a series of reports on the Middle East, Cheung turned her attention to Latin America. She witnessed the political passions of Mexico's people at first hand in Mexico City during a visit to the major countries of the region in March of 2006.

Looking forward to the future

Though Cheung bade farewell to Taipei and hurried off to another war zone, her words remained behind, lingering in the hearts of some of her readers.

"To me, she's the bravest Chinese war reporter of our era," says Taiwanese writer Wu Yin-ning, who interviewed the Zapatista Army of National Liberation's Subcomandante Marcos for her book The Masked Jungle. "Her example gave me the courage to go into the Mexican jungle."

But even as she prepares for her next long journey, Cheung is still thinking about the role of the journalist. She writes: "The ever-changing Middle East has no patience with a journalist's personal honor or naivete. It needs us to be skillful and honest chroniclers. This war in which black and white are so entangled is hammering at our sense of right and wrong. It is the core conflict in the 'clash of civilizations.' We must untangle its mysteries."

In Cheung's view, this single point best explains who she is.

The years from the Desert Storm attacks of the 1990s to the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, foreign armies and Saddam's autocracy brought terrible hardships to Iraq. Pictured next to a derelict tank under sandy desert skies, Cheung appears to have been marked by the sorrows and anger of the Iraqi people.

The streets of Syria's capital of Damascus may have been trodden by prophets including Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed, but it is in no way immune to the spreading war. When Cheung visited in 2003, she witnessed a car bombing with her own eyes.