Expats

In the beginning...

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 08:30

Byline | Manli Ho & John B. Wood

In 1981, a remarkable endeavor was launched in Beijing - an English language daily aimed at the growing number of foreign businessmen and tourists coming to a newly-opened China.

China Daily was to look and read like a Western newspaper. At its helm were a couple of Chinese Western-trained newspaper veterans. To help them accomplish this feat, a handful of professional journalists were imported from various English-speaking countries. We were among them.

We were called "foreign experts". We were to help produce a newspaper that looked professional to foreign readers, and to "polish" the language into readable English.

Having been steeped in Western journalistic ethics, our running off to China to work on a government newspaper was viewed with skepticism by our Boston Globe colleagues. We were undaunted. The opportunity to help create a new newspaper in Manli's ancestral homeland was irresistible!

It is difficult now to convey what an improbable undertaking this was. The professional, cultural, and linguistic chasms were profound; most of China Daily's small staff then was composed of schoolteachers and translators who learned English before 1949.

Producing a daily eight-page broadsheet in English was cumbersome. Most articles were translated from the Chinese press or came from wire services.

Until the next generation of staffers returned from journalism studies abroad, there were few reporters to go out on stories.

Articles were written on typewriters and handed to us to "polish". In the unending battle against "Chinglish", this often entailed rewriting the entire piece.

After a headline and final edit at the copy desk, it was sent to the typesetters, who knew no English. That required proofreaders who checked the typeset version against the marked-up hard copy by reading aloud to each other.

Most of the six or seven foreign experts were American or British. The Brits came for three-month stints and generally manned the copy desk, while Americans polished and worked on specific pages.

We did both. One of us, John, handled the business page; the other, Manli, polished the editorial page. We also manned the copy desk and coached younger staff. That first winter, when two older experts were hospitalized, and no Brits appeared, we worked 16-hour days.

The work was exhausting and tedious, but what we remember most was the shared sense of mission, and the extraordinary founding editors: the urbane, Missouri Journalism School-educated Feng Xiliang, who ran a lively, democratic newsroom; the open-minded, cigar-chomping Guan Zaihan, who oversaw the editorial page; Deputy Editor Zheng Defang, whose sharp, progressive intellect was a constant source of delight.

China Daily has come a long way in 30 years: first the upstart stepchild of the established Chinese press, then the "official" source cited by the foreign press, and now a newspaper with global reach. The young staff we coached are now leaders, but we still marvel at the vision of the pioneers.

What they created was revolutionary; it ultimately transformed the template for Chinese newspapers. We are honored to have been part of it.

Manli Ho and John B. Wood are consultants to China Daily.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page59)