Judy Polumbaum is currently a professor at the
University of Iowa School of Journalism and Communications.
It sounded like an idea for a madcap comedy: A core group of veteran Chinese
journalists, most with Western or missionary school educations, would lead
former teachers and translators, newly minted college graduates and
postgraduates, and various and sundry others in producing a daily newspaper in
English.
For headquarters, three floors of shabby offices in a borrowed building would
have to do. The hardware consisted of antique Underwood typewriters set on
scratched wooden desks.
But the software assembled for that original China Daily staff a blend of
knowledge, skills, intellect and talent galvanized by enthusiasm for this
audacious experiment was superb.
And as one of a handful of foreign copy editors (called "polishers," although
the work typically entailed major rewrites of translations or compilations from
the Chinese press as well as original reports in English), I was fortunate to be
part of that sometimes frustrating, often exhausting but also exhilarating
inaugural year.
Monday, July 6, 1981, was my first day in the old China Daily digs, at one
edge of the People's Daily compound on the eastern side of Beijing. Among my
first stack of items to edit was a commentary by a Chinese author, urging
writers to address social evils but also to maintain a sense of humour.
This was indicative of one of the important trends fuelling the paper in its
early days: lively discussions on all fronts occurring in Chinese society.
Some of the stories that struck us as novel and newsworthy then may seem
trivial today the restoration of household farming in the rural areas giving
sudden rise to heaps of watermelons in Beijing in the summer of 1981, for
instance; but they must be considered in the energizing context of the times.
My second day, I worked on a translation of excerpts from a long article by a
policymaker criticizing himself as well as Mao Zedong for missteps made three
decades earlier.
Among other changes, I suggested that all but the first "Comrade" before
Mao's name be taken out.
Before I could explain that the term was clunky to the Western ear, Guan
Zaihan, the wiry, chain-smoking opinion page editor, cut me off: "Take it out!"
he said with a wave and a smile.
Like many elderly Chinese intellectuals, Lao Guan was a survivor of political
vicissitudes: A correspondent for a European agency in Shanghai in the 1940s,
he'd worked for the Foreign Ministry after the founding of the People's Republic
in 1949, been labelled a "rightist" in the late 1950s, and later become a
schoolteacher.
Lao Guan exemplified the open-mindedness of the journalism veterans at China
Daily.
His presence also illustrated the paper's importance in returning experienced
individuals to an occupation they seemed born for.
The paper also recruited born journalists who'd never before been in the
trade. My officemate Huang Qing from Shanghai was a natural, with a nose for
news, fantastic interviewing ability and graceful writing skills.
To this day, I complain about her promotions, well deserved as they've been
she's now a deputy-editor-in-chief, and terrific at that, but I still think she
should be out on the street.
The diminutive, optimistic Sun Guozhen, with whom I had many freewheeling
conversations about the curiosities of human nature, was another of my
favourites. After a long teaching career in Northeast China, she'd come to write
and edit features. She, too, proved to have keen reporting instincts. I remember
her glee upon returning from an interview with a delightful eccentric whose home
was crammed with fantastic specimens of his object of expertise, Ming Dynasty
furniture.
Another time, she found the hotel where old people invited to Beijing for
meetings marking the 70th anniversary of China's 1911 Revolution were staying,
and prowled the halls for subjects.
The driving force behind the whole operation was Feng Xiliang, the first
managing editor, who had earned a master's in journalism at the University of
Missouri and studied graphic design at Columbia University.
Lao Feng often opened the morning news meeting by criticizing that day's
paper for running too much non-news stories about meetings, conferences,
symposiums, anniversaries, statements without action.
When a story about a panda in Mexico giving birth landed on page one, he
dubbed the paper the Panda Daily News.
It's hard to believe, but China Daily was once an upstart. Lao Feng was
tickled to learn that some US musicians teaching in Beijing had complained to
the Ministry of Culture that they'd been there three days without a mention in
China Daily!
And he was pleased when a visiting Canadian dignitary specifically requested
the presence of a China Daily reporter at a press conference.
But even when pleased, he was never complacent. "It's a good looking paper,"
he said one day. "I'd buy it for 10 cents!"
Besides the remarkable achievement of getting China Daily up and flying, Lao
Feng put an enduring stamp on China's newspaper culture: Editors at
Chinese-language papers who doubted his maverick approach to make-up displaying
photographs large, using big headlines gradually turned into admirers and
imitators.
Granted, given a small staff that thought big, the work sometimes got to us.
On days that I had to chop sprawling, poorly written articles by three-fourths,
or when others were out ill and I had to rewrite three or four entire broadsheet
pages on my own in a matter of hours, I could get snippy.
"I know you're overworked. I'm sorry," Lao Feng would say.
And he'd promise to hire some part-time relief. I don't recall that
happening. According to entries in my journal, the deluge of work sometimes had
me in tears. I don't recall that either.
Indeed, what sticks are the memories of the good old days, the wonderful
people and the sense of being on an adventure together. Lao Feng, Lao Sun, Lao
Guan and many of the other China Daily pioneers are no longer with us, but
they'll always loom large in my mind.
(China Daily 05/31/2006 page4)