Eric's Beijing Diary

CCTV 9 is the 24 hour English channel in China. It is not available everywhere. Typically, you will see it in communities that have a large number of foreigners. In Guangzhou, it is on part of the day, but eclipsed the rest of the time by the Hong Kong stations. But here in Beijing, it is on 24 hours a day. I don't watch it that much, but there are a couple programs that I keep in touch with fairly regularly. They are "Documentary" and "Dialogue." Sunday evenings (11:30pm) Documentary, which airs at that time every other day, is given a one day hiatus, replaced by "Up Close." This morning, I took the subway to the CCTV 9 studios to be part of the audience for that show. I was interested in it, because it featured Andy McEwan, one of the two Britishers who hiked the "Long March" in 2002. I had met Andy before, back in May, when he gave a lecture night at the Bookworm.

When I got to the studio, I was a bit disappointed at first, because I had hoped that the other member of the team (Ed Jocelyn) would be there. He is still out in the boonies tracing the route of the second long march, a lesser known route taken by an adjoining army. But I am glad I went, because the hostess is actually pretty good at asking the right questions. She was able to bring a lot more out of him than when he lectured at the Bookworm, although he didn't show as many pictures now as then. But CCTV sent a camera crew out to where his partner on the first march is now tracing the second long march route, and interviewing anyone he can find who is old enough to remember something from that now distant period. That information mixed in with the interview was very interesting.

It was the first time I had seen a live show since I was in the children's choir on the "Family Bible Hour," which is a long time ago. Not much to it, though. We just had to spend a few minutes at the beginning of the program to practice clapping.