小编和小记

小编和小记有很多共同点:都是女的，都是四眼，都是小个子，短头发。最重要是两个都是新鲜人。小编当编辑三个月，小记三月份到岗。两个人凑到一块，有了很多笑话。


理想
小记是个有理想的好青年，有一次聊天，小编问：
“你的理想是什么？”
“我要做一个调查记者！”
小编肃然起敬。
“那你怎么实现呢？”
“我每天看新闻！”
小编……

打电话
小编告诉小记，做好记者一定要亲自去采访。于是小编给了小记一个任务，去采访国外华商。
这是小记的第一个采访任务。小编事先给小记写好采访提纲以及采访对象的电话号码。
小编等了三天，没有音讯。
小编走到小记桌前，问她：
“采访的怎么样了？”
小记说：“我还没打电话。”
“你在干什么？”小编问。
“我正在积累足够的勇气去打电话。”小记严肃地说。
小编……

打电话二
第二天早晨，小编看到小记，准备继续鄙视她。
但是两眼红红的小记兴奋地告诉她，自己已经打了电话，凌晨四点才睡觉。
小编问为什么要那么晚睡。
小记说：“我晚上11点回家后用skype打电话采访，说了很久。”
小编很为小记的精神感动，但是也很奇怪为什么小记不提前在单位打电话。
小记认真地说：“单位用电话卡太贵了，我要省钱。”
小编崇拜中。

打电话三
再过一周，小编在编辑稿子的时候，需要小记补充采访，于是在msn上给小记发去问题。
仅仅过了五分钟，小记就传回了答案。
小编大吃一惊，“你现在打电话采访这么轻松了？”赶紧求教秘诀。
小记得意地说：
“我每天都练习打电话。”
“怎么练习。”
“我跟小陈（做小记斜对面的另一个四眼小美女）都不说话了，我打电话给她。”
小编更加崇拜中。

口水
小编是个爱说、爱吃的小瘦子。
每次人家问小编减肥的秘诀。
小编都自豪的说：“我从来不减肥，所有的食物都从口进入，然后化为口水从嘴排出。”
但是小编发现自己从来没有说过这么多话。因为她每天唠唠叨叨给小记讲各种基本知识，怎么写采访提纲，问问题用什么口气，如何写引用，如何写导语等等等等。
有一天，小编觉得自己像一只大热天跑了十公里的哈巴狗，吐着舌头对坐在旁边的帅哥小编悲叹：
“我的口水用完了。”

来不及
离截稿期还有一天的时候，小记突然告诉小编，自己可能无法写稿了。
“为什么？”小编惊恐地问。
小记说，因为自己有好几个任务。
小编这才知道，小记虽然是新兵，但是她比任何一个老兵都要忙。她要做好几篇外刊摘编，要帮别的组做摘编，要写网络稿。在紧张的发稿周期，小记再度发扬国际主义精神，又要帮别的组写稿子。
“好吧，那我来写吧。”小编说：“你就整理录音就可以了。”
当天深夜，小记又告诉小编，自己来不及整理录音了，因为稿子还没有写好。
于是，第二天，帅哥小编和四眼女小编之间发生了这样一段对话：
“你在干什么？”
“我在帮小记整理录音。”
“为什么？”
“因为小记来不及干活了。”
“为什么？”
“因为小记要帮别的组写稿子。”
“为什么？”
“因为别的组来不及干活了。”

问问题一
小记第一次采访回来热血沸腾，对小编说：
“这（采访对象）是一个真正干事业的人。”她意犹未尽地说：“我学到了很多东西。”
小编看完采访整理，遗憾地对小记说：
“你被对方操纵了。”
小编指出精明的采访对象回避的所有重要问题和细节，然后问小记：
“为什么没有问呢？”
“我忘记了。”小记羞愧地说。
小编开始念叨，从如何问问题，到如何保持客观、中立、清醒的头脑，到作为记者必须具有批判主义思想以及具有批判主义思想的才是知识分子等等。
小记头脑发涨，反驳道：
“难道你就没有忘记的时候吗？”
“当然有！”小编说：“所以我每个问题都必须问到才结束采访。重要的问题甚至以不同的方式多问几遍。”
“难道你就没有佩服对方很好的时候吗？”小记又问。
“我每次采访都对对方敬佩不已，”小编在小记惊讶的眼光中继续说：“一采访完我就不敬佩了。”

问问题二
小编一边给小记整理采访录音，一边爆笑。
原来小记吸取上次采访的教训，开始对每一个问题穷追不舍。
但是由于小记故意压低天生的小女生嗓音，以法官式和纪检干部式审讯方式提问时，就显得非常有趣。
从录音中听出，小记的逼问显然让对方哭笑不得，甚至开始结结巴巴。
但无论如何，小记得到了所有答案。
“很好！”小编在表扬小记的时候，不忘提醒小记在采访时候可以保持真我，同时尊重对方，反对以审讯方式采访。
第三次采访回来，小记对小编说：“我这次很温柔的。”
但是小编还需要小记做更多采访，小记感到有些为难。
“不行，一定要逼问。”小编说，想了想，补充道：“温柔的逼问。”

欺负
小编和小记每次对话都引发周围一阵笑声。在饭桌上，小编和小记再度对垒，引起全场关注。
“她欺负我。”小记忿忿称。
“她怎么欺负你了？”
“她骂我。”
“她怎么骂你了？”
“她说，你不要再搞我了。”
哄堂大笑。
饭后，小记语重心长地对小编说：“你没有当过领导吧。”
“怎么？”小编警惕地问。
“所以要我来刺激你，激发你的领导潜力啊。”
小编……

professional diary

Today is my last day at The Inquirer.
First, my story about Asian banks was published two weeks ago. It was published on the frontpage of the Business Section. Bill Marimow, editor at The Inquirer wrote a letter to me. In his letter he said "Your insights into the cultural differences between the two cultures made for excellent reading, and I loved the material on safe deposit boxes."
I am happy that he liked the story. I fighted for the assignment and it took me almost one month to finish it and another month to publish it. Finally I made it.
I got letters from my readers and congratulations from my colleagues. But the most interesting thing I have done during this week is my video brown bag seminar. I made a presentation with five video I made about Philadelphia Inqurier, based on my interview with Bill Marimow, Brian Tierney, Bob Moran, Jennifer Lin.
Making video is very time consuming. I worked so hard that my eyes could watch so that I had to avoid to use computer for three days.
It was hassle before the presentation. Because the computer in the meeting room cannot read my files. My laptop cannot recognize the projector. Finally Jeff at online desk helped me to convert my files into wmv 10 minutes before the begining of the presentation.
They smiled and laughed.
I uploaded all the video onto Youtube.
Today Bill Marimow came again and said he like the video.
This afternoon I said good bye to the newsroom. We had a large cake. People gave gift. Bill Marimow said I not only contributed stories but also bring high spirit and energy into the newsroom by running all the way. I told them it was my happiest period during my five year career.

professional diary

Last week was my first week at online desk. Most of my job was observing. It sounds boring but in fact it was very interesting and inspiring. I went to the office at 6:30am and observed Peter Mucha, the online reporter at the Inquirer working. I shot him with my camcorder, took notes and asked a lot of questions. Then I wrote a report to my colleagues in China. They were shocked. How could he be so productive!
Peter wrote four stories from 7am to 11 am. He also did other things, including recommending top stories, checking website and fixing online news.
Comparing to the online desk staff in my newsroom, Peter enjoys three advantages:
First, he has the power to decide what, how and when to write and publish his stories online. He controls the whole process which is shared by reporters, editors at online desk, editors at other desks and managing editor in my newsroom.
Second, as a 20-year veteran journalist and also a pioneer in online journalism, Peter can write, edit, interview, producing html codes and drawing pictures. He is perfect for online news. We don’t have staff like him. Though young journalists in China are also good at Photoshop or Adobe software, they lack the printed experience. Who is the 20-year veteran journalist in my newsroom? Only our editor in chief and number editor director.
Third, Peter has much more access to material, sources, information he need to work. For example, he can easily find pictures from Inquirer’s database. We are still building our database.
All these advantages show the gap between American newspaper industry and Chinese. What could we do? Steal Peter from the Inquirer?
I believe there must be a solution and that is why I am here.
Another thing I am doing is editing videos. My personal research project is online journalism in American newspaper industry. I have interviewed a lot of people here and also took a lot of videos. Now I need to edit them and put them online.
AFPF asked me to share my experience with my colleagues in China by holding workshops when I am back.
I already go further.
I opened a weekly column named observing American media on Caijing’s website. I have written about 20 stories about the transformation of American media. So all my readers and colleagues learn what I learn here at the same time.
In the beginning I took videos just to show to my colleagues after I am back. But my editors said they can publish them on Caijing’s website. I maybe one of the first Chinese printed reporters who tell a story with a video.
I am so excited!
Reporters at the Inquirer took video after long time training while I shoot the first minute I got a camcorder. I could get such a great opportunity not only because I get the support from AFPF and Inquirer but also because I am in a turning point of American newspaper industry.
God opens a window when he closes a door. The old saying is the best description of today’s newspaper industry.
I just finished a series of stories on the multimedia reporting of three reporters at the Inquirer. I plan to write a story about the online desk. I will also write a long story about Brian Tierney, the publisher of the Inquirer. I will also interview people at Philly.Com on marketing and advertisement.
After I finish the Inquirer series, I will begin the Washington Post series, which is about the paper side, the dot com side, the production side and also Sabrina, the third party’s opinion.
Then I will discuss other newspapers like NY Times and Wall Street Journal.
I believe the column could continue after I am back.
Some journalists who attended such programs said they had been very lonely and home-sicking in the last month of their fellowship. I am not.
I am still eager to learn andI am still happy. The only thing that makes me unhappy is that my magazine cancelled my 10-day vacation. I waited for five years for a 10-day vacation!
To me, it is difficult to combine work with vacation. I am too busy here. Every day I work from 10 am to 6 pm at the office and then I work at Starbucks from 7 pm to 9:30 pm and go to bed at 11 to 12 pm.
The positive side of my busy agenda is that I will not have much problem adapting the huge burden of work in China when I am back.

my professional diary

Last two weeks I was very busy. The first week I went to New York with Aresu for a Study trip. The second week I finally finished my story on community banks.
The trip was productive and enjoyable. We spent a pleasant night with Stephen Baldwin , a member of the big friendly family who choose me as the 2007 Baldwin fellow. We enjoyed the best Indian food I have ever had. He shared with us his experience in different countries across the world. We also agreed with the idea that press is too powerful.
The next day we had a brief interview in Wall Street Journal, a wonderful talk with Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor at NY Times at their brand new building, a fantastic tour at Bloomberg.
The third day we went to JP Morgan. We talk with a researcher there and visited the trading room that generates huge money everyday.
It took me pretty long time to finish the bank story. It was a little bit harder than the work at the city desk. I had to take more initiative to get assignment and also write a more complicated story. But I love it. Because it is the first story that reminds me of the work at Caijing in China.
Most of work I have done here is very easy. But reporting banks makes me nervous, which is exactly what I need. I need pressure to be more productive so I can learn more.
Besides I finished the list of books that I will buy for my newsroom. I send letters to my colleagues and asked them to give me the name, link, price of the books they want and the reason why they need them. After our editor in chief approved the list I sent it to Katie. And then I realized that I asked them in the way that Susan asked me!
I learned a lot here not only from working but also from observing how people are working in newspaper, community, government and organizations.
For example, I didn’t like to write training plan or essay or diaries. As a journalist, I like freedom more than discipline. But I realize these “boring papers” force me to reflect and help me to set up my own agenda which is the key to the success of a program like AFPF.
Why?
Because the American newspaper industry is changing now. If you don’t set up your own agenda no one will set up one for you. Taking initiative to get more bylines is not enough. As professional journalists, we would get bored after writing many stories for several months. If we don’t know what to do next, we would be in the bad mood, homesicking, regretting for working too hard and having less fun.
Before I went to the States, my number one goal is to show a good journalist who reports in her own language can also be productive in an English newspaper. I want to show it to both my colleagues in China and also people in the States so that more journalists like me can have the great opportunity to learn the world which would finally benefits Chinese readers and Chinese society. If all the fellows are from English newspapers or international desks, what they learn may only benefit a very small group of readers in their countries.
So I have to be productive and I know I will absolutely learn something. At least I can learn how to talk and write in English. To my surprise, I learn far more than that.
Tomorrow I will transfer to online desk. I hope I can learn the operation of the online desk and make more video. I will continue my column “Observe the American newspaper industry” at Caijing.com. The column will continue after I am back to China since I have interviewed so many people here and have so many interesting stories to tell.
My mood is still very good not only because I am busy but also because the Inquirer provides a warm environment. I have many friends. Every weekend I am invited by some friends for B.B.Q, game, video shooting or other activities.
After a tour in New York, I have to say that the newsroom of the Inquirer may not be the most fantastic one. But it is the most informal one.

My Professional Diary

Last week I focused on my new assignment on banks and my personal research project on the transition of the American newspaper industry.
My new assignment is about how banks serve Asian community in Philadelphia. I interviewed two banks and will continue to interview two more banks next week. The assignment is very interesting because we don’t have community banks in China.
After I finished the story about Chinatown Arch, I found that working in the Inquirer was not difficult to me at all. One important reason is they didn’t give me deadline story. Then I was worried that I might be worse at reporting and left behind after I go back to China. I worked so hard to interview people at different newspaper partly because I wanted to sharpen my interview skill.
Now I know I am wrong.
If I don’t work here, I cannot gain my understanding about American society, which is more significant than practicing interviewing skills. I want to know more about the developed operation of American society so as to help me better understand China’s development.
At the same time, my personal research is going smoothly. I interviewed Jim Brady, the executive editor of Washingtonpost.COM, and learned a lot from the energetic and fast speaking man.
Another piece of good news: Jonathan Landman, the deputy managing editor of the New York Times and Bill Grueskin, the deputy managing editor of the Wall Street Journal agreed to talk with me.
Though I already talk with an editor at the Wall Street Journal off the record, I need to talk with people of higher position to have a big picture of their online operation. I also need on-the-record interviews to share the knowledge with my readers.
Another good news is, I will start my trip to NYC on 22 July and visit Mr. Baldwin who chose me as the Baldwin fellowship winner. Without the help from his mother and him, I can never have such a fruitful experience here.
Actually what I learned here is far beyond my original expectation.
To tell the truth, I suspected the quality of journalism education in the States before. Caijing has some reporters graduated from Columbia, Missouri, Stanford and Berkley. Though they are all good reporters, I attributed it to their personalities more than education abroad. I met some reporters graduated from the States. Usually they have perfect English, poor Chinese writing and no local knowledge at all. That is why I wanted to study by working and applied for this program.
I learn that American education institution does know how to help journalists and they did help me a lot at the seminar at Poynter. I read the book on coaching twice and I am still reading it.
I learn a lot from Julie Busby and Tom Ginsburg who always encourage me and respect my idea.
I also change my mind that Americans only care about themselves. People in the Inquirer do care each other and are always generous.
As for my work at Caijing, last week my editor at Caijing asked me to write more for my column. I even received a letter from China Journalist, a professional publication on Journalism in China. They wanted me to write a story about multimedia reporting.
Everything is better except my grandmother’s health. She got panacea cancer this February. I have taken care of her at hospital for one month before I went to the United States. Then she got better after a surgery. However, last week the blood test showed something wrong. At age of 88, she can not survive another surgery or any aggressive therapy. I was worried so much that I could not eat or sleep.
I began to learn that life is limited and beyond my control when I was 10 years old. As a journalist my father reported the war between Vietnam and China in 1980s. That time I was in primary school. My classmates used to sit around me and cry: Lou Yi, your father is dead! Your father is dead.
I never forget that day though my father finally came back as a hero.
I know one cannot control everything in her/his life. But I try my best to be happy everyday. I want to make use of everyday to learn the world and share with others. That is why I become a journalist.

My professional weekly diary

My professional weekly diary
During the last two weeks, my work at the Inquirer was harder while my work at Caijing was thriving.

I didn’t do much at the business desk. It is my fault.
First, I didn’t show my editor my capability. Since I did well at the city desk, I am confidant that I can do well at the business desk too. I don’t think language will be barrier at all since I interviewed and wrote in English well at the city desk. But I didn’t let my editors know my confidence so that they had difficulty looking for a “right story” for me.

My second mistake is that I didn’t take initiative to get assignments. I focused on my own research project: the transition of the American newspaper industry. I was busy with interviewing journalists in and outside the Inquirer, including editor of WSJ.Com, deputy managing editor of the Inquirer, the first video reporter at the Inquirer, the first blogger at the Inquirer and others else.

Today I talked with my editor at the business desk and finally I got an assignment. I felt confidant and excited again.

On the same time, my work at Caijing is making rapid progress.

First, my column at CAIJING.COM is popular. People read my stories and then go to my blog at the Inquirer.

Second, my editors like my blog at the Inquirer and asked me to translate them into Chinese and publish on Caijing’s website. At first my editor at Caijing even didn’t agree me to open a blog at the Inquirer!

Third, my editor agrees to put my video on the website. So I can not only share my experience with AFPF fellows and Chinese colleagues but also with my readers across the world! I am so excited that I can show the newsroom of the Inquirer, the most beautiful newsroom in the States to my Chinese readers!

Besides work, I am also working on arranging a workshop for myself and my other fellows. I don’t want to spend my entire research fund on books. But I cannot find appropriate workshop here. So I decide to make my own.

I design a workshop agenda, including interviews with people from three newspapers (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Philadelphia Inquirer) and one news agency (Bloomberg), a tour and an interview in Wharton Business School, tour and interview in JP Morgan, city tours of American’s first capital (Philadelphia) and the power behind the throne, the economic capital (New York City).

I also invite other fellows join the workshop. Though we are working hard to write stories, byline should not be our ultimate goal. We come here to learn and share with others. We can not leave the States without a tour in the most important newspapers and the most important cities.
Let’s go!

Be yourself

How to put your name as a byline?
According to American’s culuture, I should be called Yi Lou. Because my last name is Lou and my first name is Yi.
However, I was always called Lou Yi in China. Actually my last name and first name have never been split before. I even used Louyi as my name when I first introduced myself to my colleagues in the Inquirer.
To Chinese, last name is very important. It tells the story of people’s families which may go back to thousands of years ago.
To show respect, Chinese only call senior people (both by age and position) by their last name. For example, you should call your uncle John Zhang ”uncle Zhang” but never his first name “John”.
To people who are at the senior position we also follow the same rule. If John Zhang is your director, he is usually called Director Zhang even he is younger than you.
So what about journalists?
Most of newsrooms in China follow the same name rule. Maybe even stricter. They call senior journalists “Teacher”. Because Chinese think writers or journalists are better educated intellectuals and Chinese respect education.
I was often called as “Teacher Lou” when I received calls from readers or young journalists in China. But most of them called me “Lou Yi” after they met me and found I was only a young girl with naïve eyes and acne.
Caijing where I am working with is very different. In our newsroom every one call each other’s first name just like Americans. Why? I don’t know. Maybe because most of the people in the newsroom are young or because our editor in chief, the best reporter in China, is always energetic like a young girl and never wants others to warn her of her age.
However I am unique in my newsroom. Some Chinese characters has the same pronunciation but means totally different. Unfortunately my first name Yi has the same pronunciation of another word “Yi”——means aunt. I am too young for people to call me aunt and show extra respect.
Therefore I am Lou Yi for 30 years and I wonder if I need to change myself to Yi Lou?
I tried to introduce myself as Yi Lou but felt very uncomfortable. I even thought of having an foreign first name so as not to feel weird.
Here I do the same job in the same way; wear the same clothes and eat quite the similar food (from Chinatown) as I did in China. Why should I change my name?
I asked myself and wondered what other Chinese do in the States.
“How do you call Yao Ming? ”
“Yao Ming.”
I know Yao is the famous basketball superstar’s last name and Ming is his first name.
“So call me Lou Yi.”
That is why byline is Lou Yi in the Inquirer, just the same as the one on the English version of my stories at Caijing.
Be yourself and be proud of yourself and your culture are the same as, or maybe more important than to learn to adapt yourself to another culture.
And tell you another thing of my name. Every Chinese name has a meaning. Lou means house and Yi means safe. Visit my blog and feel safe, safer and safer.

"Go to the beach" means ……

« Time | Main

"Go to the beach" means ……
Last Wednesday I was in St. Petersburg for a seminar with other Alfred Friendly Press Fellowship fellows. After the seminar I went to the swimming pool with other two girls.
Upon we arrived at the pool I jumped into the pool and began to swim. After I swim for 5 minutes I found I was still the only one in the pool. The other two girls were lying on chairs under the hot sun.
“Come on and swim!”
They didn’t go. Most of the time they were busy with putting sun block onto their bodies, drinking, or just lying on the towel when I was swimming.
Three days later we went to the beach. The same thing happened.
Most of the time girls just lied on the towel and read fashion magazines. They only swam for several minutes during the whole morning.
I had wondered before that why Americans build the best kitchen room while they don’t cook very often. Now I have a new question:
Why do Americans go to the swimming pool or beach if they don’t want to swim?
If they just want to lie on the chair and relax, why bother fly for such a long way to Florida? Why not just lie on the chair at their home?
Katie, one of the girls who went to the pool with me, told me:
“Go to swim” means exactly going to swim. But ‘go to the pool’ or ’go to the beach ’ means a lot.”
I guess it maybe Americans want to split the workday and personal vacation very clearly. Maybe they work too hard so that they want to go where they don’t need to think of any piece of work.
You know what does “Go to the pool” means to me in China?
It means a large terribly crowded dumpling bowl. There are always a lot of people in the pool that you can never enjoy swimming in the swimming pool. When I swam in China I was often kicked mistakenly by other swimmers. If I don’t want to be kicked the only way is to stand in the pool like an idiot.
To men, whether from China or the States, I guess, “Go to the pool” or “Go to the beach” also means beautiful women, especially hot girls in Bikini.
Obviously there are more Bikini beauties in the pool in the States. However, there are more and more girls with Bikini in the pool in China.
But the traditional culture still played an important role. About eight years ago when Bikini was first introduced to China I went to a swimming pool and was surprised to see a girl in Bikini. She was so brave to wear a Bikini but at the same time she was so traditional that she wore a T shirt first and then put the Bikini outside the T shirt.

Time

Americans think to be punctual is very important. It is what I heard before I went to the States as the Washington correspondent for Caijing Magazine three years ago. I didn’t want to be late for any interview. But I am not a good map reader. So I always arrived one hour earlier. Usually I went to a nearby Starbucks and prepared for my interview there after I found where the interview would be held.
I often recited the questions to myself when I prepared my interview at the Starbucks.
One day as I was murmuring questions in a line waiting for a cup of mocha at the Starbucks close to the World Bank, the man in front of me suddenly turned around and said:
“Absolutely!”
I was stunned for a second and then realized that he was answering my question.
Anyway, I never missed any interview.
When I came to the Philadelphia Inquirer I was reminded again of American’s emphasis on punctuality. The first day Andy Maykuth, my mentor at the Inquirer, gave me a printed schedule with a list of about 30 journalists I should meet in the newsroom the first three days. Every interview lasted exactly 30 minutes.
“Americans are not human being,” I said to myself, "they are computers.”
But quickly I found that Americans are also flexible. They would also change their agenda. I felt a little bit relaxed when my schedule was changed.
And then I was shocked again.
In my newsroom, when people don’t have time to talk with you, they usually say:
“Could you wait for a couple minutes? ”
Here people account by second.
“Five seconds, OK?”
I always hear that kind of response.
But then I find actually they need five minutes.
Now, whenever I hear a response like five seconds or a couple of minutes, I will translate them into five minutes or 30 minutes.
Does that mean Americans do not stick to their word?
No. They use seconds to show their respect for others and their time. But they are too busy. During this chaotic time in the whole newspaper industry in the Internet era, American journalists have to write more with fewer people and less pay. They are competing with different media, with all the other things people would like to read, with the Internet.
They are competing with the time and for the time.
So what do I do?
Leave and wait?
No. I will do exactly the same as I did in the newsroom of my country. Go back to my desk but still watch them to see if they have time to talk with me.
In China I always chase my editor or I would be chased and tortured by them. Here I have to chase my editors too or I could not get more opportunity to learn about the American society, the American newspaper industry and tell you the tale of the two cultures.

Lou Yi's weekly professional diary

Last week, I have a crash course on writing, reporting and coaching, which is very interesting and inspiring. I had so many exercises that even a talkative person like me felt exhausted. I also had a lot of fun with my fellows and teachers at the beach.

My favorite class is the coaching class. My five years at Caijing Magazine is a long way of struggling and battling for independence. Our editors are so powerful and knowledgeable that reporters dare not stand up to speak for their own idea, which severely jeopardize reporters’ moral and initiative. The class at Poynter let me realize that a productive discussion could help both the editors and reporters to get better understanding of stories.

I read the book of coaching, I am so proud to say that Bill Marimow, the top editor of the Inquirer, and Julie Busby, my editor at the city desk, are born excellent coaches. I am so lucky to be here and work with them.

Though I haven’t talked with editors about managing skills, I observed their managing style by reading emails and talking with other reporters. I sent monthly report to my editors about how the Inquirer mange reporters and my editors tell me they like it very much. They begin to praise reporters on their stories by MSN. They also reduce the editing process of the online stories.

Is that wonderful?

Now I believe my editors at Caijng are great journalists with huge potential to be the great coachs.

I will continue to work for the city desk this week. I am looking forward to new tasks!

Beach Day2

It is time to relax, reflect and reinvent ourselves.

Beach Day

Street Shows in New York

Food: a matter of life or death

Last Sunday night I attended a farewell party in Washington, D.C for Xin Li, Caijing’s Washington correspondent who will leave for Beijing this month.
About 20 people attended the party. Almost everyone was cooking when Xin Li called them that afternoon, she said.
This is typical Chinese party in the States-every guest brings a dish-not only wine or flowers- so that people can enjoy the food and exchange tips on cooking during the party.
At a traditional Chinese party, usually the one for spring festival, the equivalent of Christmas in the States, guests not only bring food but also make food, usually preparing dumplings with the host.
This is the biggest difference between a Chinese party and an American party. How good the food is at the party is a matter of life or death.
It not only shows the talent of the host's wife but also works as a permanent topic of discussion for strangers as the topic of weather, or a refuge for shy people. If you don’t know what to talk, you can at least enjoy the food!
On the contrary, it seems food is the least important focus at an American party. To Americans, the most important thing at the party is talking, then liquor or beverage, then dessert, then the meal. It could be nice if you know most of the guests or you have pleasant conversation with other guests. It could be terrible if you find all the guests around you are strangers or boring, plus you have to stand there with little to eat.
The first B.B.Q I’ve attended in the States was in a White House reporter’s home in Washington. I told my colleagues all the details about the B.B.Q:
“We had food under cherry blossom in his backyard.”
“Wonderful!”
“We had candles and flowers on the table.”
“Beautiful!”
“We played with his dog.”
“Interesting. What about food?”
“Hamburger.”
“Are you kidding?”
And then I knew American B.B.Q is not the camp B.B.Q that I imagined before, and hamburger or cheeseburger is the typical food for B.B.Q.
I attended some pleasant parties in Philadelphia and then decided to hold a party at my apartment. I prepared four dishes as main entrées, including lobster, which is obviously fancy in American cuisine but still a little bit light to Chinese. I thought everything was perfect until I found I missed one important course:
Dessert, always Americans' (especially American women’s) favorite course.
I felt sorry about that for a while then I felt better. Since we’ve already enjoyed the fancy Chinese food, why bother to have dessert?

Town watch grows in Chinatown

"Look at my ID!" said Mei Ren, proudly showing her town watch ID during her first formal patrol this month.
The 45-year-old real-estate agent now has a second job, helping guard the 5,000 residents of Chinatown as a town watch member.
Chinatown Town Watch was founded last August by 15 volunteers looking to safeguard their neighborhood by patrolling and reporting suspected crimes to the police.
After operating informally for 10 months with weekly patrols, the watch now will be trained to make formal patrols with uniform jackets and security devices such as two-way radios, said Police Capt. Brian J. Korn of the Sixth District.
The town watch won a citywide award June 4 from the police for its "hard work and dedication," said Korn, noting that the number of violent crimes in Chinatown this year had decreased by 6 percent.
Korn said the watch is important because it has been able to persuade residents - who had been reluctant to report criminal activity - to come forward.
As a founding member of the watch, Ren became a hero last August when she helped catch a thief long sought in Chinatown.
"I saw him walking out of An Lok House at 10th and Spring Streets," recalled Ren. "I called police, followed him, and stopped him at the entrance of the building at 928 Race St."
Police checked the man's bag and found jewelry, including gold rings and jade bracelets, and 28 stolen credit cards.
Ren envisioned the town watch as a way to help her renters. "There were so many thefts," said Ren, who often received complaints from her tenants, most of them new immigrants from Fujian, China, about how thieves climbed into their rooms by ladder and tied them up.
Yingzhang Lin, the leader of the Fujian Immigrants Association, proposed a town watch during a community meeting with police last July.
Since then, the group has held monthly meetings with police, gone on patrol in groups of four or more, and filed reports to police by e-mail.
But the group's most important job is to persuade reluctant immigrants to report crime to police.
"Identity is the key concern," said Jinhe Chen, director of the Chang Le Association of Philadelphia, an organization of Fujian immigrants.
When someone reports a crime, police routinely ask for identification, which many undocumented immigrants cannot provide, Chen said.
"We don't ask anybody 'What is your immigration status' when they call us for help," said Korn. "We are just here trying to address the issues, and then help anybody who does need our help."
More undocumented immigrants are now willing to report crimes to police, said Joseph Eastman, a retired Navy veteran and coordinator of the town watch.
"It is very important we get people's trust," he added.
The group also needed to get the trust of other organizations.
"It is funny," said Allen Wang, second vice president of the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA). "We began with misunderstanding."
The CBA was founded in 1947 by immigrants from Guangzhou, and its members were not able to communicate well with the Fujian group, which aroused concern about the town watch, said Wang.
"When we knew what they were doing, we joined in," said Wang, who attends monthly meetings and patrols with other members.
Chinatown Town Watch's membership has grown from 15 to 50, Eastman said.
Lin regards it as the first "deep and real" cooperation among organizations in Chinatown.
"Before then, we only met at ceremonies in Chinese restaurants," said Lin. "The only things we did together were eating and drinking."

Lou Yi’s professional weekly diary

What I did last week:

Story for the Inquirer:
Last week I finished my story on Chinatown town watch and video taping them at the same time. This will be the second video story I’ve made for the website of the Inquirer. This time I am working to make two versions of videos, one for Americans and another for Chinese. Maybe I can help to open the Chinatown’s market for the Inquirer?
It is the fourth and may be the last story I’ve ever written about Chinatown. Chinatown is interesting but I still need to learn more about the mainstream society. I also need to learn more from other reporters from the Inquire, especially on how to get access to information or contacts with different ways or tools.

Blog:
Last week I’ve been aggressively writing and marketing my blog at the website of the Inquirer. I wrote everyday and forward my articles to people around me with brief of the articles, which is quite effective. I received responses from many people, including Katie. One day a man suddenly stopped me on the street and said:
“I like your blog!”
Updating blog helps to practice my English writing. I was reluctant to update my blog because I always hope to bring a perfect article without any grammar mistake. Now, I put it online right after I finish my article. Then I change it when I notice any mistakes. The more I write, the few mistakes I make.

Personal research project:
I will interview Milton Cole, the deputy managing editor of the Washington Post this Monday afternoon. I will interview Carl Lavin, the deputy managing editor of the Inquirer after I am back from Florida. With Carl Lavin, Ke Xu and Li Yuan’s help, I finally nailed down the interviews with people from the New York Time, the Wall Street Journal. I am thrilled but uncertain about the future interviews since we still don’t decide the exact time of interviews.

Observation on American printed media: My column on Caijing’s website
I finished another story about Bill Marimow last week. The story will be published on Tuesday. I plan to write at least 30 stories about American printed media’s transition and show the videos about them at the same time.
As the first reporter in Caijing magazine who writes column about my own overseas experience, I started my column in the middle of April. Today I open Caijing’s website and find five reporters’ stories about their oversea experience, including our editor in chief. I am glad that so many reporters share their experience with our readers.

What I learned last week:
Journalist’s transition to the multimedia era:
Must all the journalists learn to shoot with camcorders or write blogs?
No.
Actually the more I work on blog or video the more I disagree with such idea.
The answer is simple. It is too time consuming and very different from newspaper reporting. Even you are extremely smart and hard working, you still can not do a perfect job on three kinds of work. I am able to working on three kinds of things because I am not asked to write deadline stories everyday or do investigative reporting like I do in China. But sometimes I still feel overwhelmed.
I think the best way to solve the problem is to allocate different kinds of job to reporters with different professional skills. I heard that the Washington Post have three full time movie editors to edit video taken by reporters. I would rather edit my story by myself. But I think it is evitable that the let professionals to do the job in the future. Does that mean newspapers will recruit more people from TV stations?
I guess the editor have to re-describe their job too. When they think of a story, they don’t only think of the writing style, the details of the story or the accuracy. They have to think of a multimedia picture, allocate assignments to not only reporters, but also people from graphic desk, photo desk, movie desk (in the future), and online desk. I find the editors at the Inquirer are beginning to think of the online news reporting, and people from different desk are beginning to work together. There is still huge potential for editors to improve their capability of organizing and understanding of the multimedia way of story telling.

How to manage the newsroom effectively?
Last diary told a tip of philly.com’s management by sign on and sign off emails. This time I learned how to keep transparency from Bill Marimow’s email.
Anne Gordon, the managing editor of the Inquirer, left last month and Bill is now interviewing different applicants. We all want to know who will be the new managing editor. I even thought of asking him during my interview. Last week, I received a letter from Bill to the whole newsroom. He told us what kind of managing editor he think suitable to the Inquirer, How is the recruiting process and when he hopes to make a decision.
I am surprised to receive such a letter. Reporters at the Inquirer told me it is Bill’s style to try his best to bring transparency into the news room. He may not tell us the details of the recruiting but his letter does let us feel that we are part of the process.
Excellent!

Bye Bye, W.C.

Finally China’s government decided to replace "W.C." with "Toilet" as the name of a public restroom.
A notice was published by the Beijing government yesterday.
"W.C,", or Water Closet, has been put on the door of every public restroom with the Chinese name “Ce Suo” in China. We believe in putting Chinese name and English name together on the door of restroom so western tourists know where to go after they enjoy the delicious Chinese food.
Really? My English teacher in middle school told me his personal experience :
He was walking on the street when a western tourist asked him where was the bathroom.
“I obviously thought that was the “Public Bathroom” and told him where to go and you can imagine what happened,” he recalled, refering to public baths.
You can imagine how surprised I was when I heard that people on the other side of the world don’t use "W.C."!
Actually there were a lot of public baths when I was a child since Chinese had no bathroom or W.C. in their own houses at that time. In a typical building, usually a number of People living in one floor shared one “W.C”. And it was a simple ditch but not flush toilet. If you wanted to have a bath, you could have it in your own room with a wood tub and put the hot water into it, which took a lot of time. If you needed a shower or a bath in a real bath tub, you had to go to a public bath.
Before I was 15 years old I went to the public bathroom every week and it was so crowded that I had to wait 40 minutes outside of a shower cubicle. I was always wondering if I would become a science fiction writer since I had so much time to think. I might also become a scientist who invents a waterproof book so that people in the long line would not waste time.
As an investigative reporter, I am famous for patience in my newsroom. I could not stop thinking that it is the bath trip that helps to cultivate my patience.
This kind of inconvenience changed when I entered high school. My family moved into a new apartment and had a dark red bath tub and a flush toilet.
Last year I renovated the bathroom in my own apartment in Beijing. I covered the wall with dark blue tiles, my favorite color. On the wall I put a papyrus painting I got from Egypt. I bought a big wood tub so that I can have a spa there. With wireless appliance, I even write stories and read on my tiny VAIO when I enjoy the spa.
Now almost every Chinese family in the cities has a bathroom in their own apartment. Most new houses on sale even provide two to four bathrooms. At the same time, “Restroom” or “Toilet” already replaces “W.C.” in many public places such as restaurants, hospitals, stadiums and parks.
So, don’t worry where to go when you enjoy the Olympic Games in Beijing. We know exactly where the bath room is!

The Chinese part of the poisoned pet food story

How did the Chinese factory that produced the poisoned wheat protein powder and killed pets in the States destroy the evidence?
In the beginning of May when the joint investigation team of officials from FDA and AQSIQ (General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People's Republic of China) came to Wuxi Jiangsu to investigate the factory that produced wheat protein powder, the source of poisoned pet food, they found the most important evidence has already been destroyed.
What happened?
Today I read the newest issue of Caijing Magazine and find:
In the middle of April, Li Jun Mao, the manager of An Yin-the company that sold the material for pet food-moved all the machines and wheat? to another village with more than ten tricycles. Each worker who worked for the movement got several hundreds RMB (about $50). These machines and wheat protein powder were moved to another place then.
At the same time, Mao tore down a row of plants in the factory and moved all the ruins. Then he dug out the soil in the ground in case any chemical ? maybe found by testing the soil.
Before the movement, Mao claimed his company had never export wheat protein powder to the States in an interview.
It took Mao several days to do all the things. Both the county government and the police station of the town close to his factory did nothing to stop him.
Ironically, Anyin, the name of the factory also Mao’s nickname_means ”safe camp”.
Then the central government launched a food safety crisis public relation campaign and set a rule that the exported pet food should be checked to see if it has melamin. But what about the pet food sold in China and other goods?

Globalization and smoking

What kind of role does globalization play in Asian community’s smoking cessation in Philadelphia?
A business trip to China could destroy all the effort you made to quit smoking.
Last Friday I talked with Dr. Grace Ma at the Temple University. Dr. Ma has worked on the smoking cessation program in Asian community for many years. She told me many Chinese Americans smoke again after they went back from China. Because they have to do business with Chinese by smoking.
As Dr. Ma said, smoking is the social norm in China. That is why smoking cessation is really a harsh battle for these Chinese Americans who travel a lot between the States and China.
But not for Melissa, the reporter at the Inquirer.
She went to China in the 1980s and the first Chinese sentence she learned to speak is:
Smoking is not good.
That time she was in a closed train where almost everyone around her was smoking. I hope more people like Mellisa could learned Chinese and then the globalization would help the tobacco control in China.

My Professional Diary

My diary:
What I did last month:

For the printed paper:
I published one story about the repainting of Chinatown Gate, one story about a chinese' death, one opinion about smoking in China, helped other reporters to interview illegal immigrant and mayor election. Another story I worked on was about chinese takeout restaurants but Julie and I decided it was not a good timing to write the story. I am now preparing for my next story on town watch and also doing some research for the business desk.

For the website:
I finished my first video for the Philly.com, including video taping and editing.

I began to update my blog and market it every day after I found it was the least popular blog in the Inquirer. Now it is updated everyday and full of videos and pictures. The newest one is about Jeff Gammage’s daughter playing Chinese traditional children’s Kong Fu.

I am so lucky that Paula and Karl, editors at the national and international desk, sometimes volunteer to edit my blogs. Karl now moves to business desk. I miss him!

I am now working on my another news video on town watch

For the Caijing Magazine:
I began to write my column named observing American media. The first story is about pigs fly. The second is about Bill Marimow——an excellent journalist in front of challenges

For my personal research project——transition of the American printed media

I interviewed Andy Maykuth, Bill Marimow, Vernon Loeb, Dan Biddle, Bob Moron and Brian Tierney and video taped them at the same time. I will shoot Jennifer Lin video taping Rick (the food editor) next Tuesday. I will write stories for my column and make a video for AFPF and Chinese reporters. Some of them are very interesting, such as Brian playing a flying pig toy. I hope to interview people from the online desk and Philly.com next month.

I also set up interviews with the Executive editor of the WashingtonPost.com and Sabrina, our AFPF fellow. See you, dear Sabrina!!!

I may stay a day with the online desk of Men’s Health in July. Are journalists of the magazine as handsome as the men on their covers? I will find it in July.

I am still working to contact people from the printed side and online desk of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NY times (since they are leaders in the transition and also convenient for me to interview)and some magazines like Time, Business Week or others.

It is not easy. I can stop Bill in the corridor of the news room or knock the door of Venon for interview but I have to send a lot of letters and looking for people who can introduce me to the editors in other newspapers. So any suggestion or help is welcomed!!!!

What I learned:
First, I learned that Caijing magazine and myself are working on the world- class professional standard. Things I am doing here are not very different from what I do in China. We have the same standards on ethics, accuracy and in-depth story. We have the same aim for excellent stories and try our best to beat our competitors.

We have the same crazy editors who send their reporters to people’s house at 10 pm. We also have the same patient editors who let you sitting beside them and take part in the editting process. Thank you Julie!

But one thing still surprised me. I am famous in my newsroom for accuracy and being impartial and I am proud of it. However, I was asked to write an opinion on smoking here when they found I have a strong feeling on tobacco control. Though my opinion is more like a story, I learned how important it is for journalists to maintain and show impartial attitude.

I also learned the harsh challenges and huge potential the Internet brought to American journalists by talking with people. I learned how to adapt to the online news by writing blog and making video by myself. Blog is good for me to practice English writing but too time consuming. Making video is exiting but sometimes frustrating. My poor small laptop crashed for 30 times when I edited my first video. I felt so bad that I cried. And then I know it is not my fault. Video editing needs powerful computer with large memory.

The fourth thing I learned is how to inhance journalists’ moral:
A an easy going editor who always open the door of his office, often walks around the news room to talk with journalists, frequently sends letters to praise journalists for their excellent stories(by the way, our editor’s trademark expression is “you are a genius”), and accepts interview inquiry from an AFPF fellow who stopped him on the corridor of the newsroom.
B an monthly award to the best reporter in this month
C emails reporting big news of reporters’ families

The fifth thing I learned is how to effectively and efficiently manage the newsroom by sign on or sign off emails. The content of these emails includes who take what job at what time. These emails are not only working record but also a promise to the whole news room. I like this idea.

The sixth thing I learned is the culture difference between the Americans and the Chinese. Though both two nations believe in independence and helping each other, Chinese would rather help others before they ask for. In Chinese' view, one should wait for help from others, and one who ask for help is regarded as a beggar. However, in the States, people don’t help until you ask them because they need to first respect your independence. But the culture difference is not a trouble to me since a reporter always has to ask.

The last but by no means the least important thing I learned is I am cool. Before I went to the States, I talked with some alumni and read all the letters from AFPF alumni. I noticed that there would be bitter frustration generated by failures, culture shock, and being ignored in the newsroom both in the States and back to their home countries.

I always learn from failures and do not expect huge culture shock since I have already worked for one year in Washington D.C. But I cannot stand being totally ignored. That is also one of the reasons that I designed such a training plan. Now I keep myself busy and learn much.

Jin Yu's Saturday

Every Saturday morning, Jin Yu takes her GongFu class at Chinatown. She practices Hong Quan, a traditional Chinese Gongfu, her mother learns to play Chinese drum. After the class, Jin Yu has lunch with Zhaogu, her younger sister, her mother and her father in her favorite Chinese restaurant.

His father , Jeff Gammage, often wears a T shirt with English and Chinese words: Jin Yu Loves Baba.

Jeff is a reporter at the Inquirer. He adopted Jin Yu and Zhaogu from China. He then decided to embed Chinese culture into his daughters’ life.

I was shocked by the fact that so many Americans adopt Chinese girls, including Meg Ryan. According to Xinhua News Agency, There have been about 40,000 Chinese children adopted by Americans by 2006.

The other thing shocked me is that many American families try hard to teach their children Chinese culture, which is very different from the things in China. In China if a family adopts a child, they may try their best to cover the adoption truth, especially to the child himself. Some families even move to a new city.

Why? I guess to Chinese it is a stigma both to these families that can not have their own children and to children abandoned by their original families.

Jeff told me it was the same thing in American two decades ago, but now things changed.

I guess one of the main reasons is that they cannot cover the different colors and faces since they adopt Chinese children. So, let’s be proud of them!

Dance By Central City High School Students

Gaining weight

I am gaining weight here.

It is really surprising because I stop gaining weight since high school.

Before this May, I wore trousers of size 2 and now I wear trousers of size 6. I find a tire around my waist when I sit down.

Why do I begin to gain weight after more than 10 years?

Too much American food?

No. Most of the food I have here are Chinese food I cook myself or buy from Chinatown.

Too few works?

Maybe a little bit fewer than I have in China. But I am still busy with assignments, English blog everyday and Chinese columns every week. Plus, I am working on my research project and learn to take video.

So what is the reason?

I guess it is because there is less stress on me though I have the same workload. Most of the stories I’ve done in China were sensitive, difficult, complicated and very demanding. However, the stories I am working on here are easier, softer. I am really relaxed here.

The other reason of my gaining weight could be the dessert. We have no habit of having dessert after dinner in China but here it seems a normal thing. Having a dinner without dessert is like wearing a evening dress without wearing high-heel.

However delicious the dessert is, it really does a lot to the gaining weight of not only me but also other American women.

When I was in China, I always wonder why American women don’t stop eating dessert while they exercise aggressively to lose weight.

After I try the chocolate cake here I get the answer. Now I run every morning and continue to eat desert. Why? Not for losing weight but for more chocolate cakes.

Main culprit in Panama's poisonings is not China

If someone steals your gun and kills people with it. Who should be responsible for the murder?The answer is obviously not you but the person who steals the gun.

However, in the case of Panama’s poisoned medicine, China’s role is more complicated.A report by New York Time in early May said the counterfeit glycerin from China is responsible for the death of hundreds people from Panama.

But the investigation result by the Chinese government is: the Panama business man who sold it killed people by changing the name and the expiration date of the product.

As a reporter covering international trade, I like this kind of report linked to above. I read the report of The New York Time several weeks ago. I think it is a story with a fatal flaw.

That is: who changed the label of the product from industrial use to pharmaceutical use? This should be the key to the story. Only when you get the details of the whole trail can you figure out what happened. If someone changed it from the beginning, the Chinese company should no doubt take responsibility. If not, the one who renamed it is the killer.

Unfortunately I cannot find the answer from the New York Times.

There is a paragraph about it but far less than enough:
“The counterfeit glycerin passed through three trading companies on three continents, yet not one of them tested the syrup to confirm what was on the label. Along the way, a certificate falsely attesting to the purity of the shipment was repeatedly altered, eliminating the name of the manufacturer and previous owner. As a result, traders bought the syrup without knowing where it came from, or who made it. With this information, the traders might have discovered — as The Times did — that the manufacturer was not certified to make pharmaceutical ingredients.”

If the report can disclose the process of changing labels during its trip through three continents, it really exposes big problems behind international trade during this time of globalization.

That would be a fantastic story!

Instead of articulating the process of changing labels, The New York Times’ report then quickly turned to a case that happened in China last year and the big holes in China’s food and drug system which are astonishing but have nothing to do with the Panama case.

Another interesting thing: instead of reporting the results of the Chinese government’s investigation by itself, The Times uses Reuter’s news and emphasizes “China Blames Media For Food Safety Scaremongering” while Reuter’s version’s blames mislabeling for the drug deaths in Panama.

In my view, there are still a lot of questions to answer.

For example, is the trade involving the three traders just a one-time occurrence or is it more frequent? Is it a conspiracy? What about the Panama trader who sold the product? Does that firm always rename the goods or did it do this only this time? Why were there no tests on entering each of the three continents? What are these customs officials doing?

Also, the Chinese company should also take some responsibility for the death.

According to the investigation by the Chinese government, although the Chinese company did sell it as for industrial use and told the Spanish trader that, it gave the product a vague name _ TD GLICERINE _ and even changed its packing mark as GLICERINE.

It was cheating.

I am wondering how many Chinese companies are using these “tactics” when they sell goods at home and abroad.

I like the story by New York Time. It warns people of the danger behind a flawed international drug trade system; it tells Chinese government and companies they should take more responsibility while they enjoy huge export growth; it also warns the Chinese government of the importance of media and the public relations hit they will take if they don’t respond efficiently and sincerely to media!

The Ugly Truth

Can a well designed corporate governance structure completely guarantee a well run company?

In China, the answer is no.

Look at a major player in China’s life insurance market.

It is a big company, with asset of RMB 94 billion, about $12 billion. It collected RMB 26 billion (about $3.3 billion) premium in 2006 and it enjoys a above average growth rate at 20% to 30% in the past 11 years.

It also looks like a company with a nice governance structure, at least in paper. It has a balanced shareholding structure: 15 shareholders present a nice mix; a little less than 50% of which are private enterprises; 20% of which are big state owned companies; 25% of which are foreign insurance giants.

It has a sound board with 15 directors, including 10 shareholder with above 5% stake gets representation and 5 independent directors with solid background . Everything is nice?

No.

If you look closer, it is a mess.

First, the The chairman of this company is a fraud. He has channeled about RMB10 billion(about $1.28 billion ) into outside investments profiting not the company but himself, RMB2.7biilion ($ 340 million) of which are not yet paid back. The company has a simple way out: fire him, call the regulators, and let the police do the rest. Why not?

On the contrary, no Board of Directors took action.

Why?

Because the board’s legitimacy itself is in question.

If you look closer, you find:

The current board of directors should have expired before the end of 2005. It remains because the key shareholders has different opinion on how to elect a new board during a 18 month deadlock.

So why the current board does not rebel against the chairman?

Because it is a manipulated board.

First, The board is being dominated by chairman’s cronies. Even more important, several key shareholders are secretly owned by the Chairman, with the fund channeled out of the insurance company.

Second, the big state owned companies and the foreign insurance companies, though own nearly 50% of the company, have only 3 seats. Their protests were ignored.

What about the independent directors? Did they speak out?

The independent directors named by the chairman himself are largely silent.
Finaly, the regulators took action.They summoned a a meeting of senior management , declared that a “routine on-site check” is going on, demanded the chairman transfer all his responsibility to the president and fired him two months later.

All that the regulators have done are not supposed to be done by the regulators but the justice is served. It looks the regulators intervene exceedingly heavy handed in one way, but not really tough enough in the other way.

For example, they tried hard to downplay the crisis, using “routing on-site check” to avoid public recognition. The regulators also try to arrange a paid back deadline for the chairman. But it is not working. After 6 months since the regulators involved in, there is still RMB 2.7 billion ($340 million) not paid back. So the deadline had to be rescheduled again and again.

Most surprising, there is no business crime investigation involved so far.

Whaterver a nice governance structure it looks like, it may simply do not work.

And that is why media is so important.

If , like in this case, the board of directors, the shareholders, the regulators, are not doing their job or doing their job well, we news media can tell the ugly truth, a nightmare to investors, but a fascinating and illuminating story.

Click the link and read the story:
English: http://www.caijing.com.cn/newcn/English/Cover/2007-05-30/20875.shtml

Chinese: http://www.caijing.com.cn/coverstory/2007-05-26/20527.shtml

Making money on a free trip?

There is no free lunch in the world.

It is a Chinese saying I learned from my childhood and I believe it.

Now I find it is not completely true, at least on the bus to Atlantic City.

Last Sunday I went to Atlantic City to meet my friend by greyhound bus. I paid $18 for a round trip and got $20 refund at the destination. I understood that it is a way of attracting people to the casinos. But I was a little bit surprised when I found my friend got $25 refund and a free bowl of noodle. She was from New York City and only paid $15 for a round trip!

Then she told there are some people making a living by taking bus everyday. They take a round trip in the morning and another one in the afternoon so that they got $18($2 for tips) and two meals everyday.

“But it is not enough for renting house,” I said.

“They don’t need house, “my friend said:” they sleep on the bus or everywhere and bring their belongings with them.”

I still suspect if this kind of life could stay for a long time. You need working not only for survival. You need to work to developing yourself so that you can make a better living and also become part of the society.

Of course you can also make huge money by gambling with the $18 you earned. But it is a dream that never comes true for most of the people on the bus.

China's battle against smoking

Lou Yi
is a writer for Caijing magazine in Beijing and is working at The Inquirer as part of the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships program.

One day in early December, Damon Moglen and his colleague went into a restaurant in Beijing and found themselves in a weird situation: They were at a no-smoking table, but almost all the people around were smoking.

Wondering if the restaurant had a no-smoking area or only a no-smoking table, Moglen's colleague picked up the no-smoking sign on their table and studied it. Suddenly a waitress ran over, grabbed the sign out of his hands, and immediately put an ashtray on their table.

"Her immediate assumption was that we were upset because there was a no-smoking sign on the table, which was, of course, the opposite to what we thought," recalls Moglen, vice president of the international program for Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a tobacco control advocacy organization in Washington. He says that, when the two men asked for the no-smoking sign back, the waitress looked confused.

In fact, Moglen and his colleague were on a trip to discuss tobacco control with government officials and nonprofit organizations in China - the country that suffers most from smoking.

According to a report released by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the Cancer Foundation of China, and the Chinese Association on Tobacco Control, about 350 million people smoke in China - 37 percent of the entire population and about one-third of all the smokers (estimated at 1.1 billion) in the world. Among other startling facts: Half of male doctors and teachers smoke; 1.6 trillion cigarettes are sold each year, amounting to one-third of total sales on this planet.

Even worse, every year, 1 million Chinese die of smoking-related diseases, 2.5 times more than in the United States, the New England Journal of Medicine says. The death toll in China from tobacco is expected to double by 2020, the Chinese Center reports.

But after a long-running back-and-forth between controlling smoking for the sake of public health and encouraging the tobacco industry for the sake of the economy, the Chinese government seems at last to be moving in the right direction. The milestone is China's ratification of the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2005, committing itself to becoming a leader in the global effort in tobacco control.

Some government restrictions exist on tobacco ads, youth smoking, and smoking in public. But those regulations are neither fully observed nor effectively enforced. The institution that controls all tobacco production, sales and trade in China has two names. The first is the China Tobacco Corporation, the second is the State Tobacco Monopoly Administration. By any name, it is both a politically powerful government organ and a profitable giant, holding the largest cigarette monopoly in the world, churning out insanely huge profits each year. The annual pre-tax profits from China's tobacco industry - the annual pre-tax profits, namely, from this single company - amount to about 10 percent of China's pre-tax profits annually in the last 10 years. In 2006 alone, the company's tax bill was more than 290 billion renminbi, or $37.17 billion.

That is one reason the Chinese government was long reluctant to be really harsh toward the tobacco industry.

But the biggest reason is that so many jobs depend on tobacco. About 3.6 million farmers plant tobacco in the fields, and 500,000 people work in production. Industry advocates always ask: Where else could all those people possibly find a living?

Thus, China is reluctant to lift its duty on foreign tobacco. The government worries that such a move would jeopardize the Chinese tobacco industry, now confronted with huge challenges from international tobacco companies since China's entry into the World Trade Organization.

Smoking is deeply woven into Chinese culture. That is yet another reason neither government nor society has fully acknowledged the health dangers of smoking or the seriousness of the national problem. There is even a traditional saying that "You are as happy as God if you smoke a cigarette after dinner." Cigarettes also are symbolic gifts in social situations. One traditional practice in Chinese weddings is that the bride lights the cigarettes of each male guest.
Reflecting this important social role, cigarette packs in China feature beautiful things, such as pandas, dragons and flowers. The packs are so fancy that collecting them rivals stamp collecting in China. Even brand names reflect the close identification between tobacco and the national culture. One brand of cigarettes is called Zhonghua - literally, "China" - and another is named Zhongnanhai - literally, "The Central and Southern Seas" - which is the name of the residence of Chinese central government, the "Chinese Kremlin" to Westerners. In the United States, a rough equivalent would be naming a cigarette America or The White House.

The cultural impact of smoking follows Chinese people all over the world - including here in Philadelphia. A study of the Chinese community in Philadelphia by Temple University's Center for Asian Health shows that Chinese Americans have a higher rate of smoking than white people, largely because of the cultural importance of tobacco.

So what changed in China? Why is the country at last tightening controls and educating its people about the dangers? The main reason is the recognition, at long last, of the costs of smoking-related illnesses in China. Smoking is the main cause of lung cancer, from which nearly 1 million people die every year. The result is a huge burden on an already inadequate health-care system, especially with regard to poor rural families, whose members are usually the major consumers of cigarettes. A report released by the China Center for Economic Research at Peking University shows that the cost of medical care for smoking-related diseases in 2005 (the last year for which data are available) was more than $31.25 billion - $1.25 billion more than the tax and profits the tobacco industry created that year.

Tobacco control thus has tightened noticeably since 2005. Tobacco ads, which used to be everywhere, are disappearing from the streets, replaced by a growing number of posters on the harm of smoking. There is also some talk of forbidding "soft" tobacco ads. But lifting the tobacco duty is not yet on the table - the tobacco industry is still too strong, as is the government's concern over jobs and the economy.

The next two years could offer even better motives for change. China is due to submit its first tobacco-control progress report in 2007. To fulfill the convention, China is planning to publish rules forbidding public smoking; it will also require bigger and clearer warnings on cigarette packs. And 2008 will bring the Olympic Games, and since the games are tobacco-free, public smoking will be forbidden at the six major urban sites of the Games. True, 18 days of smoke-free Olympics won't change the longtime cultural and economic dependence on tobacco. Think of the more-than-20-year tobacco control effort in the United States!
Contact Lou Yi at lyi@phillynews.com.

The dinner aftermath

Before going to America, I learned some American table manners. And then I held my first dinner party and even learned a new word:B.Y.O.B

We had a wonderful dinner. At the beginning of the dinner, I welcomed them to my “cold cottage” and said sorry for “not treating you well”, as Chinese usually do, to show my humility. At the end of the dinner, everyone shake my hands and thanked me, as Americans usually do.

However, the next day, one of my colleagues came to my desk and thanked me again for the delicious food. I was a little bit surprised that he was so polite.

Then a strange thing happened.

My colleagues who attended my dinner came to my desk one by one and thanked me again. One colleague who did not go to office called me and thanked me again.

Do Americans always thank twice for a dinner? “Not always,”my friend said:” Maybe they really like your food.”But another friend said it is also one of the rules to double thank.

That night I could not sleep and kept accounting how many dinner parties I have attended and how many “thanks” I didn’t say.

reponse to a reader's comment

"This time it was thousands of pets but what if the next time it is thousands of humans killed by a counterfeit or contaminated product."

This is what I received from a reader about the pet food crisis recently. I read the stories about tainted pet food and toothpaste. These stories remind me of my stories on BaiYangdian lake which used to be a beautiful lake in northern China.

However, last spring people found a lot of dead fish floating on the lake. There were different explanations, including the rapid change of weather, the lack of air for such huge numbers of fish in a limited space, the polluted water dumping into the lake from Baoding, a nearby city.

I went to the cities and counties around the lake and finally I found that it was the combination of many factors. But the biggest reason is the pollution generated by continuous development of industries around the lake, first in the city, then expanding to nearby villages. There is a lack of recognition and no efficient way to solve the problem of pollution when rapid economic development is occurring.

I agree with my reader; I worry about the health of people and animals, of course, not only in the States but also in China.

In the comment, the reader also said:

"If you did a hard-hitting investigative story and it hit close to high ranking officials, would you get a Chinese "Pulitzer" or imprisonment?"

My answer is:

As a reporter, I have written a lot of stories on health and environmental issues. Most of them are cover stories or special reports for my magazine. Some of them did hit high ranking officials and helped to change the situation.

That is why I love my job and why journalists are so important in today’s China. Because you can make a difference to people’s life.

Though I got no Chinese”Pulitzer,” I am still working and writing blogs in English and columns in Chinese.

Another thing I worry is about the China bashing emotion from this comment.

If my cat or dog got sick because of the food, I may also get angry. Actually in China, there was also a lot of foreign bashing when cats and dogs got sick because of pet food from Mars, an international company; Or when people’s eyes got sick because of the product of Bausch & Lomb, an international company based in N.Y.

Several days ago I had a hot debate with a scholar on trade on intellectual property rights. Reluctantly admitting this problem exists in China, he criticized big foreign companies for monopolizing intellectual property and said that it is the high price of luxury products from such firms as Armani that drives people to steal intellectual property.

So ridiculous!

If we don’t realize the serious problem of intellectual property in China, there will never be rapid development of high technology industries in the country. We must protect intellectual property not because of the pressure from the States but because it is the key to the development of our country.

I cannot understand why this guy just wants to criticize and fight Americans but not emphasize the importance of intellectual property in China!

As for my reader’s angry comment on so many issues, I would like to say that we need to focus on the solution of a specific problem to really solve it.
If we expand the complaints from pet food to slave labor and even to Chinese foreign policy in Sudan, it raises the emotional temperature without solving the problem.

We need solutions, not slogans.

Starbucks and home

Does some one from China feel like home in Chinatown?

To me, the answer is no.

The narrow streets, the smell of restaurant kitchens, the sweet songs of Lijun Deng, the Cantonese dialect-all make me feel like I am in a small town of southern china, or in a Hong Kong movie, but not where I live.

However, there is someplace makes me feel like I am home. That is Starbucks.
Last night when I sat in a Starbucks on the Market Street with a tall cup of mocha in hand, I really feel as if in Beijing.

There is one Starbucks on the Chaoyangmenwai Street, close to my office building. When I am in Beijing I go to Starbucks very often, to interview people, meet my friends, write with my laptop or just hide from piles of works. There is also a wide road in front of me when I look through the window, just like what I saw from the Starbucks at the 12th and Market Streets in Philadelphia.

One difference between the two Starbucks is the one in Beijing is much bigger and noisier. The other difference is that Starbucks in Beijing offers my favorite chocolate cakes and tiramisu, which I never find in Starbucks here.

There is also a Starbucks close to where I live in Beijing. Though it is in a residential area, it is often crowded even on the workdays. Sometimes I go to Starbucks with my book or laptop, sit at an outdoor table, and play computer games or reading. .Then I realize how globalization is changing China and my own life, which I think is good.

But some Chinese don’t think so.

Last year, a Chinese TV anchor found a Starbucks in the Forbidden City, the royal palace in Beijing. He got so angry that he urged in his blog to drive Starbucks out of the Forbidden City, “to protect the Chinese culture”.

He said it is OK to have Starbucks in any other place in Beijing. However, while acknowledging that Starbucks is more comfortable than any of the Chinese food vendors in the Forbidden City, he does not want to see it there. Because as a symbol of tasteless American culture, Starbuck’s presence in the Forbidden City is a culture invasion to China. " It is a laugh stock in western upper-class society,” he said later in a interview.

I am at least as proud as he is of the Forbidden City many times, but I would be glad to see a Starbucks after an exhausting walk in such a large palace, especially in winter or summer. I would rush into the café and I don’t care how the western upper-class society thinks of me at all.

In my view, the point is not if whether Starbucks should be in the Forbidden City. The point is whether any food vendor or commercial site should be in the Forbidden City. If they should, then the question is how to harmonize its existence with the environment as much as possible and at the same time serve tourists well.

But the idea of throwing out the Starbucks and being satisfied with the remaining Chinese food vendors, by itself, is ridiculous.

Actually, Starbucks is very popular in China since it provides a pleasant place for people to meet and have a rest. It doesn’t force people to come in. If you really don’t like it you can just enter a Chinese teahouse or suggest building one in the Forbidden City.

That is the fair play.

The TV anchor’s idea, as many Chinese call patriotism, in my view is a kind of aggressive nationalism or protectionism which may impede a country’s development.
Unfortunately, as a reporter covering trade, I find stronger protectionism in the name of patriotism both in China and the United States in recent years.

Once I saw a red banner in a supermarket in Washington DC which encouraged people to buy a brand of wok because it is made in USA. It said something like: buy the brand and save our jobs.
It will only cost customers money and the jobs in the supermarkets!

I am tired of so much criticism on Chinese goods for trade deficit. China doesn’t force Americans to buy Chinese goods. You buy it because of its low price and good quality.

There is intellectual property right or other problems, but the main reason that China becomes a export machine is because it enjoys real comparative advantage on labor and other key resources. Therefore resisting Chinese goods would not help the American jobs. Open up to Chinese investments, say, to allow CNOOC, a Chinese oil company, to buy Unocal two years ago may help.

Three Kinds of Questions

Before I went to Philadelphia, I have already been prepared to answer a lot of questions about China and myself. To my surprise, different people ask very different questions.
In Chinatown, the first question people tend to ask me is always like this:How can you stay here after you finish your program?
My response is always:I will leave.
They feel confused and try to encourage me to stay in the United States, saying like:“Don’t worry, you will find a job here.”
A woman working at a non-profit organization for refugees even offered an interpreter job and working visa.
I said: No thanks. I want to go back to China.
“Really? Why?” the woman asked.
“Because my 100,000 readers are waiting for me,” I said, “they miss me and I miss them too.”
She paused for a second and said:
”You must love your job very much.”
Yes I do love my job. Though China’s journalism environment is not fully developed, it is a land of opportunity for journalists not only from China but also across the world. There are so many interesting stories to report, so many exciting and important moments to witness and so many people out there reading your stories. Different from what I have seen here, almost every newspaper in China is recruiting reporters. With a decent job and happy family and promising future waiting for me, why should I break my words, even illegally?
As a reporter, most stories I wrote are problems China is facing. By talking to people in Chinatown who came to the States to escape the suffering life in their homeland, I realize how lucky I am living today’s China, a rising, peaceful land with many problems but more hopes.
It seems that Chinese outside Chinatown have more interest in China itself. Most of them are from mainland China and came to the States only about five years ago.
Their question always begins with:How is China now? How do they treat Haigui(Meaning Sea Turtle in Chinese, Common green turtle in Chinese, tubbed for returned Chinese with abroad education background)? How much do you earn in China? (If this guy is more Americanized, he will not ask the question directly) Will you be promoted after you finish the program?
I will introduce them the website of the magazine I work for. As for my own future, my answer is:I don’t know whether or not I will be promoted. It is not up to me. But I am sure that I am pretty unique for the fact that I have worked for both the Chinese media and American newspaper in the United States.
To my surprise, Americans don’t ask me about China. They tell me:
“China will be the next global leader.”
I am shocked.
I have never thought of China becoming the leader of the world, economically, politically or militarily. On the contrary, when I was in China, we always talked about the barriers in front of China’s future development.
For example, we are afraid that China cannot continue its world factory strategy in the next 20 years since it maybe difficult to provide a lot of cheap and sustainable resources like labor, land and electricity.
If true, what’s the alternative option? With problems on intellectual property protection and inadequate higher education, Can China change its focus to intellectual intensive industry?
But here it seems Americans are so fascinated and at the same time scared by China’s development.
Personally I believe one’s own effort is much more important than the outsideenvironment. However, confronted with so many different questions, I begin to understand how important a peaceful, thoughtful and objective attitude could help each other, whether for people or for their nations.

Chinatown, not China

Last week I received a comment from a reader on my video “A Glimpse of Chinatown”:
It said:
The problems mentioned in your video could be common in almost every Chinatown around the world. It's hard to solve these problems. It's some kinds of Chinese problems. Anyway, I don't think Chinatown is an elegant place. In most cases, Chinatown means cheap and dirty.
I partly agree with him that it is a problem of every Chinatown. Though Philadelphia’s Chinatown proudly ranks among the biggest Chinatowns around the America, it gives visitors the same impression as all Chinatown: ubiquitous smells of Chinese food, trash everywhere, in short, dynamic business atmosphere, but dirty. To find a decent and clean restaurant in Chinatown is not a easy job. It is not only the same in every Chinatown, but the same, say, in past 30 years, if not longer. Chinatown never changes.
One Chinese American living in Chinatown for 20 years regards it as a cherished tradition, but their argument is not that “We Chinese lived and will continue to live in this way”, but that “Laowai (the foreigner) is addicted to this exotic image of Chinatown so we keep deliver it to them”. Is the argument right?
An American friend echoed agreement. He claimed Philadelphia’s Chinatown is exactly what he saw in China. He may have a point here. He had been to Gansu and Hunan two provinces in China’s hinterland. Gansu is especially famous for being poor.
However, Gansu and Hunan do not represent the whole picture of China. There is Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, which stand out as truly international metropolis. Actually, China’s southeastern seashore region has become very much modernized. Moreover, even Gansu, Hunan and other inner provinces have improved a lot.
Grown up in Southeastern China and working in Beijing, I found Chinatown and China are two different worlds. Restaurants are a good example. The food, decoration and songs played in the restaurants, though authentic, are 20-year outdated.
The real thing is that China has changed, but Chinatowns have not. Why?
May be that is because in the past 30 years, since China open its door to the outside world, those who come from China to the U.S. usually don’t live in Chinatown anymore. Unlike their predecessors, they are educated from American universities, find a decent job and settle down in mainstream society. They may sometimes go to Chinatown for Chinese food. And that is it.
In the same time, Chinatown boxed in by more and more public constructions from different directions, has limited housing or public service. New people come and move out. It becomes a working-class transmit community but not a good neighborhood for long time settlement.
Maybe that is why you don’t frequently see highly education young Chinese in Chinatown. Maybe that is why Chinatown population obviously gets older and older.

No Excuse

What is shocking me most in the United States?
Not tall building, fancy cell phone or high technology which I am sure China have or will have but some words Americans use everyday.
“Excuse me”, “sorry”, you can’t live a single day in America without hearing these words repeated dozens of times. They are simply everywhere. No doubt they are neither 100% sincere nor substantiated, but they can quickly and efficiently deal with innumerous minor unpleasant situations in the real world: an accidental bump into a stranger, a cough in a serious meeting, etc. They make life easier for everyone. These magic words we Chinese can not help admiring.

We don’t use them.

We Chinese don’t usually say sorry to a stranger today. For example, when somebody crush on you in a loaded bus, you look at him expecting some kind of apology, 90% of times you see a guy not even looking at you but anywhere else, he would even not bother talk to you, as if nothing happens. If you are determined to extort an apology from this guy, chance is that it may evolve into a quarrel, then into a fight, or anything.

Why? Isn’t China supposed to be a land of politeness and courteousness?

Actually, courtesy does exist among those who are acquainted with each other. People know how to treat you only when they learn who you are. The way they talk to you, deal with you is defined by your position in a given society. These do not apply to a stranger.

A bigger truth is: China may used to be a land of politeness and courteousness, not anymore. The courtesy system imbedded in the traditional society has gone, replaced by universal camaraderie since 1949. However, during the rapid economic and political change in the last 30 years nationally and internationally, Chinese people are struggling to find a new interaction interface with each other.

An excuse to explain away the “no excuse” is that, we try to convince ourselves that you should not be “too polite” toward those you are familiar with, because if you treat your friends too politely, you regard him not as one of your own. However, a contradiction is that when those who are really not one of your own appear, there is no need to be polite to them. Either should not be or need not be polite, we end out treating other people rude. There is simply no excuse not to say “excuse me”.

Chinatown Week, My second week at the Inquirer

22/04/07
This week is Chinatown Gate week. I really enjoyed this assignment.

In China, most of the stories I did were controversy and sensitive and it was really difficult to get information. Before last July, besides covering trade I went outside Beijing for 7 to 10 days every month for urgent and important assignments about which I had no contacts, background or knowledge at all and I even didn’t expect people would speak out or to tell the truth when I approached them. I had worked like this for 15 months and then I decided to only cover trade and health. I was successful in almost all the assignments but my business trips were full of frustration and nightmare.

That is why I enjoyed working here. The topic was interesting and everybody liked to talk to me. I interviewed Americans in the daytime and Chinese at night. I was really relaxed.

I guess my one shortcoming is that I always over report. I interview too many people. Up till now I have interviewed 14 people for this story and will interview more in the next week. I was slowly not only because I interviewed many people but also because I would rather record then to just take notes.

You know I am still not confident on my listening comprehension. But this morning, I found I can write down all the important words my source has said. Wonderful!!

What will be my next story?

Next week my number one job is to build my own network. So my aim in the next week is: everyday meet one new person.

Today I met with a woman from the world affair council in Philadelphia. She invited me to attend their activities as guest. Next Tuesday I will attend a fundraising party for a city councilman. I will absolutely meet more new ones. By the way, I have my Inquirer business cards now!

Last week, Bob Moran, our crime reporter was so sympathetic that he invited me to work with him in the west Philadelphia. Then Andy asked him if possible to work with me for other stories. We went out for an event about death penalty. I did some transcript for him and I found my name was on byline. I felt a little embarrassed because I contributed only a little.

This Friday I felt better because I worked much more with Jeff, our health reporter on the story about mental health. But I felt embarrassed again when I found he put my name before his name. I asked him not to do so because he was the writer.

To tell the truth, the most important thing to me is I can really help people here but not to be a burden. Byline, though makes me feel comfortable when my fellows keep asking about my stories and showing their own, is not very important for me. Though I enjoyed working here and working alone is not a problem for me, I want to work with other journalists so that I can learn from different people and learn how the American society works.

My final aim is to find a way for the development of Chinese Journalism and Chinese society. The more people I talk to, the more things I observe or involve with, the more I can share with my colleagues and my readers in China.

I talked with Jennifer Lin, my mentor, about my training program. Besides working for the Inquirer, I also need time to do my own research which is the internet and the US-China trade. I want to learn how to use Bloomberg. I also want to go to the Metropolitan Museum again. I want more my own time to cook!

I am learning every minute. When I do transcript I recognize my wrong pronunciations so that I can fix them. I found a whole new world when I watched Jennifer and her son’s movie product. I learn what community is from the Gate story. I learn how to efficiently run a media by watching the Inquirer’s emails everyday. However, I am still looking for a cheaper way without Hermes.

The most important thing I learn from the program is how to deal with new comers or green hands. We have many green hands in my magazine with little experience but huge potential. They deserve more attention. To what extent they can contribute depends on to what extend we help and inspire them and provide a warm working environment. I do learn a lot from Andy, Jennifer, John Brumfield, Susan and Katie. For example, Andy is busy but sitting next to him is a kind of comfort to me.

Girl Girl Study, Up Up Everyday, My first week at the Inquirer

04/15/2007
My first week was a very busy orientation week. In the first three days, I had ten interviews every day, with all the important people in the news room. I was very sorry that I could not talk Bill, the editor in chief, since he was still in hospital after surgery. However, I finally met him last week.
Before I set out to the States I talked with my editor in chief, editors in each desks, and website manager. I asked them for what they wanted me to learn from the program and collected a lot of questions.

However, I did not want to throw all the questions to them now. I would like to find by myself first and then I could ask better questions.

Actually some interviews were so interesting that I could not wait for one more minute. After I talked with the people in the Philly.com, I rushed back to my apartment and reported to my website editor.

Andy is a wonderful mentor. Before I went to Philla, he had already written a letter to the newsroom to introduce me and encouraged them to say hello to me. You can imagine how I was surprised when I received letters from my future colleagues.

I replied by sending a video I made with my photos and it did help a lot. Now 156 people watched it and I bet most of them were sitting in this white building.

It was my first video. And then I made four. To me it was not only for fun but also to help me out of homesickness and loneliness. The newest one is for my fellows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDmOyYTaTc8

Andy also asked people to donate their used cooking things to me since there were only few things in the kitchen of my apartment. Everyday when I entered the newsroom I found a pan, a wok or a pot on my desk.

Jennifer Lin, another mentor, a former Beijing correspondent with the Inquirer reminded me of the life in Beijing. Though she was still in a fellowship in University of Pennsylvania, we had several pleasant dinners and we will have more in the next week.

John Brumfield, the administrative person, who helped to find my apartment, is amazing. Every time I turned to him, he gave me the answer. Every time he saw reports about China, he would give them to me. He is efficient and warm hearted.

To my surprise, my first assignment was about basketball. A Chinese basketball player, who would go to the United States for the NBA draft, is the target of 76ers, the Philadelphia basketball team. As a business reporter, I had never covered sport and I had no interest in basketball at all. Now I learned a lot! The story was not done yet since the sport editor is still on vacation. He will be back tomorrow.

Besides homesickness, English writing is another big concern. I have no previous professional English writing experience and I didn’t worry too much when I was in China. The reason is simple. I write in Chinese so that I have a lot more readers and influence than any English media reporter could have in China. Better English writing or more bylines were not my number one goal for this program.

Now I realized I must work harder on my English listening and writing or I would be a burden not helper for the Inquirer.

I set up my aim: one paper everyday, one magazine every week. I put a slogan on the back of refrigerator: Hao Hao Xue Xi Tian Tian Xiang Shang(girl girl study, up up everyday), which haven’t been in my room since I graduated from elementary school.

Now I am working on a story about Chinatown Gate. It is really interesting. I got the answer of a question hunting me for 2 years: why Chinatown is so dirty?

However, I hope I can have more opportunities to work with other reporters so that I can gain my understanding of the American society. Last week I went with Bob Moran, the crime reporter, to the west part of Philadelphia where two murders happened in one week. To me, the most terrible thing of the story was that the murders were between teenagers with guns.

A exciting news! I will have my blog in Philly.com. I am still thinking of the name of the blog.