Metalworking in Sichuan, 1984
On this page, I’ll list clickable links to a selection of serious, heavyweight, and very much less so, radio features from the first couple of years in Beijing, when I was trying to capture the normality of Chinese life.
It all went down rather well with Radio Four, and especially the Today Programme, which – as I recall – broadcast pretty much every one of the features I sent in.
After all, in those days I was one of the very, very few foreign correspondents actually filing fully-fledged audio packages for radio, with underlay sound and complex mixing (the latter done on my behalf, in the absence of computers and audio software, by good colleagues in London).
I wasn’t, however, routinely taking photographs, so sadly there’s very little to illustrate most of these features – with the exception of the Sichuan material.
I was ahead of the multimedia game in some ways, but as nothing compared with what my successors now take for granted a quarter century on.
The titles below, in no particular order, speak for themselves, and as with other postings, several of these are in their constituent, unmixed form.
Chongqing Sichuan reforms 1984
Deng Pufanfg and Disability 02’85
Guitars make comeback in China March 10 1985
China’s Children April 1985 World Tonight Radio 4
Peking’s English Corner, April 1985
Shakespeare Festival Beijing April 18 1986
