If you had ever watched English news programs on the national TV station a decade before, you must be familiar with Edwin Mahar, the first foreign English newscaster on CCTV who is loved by many Chinese audiences.
Before taking on this job, Mr. Edwin had worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and other media outlets. As a professional broadcaster who grew up in New Zealand and lived in Australia, he had never foreseen his extraordinary career experience in a remote capital city named Beijing before that rainy afternoon in Melbourne many years ago.
Edwin: It just showed you how fate can suddenly open a new door to you. I just happened to be in my vegetable garden one afternoon, and the rain started coming down. When I came inside, I waited for the rain to stop. I turned on my shortwave radio. I just turned it on to see what I could hear. And a news report started, and I thought it was not the BBC, not the Voice of America. At the end, the announcer said this is China Radio International broadcasting from Beijing.
Edwin was quite surprised when he heard there was a job opportunity that fit him quite well from the CRI broadcast, yet he decided to give it a try and sent an e-mail introducing his experiences in broadcasting. The next day, he received a phone call saying that he was invited to be a voice coach of the CRI English section in Beijing. Since Edwin had never expected to visit the city he hadn’t been to before, he even considered whether he should shorten the contract period from 1 year to half a year. When Edwin got on board the plane flying to China in 2003, he wouldn’t believe how much he would be in love with the city of Beijing that kept him stay here till today.
Edwin: Being in China was like being on a fast train going around hills and mountains. Every time you could see something amazing, something new. And that is the way it has been, because many foreigners will tell you that in their own countries, things certainly change, but they don’t change almost overnight like they seem to here. So, the speed of change here is what really has impressed me. I can sometimes walk down a street that I went down maybe 2 months earlier, and. then I go down that street again. I didn’t realize that many buildings had been going up, and it’s now finished. Things like that are happening all the time.
Moreover, a noticeable improvement of air quality in Beijing also made Edwin believe that the city has never stopped to better the living conditions of its citizens.
Edwin: Beijing’s air quality that I mentioned earlier was pretty bad. Of course, it’s taken time, but now you get so many blue sky’s days. People don’t talk about so much the weather anymore. It’s becoming acceptable to expect clear blue skies in the city where the air was totally the opposite when you sometimes couldn’t see from one side of the road to the other. Those environmental changes have made big impacts not only on me and like many other foreigners, but the people of Beijing. I’m sure they will admit that their quality of life is much better.
In addition to the improvement in air quality, Edwin also thumbs up to Beijing's transportation construction. He remembered that at the beginning of the subway construction, there were only 2 or 3 lines, but now it has expanded into a big spiderweb connecting every part of the city and providing the citizens with huge convenience.
Edwin: The quality of the system has improved. It’s much more user-friendly. I like to travel on buses as well, because they come so frequently. You don’t have to wait very long for a bus to come. And it is sometimes easy to connect the two, to use the subway, and get off somewhere and catch a bus. So, it’s so easy to do that. Beijing should be very proud of its public transport services that it operates.
Edwin says the Beijing municipal government has taken a lot of efforts to meet public needs, improve the convenience of the residents' life and make the city more environmental-friendly. Transportation is just one of their outstanding performances. Apart from the urban transportation, Edwin has been impressed by the high-speed train construction. If he has to pick one thing either he feels surprised about or impressed by, he goes for his unforgettable experience on high-speed trains.
Edwin: Chinese, of course, have always traveled by train. They love trains anyway, to get to their homes, especially at the time of the Spring Festival and other holidays. But you know, there were great difficulties of standing for hours to get home in that time frame and to come back to work. But now, you know, we're living in a different sort of society, where people can afford the luxury of a high-speed train. It not only saves time, but it’s just so pleasurable. I’ve traveled from Beijing to Shanghai, Beijing to Wuhan, to three or four other places. And you just sit down and you just relax!
In 2017, Edwin retired from CCTV. Instead of returning to his home in Melbourne, Australia, now he lives alone in Beijing. When asked about why he wouldn't consider returning to Australia to be with his children, Edwin says……
Edwin: One night, when I went back to Melbourne, which is a big city, I went into my bedroom, a bedroom that had been given to me, and I wondered why I couldn’t get asleep. It dawned on me: there was no background noise. So, I opened the window. I could hear a dog barking in the distance. That was just a noise that could get me off to sleep. In Beijing, there was always some kind of noise around. I came here so many years ago and I went to the restaurant and I thought: Jesus, the people are so noisy, so loud! Now if I go to a restaurant and it’s too quiet, I don’t like it so much. I love to be with some sort of sound and people enjoying themselves.
It had never occurred to Edwin that the hustle and bustle of the Beijing city, to which he had been so unaccustomed, would be the exact reason for his return. Of course, in addition to this factor, the irreplaceable friendliness of the people in Beijing has made him attached to the city and feel a deep sense of belonging. He remembers vividly an encounter on the subway a few years ago.
Edwin: When I traveled on the subway, on the ‘Di Tie’, I wasn’t always sure of how to get back to the ‘You Yi Bin Guan’ where I lived. But a colleague said that if you do ever get into trouble, just say to somebody sitting next to you on the bus or the train. One day I was on the ‘Di Tie’, and I felt I was going in the wrong part of Beijing. It wasn’t where I should be going. A Chinese man sitting next to me and I said to him ‘I want to go to the You Yi Bin Guan’, and he understood me, and he put 3 fingers up like this. But I realized what he meant: there were 3 stations to go. I waited, and I would get to the 3rd station. He came off the subway with me and found me a bus that would take me directly to the hotel. I would never forget that. You know, he went out of his own way to help a foreigner who he didn’t know. That was something that I always remember of my first experiences using Beijing’s public transport.
For Edwin, the special tie with the city shall live on as time goes on.
Edwin: The quality of the atmosphere, whichever way you like to look at it, has much improved. That would have to be a deciding factor not just for the administrators, but also, it’s on the minds of the people who are participating in the various events.