It recounts the author’s views on the journalistic profession, emphasizing that journalists should possess a social conscience, knowledge base, and perseverance. The author also shares their reflections at age 50, including maintaining curiosity, balancing material and spiritual needs, and contemplating the future.
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Script
The best journalist first has a social conscience, then knowledge reserves, and finally perseverance. It can’t be that you run 100 meters and aren’t satisfied, so you just run. I think these three combined—people expect the hidden dangers of vaccine safety to be completely resolved. This is like the milk powder incident – it always progresses through a cycle of problems arising, problems being solved, and thoroughly resolving those problems. Otherwise, what’s the point of journalists?
I think the best journalists first have a social conscience, second have a knowledge base, and third, they can’t just run 100 meters for fun; they need to keep running. I feel that these three combined with my turning 50 this year will make it clear that I seem suited for journalism. I am naturally closely linked to China’s 40 years of reform. When I turned 30, I stood on the bank of the Songhua River; when I turned 40, my birthday was entering and exiting the Olympic broadcast in 2008. Turning 50 this year, with the whole country commemorating the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up, there is indeed a correspondence. If we talk about a great era turning 40, does China’s 40 years of reform represent enlightenment or confusion?
I feel that after 40 years of development, China has provided enough material wealth for both the people and the country. However, anxiety and confusion have increased instead of decreased. We thought that becoming strong and prosperous would solve everything, but we discovered that material comfort is just a foundation. It’s relatively easy to escape poverty materially, but it’s truly difficult to achieve spiritual richness and become a great nation. The United States is already attacking our high-tech industries; we need to focus on agricultural products. There has always been a saying in this world: it’s not easy being number two! How many number twos have there been in the US? Therefore, we will inevitably go through a long period of time to transform this “number two” mentality into something that surpasses ourselves. I can’t expect to get everything.
I was lucky to start in television at 25, and it began with interviews of people. I came into contact with thousands of figures carrying various auras. When I was young, I thought these auras would surely make them happy. But when you get close to them, no, there’s not much connection between the aura and their happiness; sometimes they’re even inversely proportional. Just recently, I finished reading “The Last 29 Years of Guo Moruo.” Despite holding high positions like Vice Premier of the State Council, various CPPCC vice-chairmanships, and deputy committee chairmanships without ever being officially criticized, his two sons both died – one committed suicide, and the other likely fell to his death from a height. Could he have been happy?
What do you use to measure happiness? When she was in her sixties or seventies, having two sons leave her within a few years couldn’t make a former vice premier happy. Many famous calligraphy and paintings can bring happiness, being safely through many years can bring happiness. What more is needed? So I think looking at people’s reading habits is the best mirror. To put it slightly seriously, I feel that the anxiety of many people now comes from thinking too much and reading too little. This is a reply from Mr. Yang Jiang to a young person. Without reading, everyone expects fast food, hoping to find a remedy with just a mobile phone. How could that be possible? I learned to be clever through a clumsy process of studying, and subtraction is done when you read more and more books.
So I don’t want to expect everything from everyone, but I hope the proportion increases – that more and more Chinese people can find a better version of themselves through education. That’s what matters most. No one sits on the ground staring at the stars and figures everything out; I can’t do that. But I can look in the mirror. A few years ago, a BBC news anchor came to Beijing, claiming to be their best news anchor. Then some well-meaning person organized a dialogue between Chinese news anchors and him. We had a conversation. During the conversation, he asked me a question: what should BBC learn from CCTV? I joked around first and said, of course, they should start by learning Chinese.
Next, I joked that the BBC should learn from CCTV about their curiosity towards the world. I said, haven’t we rapidly expanded our presence globally in recent years? We now have over 70 foreign bureaus. Our reporters feel like students, and whenever they see something new abroad, they’re incredibly curious, observing the world with a great sense of wonder. The BBC has already treated Britain as the whole world; you’ve lost your curiosity. My friend slapped the table and said, “You’ve hit the nail on the head! That’s exactly what we lack.” In 2007, when I interviewed an author in Japan, he told me a sentence: “This country has everything except hope.” Later, I understood how profound that statement was. Looking at it from another angle, more than ten years ago, I felt like China lacked everything except hope; everyone felt there was something to look forward to.
But I worry about the day we become a prosperous nation that has everything except hope. To be honest, I’m very concerned that China will reach a point where it feels truly poor only when it has everything. When I was 50, I feared becoming someone who could satisfy all material conditions but remained a very impoverished person. In our reality, there are many highly educated people lacking in culture, and many poor people with countless numbers in their bank accounts. This is the problem of this era. True poverty isn’t scary because it has momentum and hope ahead. That’s why I say we have a moral deficit and a loss of humanity – that’s the reason. I think scientists invent so many things not necessarily because they initially carried some grand mission, but out of curiosity.
So I was curious whether I could pull it off, so I started pushing myself to be better around the age of 50. That makes me happy. One thing that bothers me now is persistence. We were just talking about you still persisting, and I said don’t – once you persist, you’re not far from death. In the past, we always said persistence equals victory. Chinese football would say “persist for three minutes, grit your teeth,” there’s no fun left, no methods left, so it relies on persistence. Persistence is sometimes important, but quite often this statement has two sides to it. I’m afraid that when I’m persisting in doing something, like chatting with everyone now, I insist on finishing everything I have left to say. Actually, my time is up now, but I’m curious, what will the conversation turn out like?
Give yourself a very small keyword, but engage in conversation with everyone. I think that at 50 years old, as long as you can still maintain great curiosity, there’s no problem. I like all fun things, but not necessarily the most fun things right now; today’s trends might disappear in an instant. There are yearly buzzwords – do you remember any? Could today’s internet media possibly be what traditional media dreamed of 10 years ago? So fun things always have their own inherent appeal. I respect everyone’s preferences, there must be a reason for that, but looking at the long term, people still prefer playing mahjong. When you also like eating fast food, restaurants serving elaborate meals will naturally decline.
Many things can’t just be passed with a sigh. How much fragmented reading do you have on your phone every day? How many longer readings do you have? But this is also a process, and the phone is becoming our handcuffs. So I think that the more short things you see, the more nearsighted people will gradually become, but this is also a process. I never worry about content being king. You’ll come back. You’ll entertain yourself to death every day until you reach 40, just like seeing teenagers drinking cola—you tell them to drink less, but you know they’re going to drink it anyway. But on the other hand, I’m optimistic; at 40, he will definitely return to the world of tea. That’s a Chinese person’s life.
It’s quite normal, but I hope the next change will be a little faster. We’re just expressing our feelings – there are so few investigative journalists these days; you don’t even look at investigations anymore.
Thank you everyone