Beijing Broadcasting Institute - BBI - is the foremost tertiary institution for Broadcasting Media in China. Students are recruited from all over the vast country, and many of the more prominent personalities in Chinese media have a degree from BBI.

BBI is situated in the poorer outer eastern section of Chaoyang District in East Beijing, next door to the Second Foreign Language Institute, Erwei. The surrounding area is not the most attractive, but the BBI campus is quite a different story with lots of trees and shrubs as well as lovely lawns and a rose garden.

The Department of Foreign Languages caters for students studying International Journalism. Here students learn to use English as a working language, to prepare them for a future in the foreign language media in China. Their level of English is usually fairly high when they enter BBI, and by the time they finish after five years of study, they are quite capable of writing and presenting news stories in English on their own, as well as translate into English from the Chinese or the other way around.
 
 

The Foreign Experts, four of us,  lived together with the foreign students - mostly Koreans learning Chinese - in a new International Centre on the far side of campus. I had mixed feelings about being segregated from my Chinese colleagues; why couldn't we live in the same sort of flats as they did?

The International Centre was brand new - we moved there in late November 1998 - with impressive marble and a huge chandelier in the lobby, but we had to go through a maze of  narrow corridors, across a courtyard, passing through six doors before finally entering our own stair well at the back of the building. Visitors often got lost and had to ring for assistance from the lobby. There was a direct entrance, but for reasons only understood by the manager of the building, this door was kept  permanently locked. When I expressed concern about not being able to get out in an emergency, a fire extinguisher was placed near the door and I was told that we could use it to smash the door in case of fire...

My flat was quite large with livingroom, bedroom and a study where I kept a rabbit I was looking after for a couple of months while its rightful owner, my colleague, was on holidays in America. There was a well equipped kitchen with microwave and rice cooker and more, and a bathroom which would have been a dream if only the hot water had been on when I needed it. After all, that had been the case in the old flat, which everyone was apologising about when I first arrived. But we had cable television with countless Chinese channels, and for a short while we had access to Star TV until this Hong Kong based station went digital and our receivers did not. An early promise of giving us CNN was never kept.

Every morning a maid would come in to clean, and once a week the bed sheets were changed, a luxury I certainly appreciated. On Wednesday afternoons, our driver, Mr Ma, would take us on a trip around Beijing to do our shopping in the embassy areas where western goods can be found.

Unfortunately my flat faced north, and in combination with blue tinted windows, it was very dark and gloomy in winter. There was also a problem with noise from a boiler on the ground floor which permeated the building during afternoons and evenings. In order to cope, I listened to mostly baroque music on my portable CD player. Luckily there was a very good CD department in the Foreign Language Bookshop on Wangfujing Street in central Beijing where they stocked Naxos recordings at a reasonable price. Needless to say I spent a few Yuan there.

I made some good friends at BBI with whom I spent many pleasant hours. There were my foreign colleagues of course, two Americans and one Canadian, some nice and friendly students and  a few Chinese colleagues, in particular Tina and William, a lovely couple who became my closest friends.

Tina and William on a visit in my flat

I also had people I knew from Melbourne, the Hsu family, who had been instrumental in putting me into contact with BBI. They invited me to their home in Beijing for a lovely traditional midnight meal of dumplings on the eve of the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit. Professor Hsu had been a lecturer at BBI many years ago and had been asked by the Foreign Languages Department to assist them in finding a Foreign Expert from Australia. He found me, and as chance would have it, he and his family were just about to leave Melbourne to spend a year in their former home town of Beijing at the same time as I was there, so we saw each other every now and then.
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                            Waiting for the Year of the Rabbit
                                            with the Hsu family

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