My first Chinese radio interview

Last week (well, the week before I was sick), I did one of those things I would have never thought possible a year ago.  I gave an hour-long radio interview entirely in Chinese.

Maybe it was that adage, "No publicity is bad publicity."  Or, that we're on a ghetto guerrilla PR & marketing budget and this was free.  But, when an acquaintance in the LOHAS (lifestyles of health and sustainability) asked me if I'd be willing to talk about  air & water on the on the daily radio program "LOHAS Everyday," I thought, "why not"?  After all, I do it all the time with clients.  

I started worrying the night before.  I was supposed to show up at the station in 12 hrs and still didn't know where it was, hadn't seen any questions, didn't even know how long the show was, and suddenly started doubting my ability to speak in complete sentences in Mandarin.  Finally, my liaison called me with some info and a read-ahead on the questions.  They were actually the sort of questions I normally field, so I jotted down some notes in English and then got some rest.  The next day, I got to the station.  There was a surprising amount of security to get in.  I met Lisa, my intermediary, and then she brought me into the studio.  I met the two hosts, two nice, young Chinese radio DJs.  Wu Bing was an upbeat, energetic guy in his mid-twenties from Beijing.  Ruan Jing was a little older and more thoughtful -- a nice counterpart to Wu Bing.  Kind of the way Jackie was for Howard Stern.  They were both very nice and went over the process with me.  We'd go through the entire show, complete with fade in's and outs, and then they would make edits later to piece the show together.  If I made any huge mistakes, they could edit out later.  

We started -- I thought it was pretty funny that their intro music was Ludakris.  They must have kept their questions especially basic, because I didn't have any problems understanding and not a whole lot of problems speaking, though I'm sure my Chinese teacher would have had a few choice words for me for some of the mistakes I made.  But all in all, it was really like just having a chat with interested friends.  Lot of fun.

Afterwards, we took a few photos, I got a little tour of the station and their offices.  The show played a couple days later and Lisa was nice enough to send me a CD of the audio.  I'm not sure how to leverage this interview, but just wanted to share with y'all.