A life-changing experience in Shanghai

Managing editor of IN-Business Media Ltd and Massey University journalism graduate Katie Foley was awarded an Asia:NZ media internship at the Shanghai Daily newspaper in China. This is her account of working and living in Shanghai for three months in 2010.

Two weekends ago I eagerly read a Shanghai travel article in the Sunday Star Times. I loved one particular quote that described the Pudong skyline. It summed up perfectly the way Shanghai gets under your skin when you live there.

“It’s a citadel of light and money and look-at-me architecture that must be the sexiest, most thrilling cityscape in the world.”

The city that seems so harsh and so abrupt, so incessantly busy at first becomes like an exciting new friend after a week or so, and like an old beau by the time you leave. In a city of 20 million, you still feel like you’ve had your own personal affair with it.

My three months working in Shanghai were - without wanting to sound melodramatic – a life-changing and career-altering experience.

In terms of the business and personal contacts I made, the events I covered, people I was privileged enough to interview, the experience of working with and being managed by Chinese journalists, and the first-hand insight into Chinese culture and life, the experience was invaluable.

I spent around 10 weeks on the features desk at the Shanghai Daily, along with approximately eight local journalists and an Australian reporter. We worked on the daily ‘Scope’ features section, various supplements and the Sunday magazine.

The majority of my published features were as the result of original story ideas about cultural issues and current events. I also published stories around events on the American calendar – Thanksgiving and Halloween.
I was given complete freedom to develop my own story ideas and angles. I pushed hard to be allocated to the business desk, as this is my speciality, but was told repeatedly that the language constraints would be too difficult in this section.

I published approximately 20 articles, averaging about 1000 words, in the 10 full-time weeks I spent at the Shanghai Daily, including two that I worked on and were published after I left. These were half-finished stories I had not been able to complete before my departure because of illness in my last few weeks in Shanghai.

Where possible, I put a business angle on my Shanghai Daily features. Several of my ‘expat tales’ articles featured business people or dealt with business issues on some level. I became good friends with the Shanghai Daily business editor Leo, and had some interesting conversations with him about business in China.

My good friend Lydia Chen, who visited New Zealand in November and December 2010, is now back at the Shanghai Daily working in the business section and I also enjoy getting her perspective on business in China.Upon my return to New Zealand I published a 2,256 word article and a 1,635 word column in the March/April 2011 edition of my New Zealand publication IN-Business Magazine. The magazine is distributed to between 10,000 and 12,000 New Zealand business people per edition, including businesses who are content subscribers to New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, all economic development agencies, chambers of commerce, ministry of foreign affairs offices in New Zealand and overseas, MPs and Koru Club lounges, as well as our own subscriber base.

These stories can be found online at:
Flying Eye on China: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/2b5091ed#/2b5091ed/53
Crossing the Line: http://viewer.zmags.com/publication/2b5091ed#/2b5091ed/75

I have had some great feedback on ‘Flying Eye on China’ – the aviation industry is fast growing in New Zealand and overseas. Commentators, speculators, venture capitalists and also business generalists are watching developments closely. The idea for the story came from a story published in the business section of the Shanghai Daily about the announcement of the opening up of low-altitude airspace.

The outcomes of this internship project with the Asia New Zealand Foundation and the Shanghai Daily are both tangible and intangible, as were the goals I went into this experience with.

The feature article and column printed in New Zealand will help to educate the wider business community about China and will also give them an honest, first-hand account of what life and the culture is like there. I hope it will help in some way to break some pre or misconceptions.

The experience in China has served to cement my continuing commitment to spearheading and managing a ‘Business in Asia’ section in every edition of IN-Business Magazine, a tangible outcome of the programme. I have come away from the experience with highly sought after international experience and an indelible desire to learn and write about China in my career as a business journalist. I am currently enrolled in night school for Mandarin at Wellington High School and am determined to up my language proficiency before I return to China again as soon as possible.

This year’s Asia:NZ/Massey University/Shanghai Daily intern Andrea O’Neil was employed as a journalist by IN-Business Magazine while I was away in December 2010 and it is fantastic to have her on board. I hope that I will be able to give her some good advice before she leaves, while leaving her with enough to discover herself.

While in Shanghai I was featured as a member profile in the November Kiwi Expatriates Association (KEA) newsletter (attached), which went out to the 1300+ members of KEA China. I acknowledged my assistance from the Asia New Zealand Foundation and this note of thanks is also attached to my column in IN-Business.

To my surprise, I was also asked to feature in Shanghai’s ‘City Weekend’ magazine as part of a personal style article, which involved my being the subject of a fashion shoot. Not my usual cup of tea, but at least now I can say I have experience on both sides of the camera... In the write up of this piece I included a note of thanks to the Asia New Zealand Foundation, but unfortunately this was edited out in the final published version.

My initial impressions of the Shanghai Daily newsroom were not original – the newsroom culture was very similar to how I had heard it described to me by previous Shanghai Daily interns. The most noticeable difference to New Zealand newsrooms I’ve been in is the noise – it’s quiet – the sounds of typing, the odd phone call, but apart from that there is a lot of still silence.

It was very interesting to go from a small media business to a large one. In New Zealand, my publication has six full-time staff. The Shanghai Daily, I would estimate, has hundreds.

Most Shanghai Daily reporters don’t talk or bounce ideas off each other. There is no morning editorial conference to talk about story ideas and progress, but like clockwork, the stories get pumped out. I’d been told that everyone talks on MSN and that is the case. This was an important part of my learning about the culture: there are some things most Chinese would feel uncomfortable saying to you in person.

While my initial impressions matched what I had been told to expect, my impression over three months was that there will be coming change at the Shanghai Daily in the kind of productivity that is expected of reporting staff and also in the newspaper’s market focus.

The editor in chief made special mention at the Christmas party of the fact that 2010 was the first year the Shanghai Daily had managed its business affairs entirely on its own. Australia’s Seven Network had officially pulled out of a joint venture the year before.

While I was there, management were conducting a review of the way staff were incentivised to include some kind of performance-based measure in their pay - a deeply unpopular move.

There were ‘most productive reporter’ and ‘best story’ competitions every month, with the winners displayed on the walls with attached notes of praise from editors. The ‘new media’ section had been given a lot more desk space in the office and they were really pushing the ipad publishing angle.

The Beijing Olympics and the Shanghai World Expo were described to me by an expat friend as ‘China’s coming-out parties to the world’ and I count myself privileged that I was able to witness one such an important event in China’s history.

I was lucky enough to attend the Expo eight or nine times as part of the media for different stories and also personally as I came by complimentary tickets through contacts. I enjoyed meeting and socialising with New Zealand Pavilion staff and the head of the Kiwi Expatriates association in China Sharon Fraser, a “Guanxi Queen”, also had many business and personal contacts in other national pavilions who she introduced me to.

The Shanghai Daily staffers who had visited New Zealand were particularly friendly, open and welcoming towards me. Joy Wang, Lydia Chen and Michelle Qiao in particular were fantastic. Lydia stayed with my family while she was in Auckland just before Christmas and I made sure my friends in Wellington made her feel at home and welcome when she was in the capital.

Three months in China thanks to the Asia New Zealand Foundation has left me countless valuable contacts, memories and stories. In catching up and talking with other Asia New Zealand Foundation scholarship recipients in Wellington now that we are all home, it has really emphasised the fantastic work the foundation does in sending young journalists at the beginning of their careers to experience Asia.

For myself, I know the experience has sparked a life-long fascination with China and has given me valuable friends and contacts, as well as knowledge and experience of the region which I will disseminate to the community through my role as a journalist now and in the future.

This opportunity has sparked what I think will be a life-long love affair with China, and Shanghai in particular.

By Katie Foley. Published in June 2011.
Photos supplied (top to bottom):
1. Katie Foley at work at the Shanghai Daily
2. Tuk tuk drivers at Houhai Lake, Beijing
3. Katie Foley at the Great Wall
4. Shangai high rise fire