(Image courtesy of Stephanie Tai)

My acquaintance with China Daily started a couple of years ago when I was doing my internship with “The World of Chinese” magazine in Beijing, and was responsible for writing and uploading blogs onto the website. At that time, I was a newbie in the media world. My job was about gathering information from various media outlets focusing on China and compiling it into blogs. What I did excited me a lot, and the biggest source where I got most of the information from was China Daily. It was a trustworthy news giant where you would expect to find any timely information, local and global news, opinion, photos, polls etc. I was so impressed by the quality of the material, its openness to the audience and interest in attracting new authors, that, being an English author myself, I felt like I needed to make my contribution to the newspaper. So, here my China Daily story took its beginnings.

My first work was published in 2014 and was titled “Meeting the master” in their section “My China Story” which welcomed foreign authors to share their story on China. It was published a couple of months later after I had submitted it and was featured on State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs official website as well. That was a surprise for me because I didn’t expect much success. The article was about my Chinese martial arts master whom I had been lucky to know some five years ago when I had been working as an interpreter. That same year I started my blog on China Daily Forum platform and met other nice authors and the managers of the platform.

For me, China Daily Blog platform provided the opportunity to share with the readers the topics I was interested myself: culture-related, travelling, life in China, interviews with interesting people in China that I did for “International Talent” magazine etc. I took part in China Daily blog competition and was granted the second place. More than that, a couple of meet-ups were organized last summer that brought together both bloggers and readers.

Last autumn I interviewed Mr. Raymond Zhou, who is the columnist and writer with China Daily. He is a famous movie critique and it was such a pleasure to talk with him about Chinese, American, Russian movies. He gave me an insight into what it’s like to be a movie critique. Personally, I admire his style with which he write the reviews and articles. His language is very precise and coherent.

To continue, my two-year cooperation with China Daily has been quite fruitful. Last year I was chosen as one of the participants for a trip “Shanxi in the eyes of foreigners”, and again, my articles appeared on the China Daily website.

At the end I would say, maybe no other media helped me develop professional qualities needed for a writer, enriched my knowledge about China and brought many new interesting friends into my life, like China Daily. It has been on the media arena for 35 years, broadcasting China news to the world and getting two poles together, taking its firm place among other media giants. We would sincerely hope, that it would broaden its international influence and get more representatives in other countries, for example, Russia; give opportunity to young journalists to showcase their abilities and continue to serve locally and internationally.