Mok Chin Wai
“I am worried and afraid I may not perform the internship well,” I told a friend before the day I went to Beijing. But after I experienced my eight-day reporter’s life of the Two Sessions Conference, I just wanted to say what I leant was more than I could tell.
During the trip, I was instructed to report duty to Mingpao Daily News, acting like an ordinary reporter to complete the work assigned by the seniors. So, I understood more of what Two Sessions reporters act, their daily working life and the challenges that they would face everyday. I guess, no journalism textbook can tell how to cover the Conference.
The third day was the most the most astonishing day for me since the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) was initiated. The opening ceremony started at 2 pm, Mingpao reporters and I already arrived there around one hour earlier, and a large number of foreign, Hong Kong and mainland reporters already stood in front of the Great Hall of the People, setting up equipments and waiting for the CPPCC delegates to arrive.
Such scenario was spectacular to me. Half an hour later, I saw shuttle buses arriving in the Tiananmen Square one after one, the delegates then walked to the Great Hall just like columns of soldiers. I was stunned when they passed through me as I could not figure out how I should pick the interview targets among a few hundred of people. I kept on asking myself what I could do at that moment.
Later on, I saw a ‘small honeycomb’ and a ‘big honeycomb” were formed one after one as reporters encircled their interview targets like swarm. The scene was quite chaotic. I imagined that all those CPPCC delegates were just like flowers with rich nectar and the reporters seemed like the bees, swarming around the flowers in order to get something for reporting. I was an inexperienced bee there with the camera and tape-recorder, listening to one delegate saying something and another delegate replying another thing without knowing what was really at issue.
Two days later came the opening ceremony of the National People’s Congress, what a spectacular assembly of nearly 5,000 delegates coming from different localities of China! A similar scenario reappeared again. Reporters’ tricks of getting the delegates’ mouth open were much the same.
On days 5, Mingpao senior reporters assigned me to cover all by myself the press conference delivered by the National Development and Reform Commission. I was panic because I was afraid that I would get lost on the way since it was my first time to travel alone in Beijing.
Although I was scared, I knew that I must sort it out in order to get the work done. Before getting off to there, I downloaded the app of Beijing Subways and checked out the map for which station that I need to get off the train. Beijing subways were more crowded than Hong Kong and it was not a pleasant experience to me. Luckily, the venue was not too far away from my lodging. After a journey of six subway stations and walked for 10 minutes, I saw the MediaCenter in front of me. I felt excited for I could arrive earlier with no trouble.
Being a reporter, we will always handle something unexpected or may be assigned to a remote venue that we have never been to before, so get prepared all the time is one of the prerequisites if not mottos for getting the reportage done.
