Hello Minister: SISU produces innovative video program to showcase Chinese stories

Students and faculty members from Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) produced an interview program named Hello Minister as part of a practice course to tell Chinese stories, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China.

The program interviewing five Chinese ministers was proposed in 2019 and was conducted in 2020. More than 30 students, most of whom are members of a practice course offered by SISU’s School of Journalism and Communication, attended the program production.

Associate professor Chen Dake from the school teaches the course and guides the program production.

“Even though the students are not as skillful as off-campus professionals, their professional capacity can be improved in the production process,” Associate prof Chen said.

The student producers benefit from different duties in practice. Lin Bingjiong, a student working as the program’s voiceover, said that he had corrected his work for over ten times and was keeping learning from many other professional documentaries. This experience helps him to understand how to tell a story using a camera, according to him.

Another student producer Jiang Ziyi said, “I was mostly impressed by the details at practice, such as how to place the two chairs, the lights, the greenery and the cameras. Even though there are many difficulties, I am inspired to make full use of my professional skills to tell Chinese stories.”

Preparing plenty of materials for interview is one of the largest difficulties. Before interviewing Zhao Qizheng, former director of the Information Office of the State Council, they had read more than 20 books and collected 39,000 pictures in three months. In order to better present stories of Minister Zhao, they had sorted out all the reports about him.

Another difficulty is unexpected changes. For example, Ambassador Mei Zhaorong sprained his ankle accidentally and couldn’t come to Shanghai in July for planned interview, so the team had to postpone the schedule by changing the interviewing location from Shanghai to his resident in Beijing.

According to Associate prof Chen, it was a precious opportunity for students to go out of campus and interview the ministers whose stories could reflect China’s key developing stages of to some extent.

For instance, the first interviewee, Minister Zhao, nicknamed “Mr Pudong”, is one of the  pioneers in transforming Pudong New Area of Shanghai from a farmland into an international trade and financial hub. His stories implied how China has developed since the reform and opening-up, a turning point in Chinese history. 

“How to present China to the world is very significant for us in the international communication,” said Zhao.

“It’s also of great importance for SISU students as storytellers,” Chen added, “We teachers are discussing to take SISU’s multilingual advantage to make English and other language versions towards foreigners in the future.”

The first video has published on the SISU educational platforms and Bilibili, a popular Chinese video-sharing platform, and the next four are expected to come out in a year.