Fang Ming and Liu Zhuo
On October 1, 1965, Fang Ming (first from left), Qi Yue and Lin Tian broadcast the National Day celebration live at the Tiananmen Tower
Fang Ming and his wife Yang Ling in St. Petersburg in 2014
On November 29, 2021, the famous broadcast artist Fang Ming passed away due to illness at the age of 80. In Fang Ming's broadcasting career, he successively undertook the main broadcasting tasks during the funeral of Chen Yi, Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and other state leaders, climbed the Tiananmen Tower five times for broadcasting, and witnessed the process of new China's history again and again in the radio waves.
On December 6, in an apartment in Xicheng District, Fang Ming's wife Yang Ling and Liu Zhuo, a professor at the School of Broadcasting and Hosting Art of the Communication University of China who studied Fang Ming's broadcasting art, accepted an exclusive interview with a reporter from Beijing Youth Daily, and they used their affectionate narration to restore the brilliant and diligent life of Fang Ming, an old journalist and announcer. The thin old man Yang Ling, who does not lose her tenacity in calmness, specially brings a treasured photo album, behind each photo, is a touching story.
When he was in the conservation centre, he listened to the News and Newspaper Digest every day and watched the News Feed.
Fang Ming dedicated his life to the broadcasting career, winning the love of countless listeners and the admiration of his peers. Fang Ming's wife, Yang Ling, admitted that she received a lot of messages these days, and she didn't dare to read them until the night before the reporter came to interview. The information came from Beijing, Tianjin, Xiamen, Shenzhen, Jinan, Yantai, Nanchang and other places, with photos, videos, and texts recalling the contact with Fang Ming. Twenty or thirty years have passed since many things, and she was particularly touched. Kimi, the little grandson who was next to me that day, said: Grandma, so many uncles, aunts, and grandparents like my grandfather and respect my grandfather, and I will do the same in the future.
In May 2020, Fang Ming was sent to the hospital for rescue due to heart and lung failure, and his tenacious vitality surprised doctors for a time. During the hospitalization, due to the epidemic situation, the family was not allowed to accompany and visit, and director Wang of the emergency department agreed that the family would record what they wanted to say into a video and relay it to her. So the family recorded a video of his young grandson Kimi to him, and Kimi said, "Grandpa, I am now playing you the Ode to Joy of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which is your favorite work, and you participated in the recording when you first performed this work in our country in 1959. I play it to you now and wish you a speedy recovery! Fang Ming, who was originally a little sleepy, heard the doctor play this recording, and suddenly raised his hand to beat the beat along with the rhythm of the music.
After being discharged from the hospital last year, Yang Ling accompanied Fang Ming to live in Yanjiao Health Care Center. During the rehabilitation training in the nursing center, Fang Ming did not forget to recite Chairman Mao's poems and Tang poems and Song Ci every day, and finally even the nursing care that took care of him could recite "Galaxy Geng Geng, Silver Han Roundabout". Yang Ling said that in 2020, "Learning to Strengthen the Country" issued Fang Ming an expert appointment letter until the end of 2022. In Fang Ming's heart, he still has unfinished work, "so he has been actively cooperating with rehabilitation training in the nursing center, listening to the "News and Newspaper Summary" as usual every day, watching the "News Network", thinking that he can return to work as soon as possible."
Hearing the news of Fang Ming's death, Liu Zhuo, a professor at the School of Broadcast Hosting arts at the Communication University of China, felt very sudden, "The day before Mr. Fang Ming's death, our school just held an annual academic seminar on the Qi Yue Recitation Art Festival, Mr. Fang Ming has been particularly supportive of our Qi Yue Festival activities before, and his son Cui Zheng has also been paying attention to our activities, he also watched the live broadcast of the seminar on the same day, and later the two of us also discussed this in the evening... When I went to see him in May this year, the indicators were quite stable, and I didn't expect that the phrase 'I'll see you next time' would become a permanent farewell. ”
Liu Zhuo remembers that in May 2019 in West Lake, it was the last time he participated in a seminar and performed on the same stage with Teacher Fang Ming, when he was still so spirited, vigorous, and humorous, "Whenever he let him eat more, he would smile and point to his stomach and say, 'You see, the suite is open'." Someone asked him if he could take a group photo together, and he would laugh and say, 'I heard it was okay'. We saw him standing there like a gentleman all the time, which made us deeply admire. ”
In Liu Zhuo's heart, Fang Ming is definitely a mentor, both professionally and as a person, and is an example in her heart. In 1998, Liu Zhuo entered the Communication University of China, which was also called Beijing Broadcasting College, and she and Fang Ming's son Cui Zheng were classmates. The real close contact with Fang Ming was because she did her doctoral dissertation, and later she has been studying Fang Ming, especially when writing and publishing the book "Fang Ming's Broadcast Creation", Liu Zhuo has a deeper understanding of his mentor.
Liu Zhuo feels that the fate of the world is sometimes very wonderful, "Teacher Fang Ming's wife, Teacher Yang Ling, is herself a music student and a professor in our college. Coupled with the fact that my child and Cui Zheng's child were born on the same day in the same month of the same year, the two children grew up together, and every year on their birthdays, Teacher Fang Ming and Teacher Yang Ling accompanied them to celebrate, and we moved closer together, like a family. ”
In Yang Ling's view, Fang Ming was very calm in the face of diseases and difficulties. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2006 and went to participate in the 70th anniversary of the Long March just over a month after surgery. Before the performance, every time Fang Ming and Ya Kun went to the scene to complete it conscientiously, and the actors who performed with him on the same stage said that they felt his persistence and the tenacity of his vitality. Once, Fang Ming went to a performance before he finished chemotherapy, and when he recited "Answers to Aging", many people listened to it and cried. Everyone thinks it was written by him, but in fact it was written by Major General Zhou Tao, and it was this work that was given to Fang Ming when the Propaganda Department of the General Political Department held a seminar on Zhou Tao's works in Urumqi, Xinjiang in 2003.
Read the dictionary every day, practice your voice every day, for 60 years
Fang Ming's real name is Cui Mingde, in 1960 to the broadcast group, after working for a few months to broadcast "Concise News", found that there is no broadcast name, Glen, Wang Huan, Lin Ru, Liu Wei several teachers together to turn the dictionary, look up more than 20 minutes, and then Glen teacher said, "Just call It Fang Ming, the direction is clear." Yang Ling heard Fang Ming say that in 1956, after Fang Ming was admitted to the training class for technical personnel of the Broadcasting Bureau, she learned that this class was originally to train the newspaper personnel who had reached the front line of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and they used the teaching materials of the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tsinghua University to learn radio and radio transmission technology. When they graduated from two years of school, the war was over, and the newly built broadcasting building needed a recorder, so Fang Ming of the 503 class was assigned to the recording department of the central control room as a recorder. Fang Ming did everything with special care, he recorded a lot of things at that time, the operas of various places in the north and south, including Mei Lanfang, Zhou Xinfang, Tan Yuanshou, Xun Huisheng, Yan Fengying and other famous artists, Fang Ming said that his artistic accomplishment came from his cultivation as a recorder, and many years later he can still count the family treasures.
In April 1960, Fang Ming was transferred to the Central People's Radio as an announcer, and he made rapid progress, starting to broadcast the "News and Newspaper Digest" at the end of 1961. In the early days of broadcast creation, Fang Ming was down-to-earth and perfect from speech, vocalization to language expression. In 1965, at the age of 24, Fang Ming, as an announcer for the younger generation of New China, climbed the Tiananmen Tower with Qi Yue and Lin Tian to carry out the national day parade broadcast task.
Fang Ming especially respects the people of the older generation and strictly abides by the ding-dong of the predecessors. Teacher Xia Qing warned Fang Ming to prepare carefully every time he read the manuscript, and also suggested that he carefully read three pages of the dictionary every day. Fang Ming reads the dictionary every day, practices his voice every day, and has been practicing for 60 years. Teacher Qi Yue asked Fang Ming to go deep into different social classes to experience life, and also asked him to memorize some poems or some prose every day. Qi Yue told him that the broadcast should treat every article with a sense of truth, and Fang Ming would incorporate himself into his life and integrate with the country and society.
In Yang Ling's view, Fang Ming is to learn from editors, reporters, and manuscripts, "He spends a lot of time every day preparing for the manuscript, for example, when he broadcasts "News and Newspaper Summary", he has to get up at 4:00 in the morning shift, and then go to the ministry to read the manuscript." Fang Ming read the manuscript very carefully, not to say that he would pass by after reading it once, to mark it, and later to do some special programs, and his manuscript was still kept as a model. Even if he is very familiar with the business, he must also carefully prepare the manuscript, he said that these news and the party's principles and policies are related, and not a single word can be wrong."
Fang Ming will not be satisfied in the broadcast business, he feels that this is good, the next one must be better expressed, and constantly improved. Fang Ming broadcast a science and technology program, and the audience said, "How it seems that you also know hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs." Once Fang Ming recorded the film recording and editing of "Thunderstorm", and before recording, he carefully read the original work of the writer, the creative notes, the literary editor's creative talk, and the performance experience of each actor. Later, some listeners said that after listening to Fang Ming's film recording and editing, it was like watching the movie in person.
Professor Zheng Xiaoying, a 92-year-old conductor, said that she will never forget fang ming's figure standing on the side of the curtain waiting for the concert, and she asked Fang Ming, how can you memorize such a long opening? Fang Ming told her that in order to challenge the gradual loss of memory, he had to recite it every day. Yang Ling said, "Every day when I open my eyes, I see him carrying there, and at night before going to bed, I also carry it, always back, sometimes whispering, sometimes reciting aloud." Teacher Qi Yue told him that no matter whether you are a deputy director or whatever you are, the business must not be lost. He has never lost his business, and for 60 years, he has been carefully and carefully preparing manuscripts, and he has done so all his life."
Broadcasting is faith for him
After more than half a century of broadcast creation, Fang Ming gradually formed a sound and steady, vigorous and dashing broadcast style, and he served as the host and recited the opening words of the "Tang and Song Dynasty Famous Music Recitation" and "Yueyang Louji" and other works that sounded breathless and widely recited. Fang Ming felt that the more the programs made by the Central Station, the more it was necessary to ensure the quality; the more it was shown to students, the more it was necessary to strive for excellence. Yang Ling recalled that when he made "Reading Appreciation", he had to check a lot of information, and later when he recorded the "Chinese Sinology Classics Resource Library", the expert team was led by Mr. Ye Jiaying, and Fang Ming was also one of the members of the expert group, and the first 100 poems were read by Fang Ming and Ya Kun. In 2008, Fang Ming performed the "Classical Chanting Of Chinese Sinology", and has now done a total of 12 programs, of which "Heyun Tiange - Feeling Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching" and "Song of the Benevolent - Feeling the Analects" were performed in Paris at the invitation of UNESCO in 2012 and 2013, which received unanimous praise on the international stage and aroused enthusiastic response. Yang Ling admitted that there are various dictionaries at home, and she often accompanies Fang Ming to libraries and bookstores to check various versions of reference books.
When Fang Ming gave lectures to students and young announcers, he often mentioned, "It was the party that raised me, I came to work in the radio building, and I came to participate in revolutionary work." In Yang Ling's view, this belief has guided Fang Ming for more than half a century, and for him, broadcasting is faith, belief, and confidence. In Liu Zhuo's view, broadcasting is a kind of faith for Fang Ming, "Every time he sees me, he almost emphasizes the importance of careful preparation, including the last time we met, he is still advising and hoping that we can pass on the unique magic weapon passed down to him by the generation of Qi Yue and Xia Qing." I remember the first time I asked Teacher Fang Ming to meet in the desk, as soon as I entered the office, the phone on his desk rang, as if Teacher Kang Hui had called, asked him what word he was, Teacher Fang Ming immediately said, I will confirm it for you. His dictionary is not known how much it has been turned over, and even if he knew it, he would have to look it up again and tell the other party what pronunciation it was and what version it was."
Fang Ming never complained about things at work, nor did he ever think about himself. Yang Ling remembers that in 1999, from the first day of the Chinese New Year to the tenth day of the New Year, there was a performance of "Tang Poems and Song Ci", but during that period, Fang Ming's mother died of a critical illness, and in order not to affect the normal performance of the group, he failed to send his mother on the last journey. When Cui Zheng was in middle school, he once had an acute illness and high fever, when Yang Ling was in class, Cui Zheng had to call Fang Ming, but he still insisted on sending his son to the hospital after finishing the festival, and later the doctor said that the situation was particularly urgent, and if he was sent later, it would be dangerous to his life.
Fang Ming recited "Back to Yan'an" written by He Jingzhi in the 1960s, when he was 19 years old and practiced in a hut no less than hundreds of times, devoting all his body and mind to the creative experience. Fang Ming has always had great feelings for Yan'an and has been there several times. He took a small horse in Yan'an and sat in the place where Zhang Side burned kilns to listen to lectures, and also went to the place where Nanniwan was produced to feel the local life. Under the pagoda mountain, on the Jinggang mountain, on the well side of the draught man who did not forget to dig the well, and the Ruijin sandbar dam all left the figure of his original intention.
His voice stayed with us, and it felt as if he was still resting there
Fang Ming always remembers the friendship that Teacher Qi Yue saw that he was particularly thin in winter, so he took off his sweater pants to give him a friendship. Fang Ming is also encouraging and supportive of young people, students, including his son's classmates, and caring for his life in his life.
Fang Ming's fried sauce noodles are very famous in the broadcast circle, and many people still remember it. Regarding fried sauce noodles, Yang Ling smiled and said that the earliest can be traced back to more than 30 years ago. Now some well-known announcers and hosts were still college students at that time, and they all ate fried sauce noodles made by Fang Ming. Once, after eating the noodles, he took the sauce away, "Later, everyone wondered, why don't people in this dormitory eat breakfast for a week?" Later, they learned that they sent a person to buy steamed buns and go back to the dormitory to dip and eat. ”
In the early 90s, a young man who was famous in the industry went to St. Petersburg on a business trip, when Russian materials were relatively scarce, he packed a lot of food in a large suitcase, Fang Ming asked him what he was missing, he said he also wanted to ask the old man to fry some sauce. Fang Ming began to fry the sauce in the morning, and fried four pots of sauce in four large canned fruit bottles. It is said that his son Cui Zheng has not eaten canned fruit until now.
One of Cui Zheng's classmates enjoyed "special treatment" even more, and before returning home from the holiday for two consecutive semesters, he had to go to Cui Zheng's house to eat a meal of fried sauce noodles made by Fang Ming, and then go to the train station. Once, a student went to Fang Ming's house to recuperate, and there was a meal of "three people eating four pounds of noodles". There are too many things like this, until now, many students can't forget The fried sauce noodles of Teacher Fang Ming.
In Madame's eyes, Fang Ming is a loving father, a person who is rich in inner emotions but rarely expresses directly. "If their father and son have a dispute, they are all for each other's consideration, for example, the weather is particularly bad, the wind is windy and snowy, Cui Zheng said to pick up Fang Ming after work, Fang Ming said no, you work very hard, don't pick up." Cui Zheng felt that he had to squeeze the bus on a cold day and had to wait to pick him up, and the two were often unhappy about such things. ”
Fang Ming loved his little grandson very much, and as long as Fang Ming was at home, he would hold him in his arms and read poems to him, and when he was eight months old, his grandfather recited "Yueyang Louji" to him, "He listened, four minutes, did not move until the end." The little grandson who spoke with milk and milk also read poetry with his grandfather, and for a while, as soon as others came in, he would read "The day is at the end of the mountain, and the Yellow River flows into the sea." What makes Yang Ling feel relieved is that after experiencing the death of her grandfather, her little grandson seems to have grown up at once, and he said to her grandmother, "I will accompany you every day after school."
Yang Ling has been taking care of Fang Ming since she retired, and the two are inseparable from each other. Fang Ming was particularly attached to Madame in the end, and if Yang Ling went out, he would see if anyone had returned after a while. "When Fang Ming was hospitalized, I got up at 5:30 every morning to make water juice for him, and when the nurse sent him at breakfast time, he told him, Uncle, this is the juice sent by Cui Zheng's mother, he said that he also wanted (Cui Zheng) mother", Yang Ling's voice was a little choked, "He just came home from the hospital, his hands were still very strong, and he called me once every hour at night."
Fang Ming did not retire until he was 72 and a half years old, but he was still working, often changing places the day after the performance the day before, and sometimes Yang Ling took the night bus to the next place to pick him up. "I sat in the first row, I was there, and he was very grounded."
Fang Ming likes the Summer Palace, likes Kunming Lake, and the two old people in life have their own romantic feelings. When Fang Ming did the fourth chemotherapy, Yang Ling accompanied him to Xidi, when the osmanthus blossomed, Yang Ling took a picture of him and said to him, "The song is good, the osmanthus blossoms open and happy." Once they went to Jingshan just in time for the snow, it was February 14, and a young man with a long gun and a short cannon took a picture of them. There was also a meeting of Fang Ming in Yabuli, after the meeting they went to the snow town, the lady saw that Fang Ming was wearing a red scarf, and the leg cover was also red, so she said", "Don't look too rigid, the legs are slightly raised", after taking this picture, it happened to be February 14, Yang Ling named the photo "Old Naughty Boy in the Fairy Tale World". In the 1950s, Qi Yue was good friends with Leviathan when he was in Moscow, and Fang Ming and Qi Yue had a particularly good relationship, "When we went to Moscow in August 2014, we deliberately went to the celebrity cemetery, took a photo in front of Levitan's tomb, and brought the greetings of Qi Yue's teacher."
On November 29, when the city was still asleep, Fang Ming hurriedly left, and Yang Ling felt that he was walking very detached, "His voice has always accompanied us, and listening to it during the day and night, it feels as if he is still resting there." Friends who have performed with Fang Ming for many years told Yang Ling, "Our team has one less relative, and it is the leader and the main backbone." The disease depleted his life, and the old elephant's life was far away from the elephant herd, silently saying goodbye in a place where no one knew."
In Madame's view, Fang Ming was very open to life and death, "When he was sick, we both often said that we felt that this life was quite peaceful, very dashing, very happy, very rich." When he was 73 years old and I was 70 years old, we went to Tibet, and on the first day we went to the Sedilla Pass, at an altitude of 4728 meters, and we didn't have any altitude sickness or any trouble for others. At the end of the interview, she specifically instructed, "Thank you for your concern, care and love for Fang Ming, I will live well."
Text/Reporter Li Zhe
Photo courtesy of Yang Ling