By Xu Zhongyou

Li Zimeng is a new woman news presenter of Network News (Xinwen LIanbo) at CCTV, a syndicated primetime news program at 7 pm.

Born in 1977, Li Zimeng comes from Shenyang, the capital city of Liaoning Province in the Northeast. Her language aptitude bloomed in primary school under the care of Jiang Xiuying, the best Chinese Language teacher in Shenyang. Li read a quite lot in her spare time. She was encouraged by her teacher to retell the episodes from Chinese classic novels to her classmates. She took part in various competitions and won prizes.

In her middle school days, she was able to host quite a few student shows at the school. Before she joined the school broadcasting station, the campus system broadcast nothing but announcements and the music that went with the regular weekday school-wide gymnastic exercises. Li Zimeng and some students took over the system. They revamped the broadcast. A good writer and standard mandarin speaker, Li wrote and read news stories about the school through the campus system. The news and music program became extremely popular with teachers and students.

In 1996, Li Zimeng was accepted into Beijing Broadcast Academy (todays China Media University), her dream higher education institution, with the best aptitude score in Liaoning Province. The academy has been the cradle of many now famous television and radio news presenters and emcees and journalists in China. Li Zimeng found that she was merely one of the best talented young scholars from provinces. The fierce competition with her classmates at academic study and training made her not so confident in herself.

She put in more hours to her work. To weed out the slight dialect accent from her mandarin, she applied the proved success formula: she repeatedly practiced vowels and consonants and various combinations in mandarin. She launched an individual book reading program to help herself become a knowledgeable scholar. The assiduous work proved successful. The awards she won at various campus shows and competitions indicated she was on the right track.

In her senior year at the academy, she spent about 6 months as a trainee at the CCTV news department, which gave her opportunity to observe how the prominent newscasters worked. The trainee work also gave her an opportunity to audit for International News, a new program to be launched at CCTV in 2000. What CCTV wanted was more than a conventional news reader. It needed a reporter who should add personal touches to the new program. For newscasters across the country, the new program presented a new career advancement opportunity. CCTV had a large audience hungry for international news. Newscasters across the country competed for the opportunity. Through three rounds of competition respectively in oral and written form and interview, Li Zimeng became the successful news presenter for the new program and she got a contract with CCTV. Her personal style for the program was widely accepted and applauded.

After her initial success at the program, she was transferred to Morning News, another heavy-weight news program at CCTV with a much larger audience across the country. The new job was more than the importance of the program and the larger exposure she attained. It also meant earlier hours. She got up at four oclock every morning and rushed to the studio to prepare for her time. She survived and prospered. Her success at this news program paved the way for her to get to the Network News, the most important and most watched news program at CCTV.

The Network News first started on May 1, 1958. Over decades, it underwent some major changes. In July 1, 1976, it became a nationally syndicated news program. In 1980, the program included 10-minute international news to be 30 minutes long. And later it shifted to the 7 oclock time slot every evening to make way for prime time entertainment shows. It is said that some foreign intelligence organizations and foreign state leaders watch the news program to find out exactly what is going on in China.

Such a heavy-weight news program requires the best newscasters. It started with one woman newscaster in 1958. The 18-year-old Zhao Zhongxiang joined the program in February, 1960. Another woman news presenter joined the team in September 1960. The three-person team worked through the whole of the 1960s and the early years of the 1970s. Xing Zhibin became the fourth woman in 1974. Then many new faces gradually appeared.

By 2006, many faces appeared too old for some watchers. Some complained to CCTV and demanded new personalities. It is under this circumstance that Li Zimeng got an opportunity to appear at Network News. After competition and approval, she partnered with Kang Hui on June 5, 2006.

By the time Li Zimeng appeared at the Network News, it had already evolved to be a live broadcast. With her experience in other news programs, she thought it would not be too difficult. But During a few test broadcasting, she found she was not able to find the right tone. The producer negated her voices a few times. But fortunately she found the right tone when she was sitting in the news presenters chair and testing her sound. She tried a few remarks and heard the producer approved her right tone. It was just a few hours before her first appearance at the Network News.

In the latest survey at CCTV website, Li Zimeng was voted the most popular new news presenter. □