Radio- China Plus

  It's interesting to think about the fact that their are English speaking radio stations in other countries. Up until this point I've never actually pondered it that much being someone who's never left the United Sates. Evidently it isn't uncommon given how many English speakers there are in the world. One such example is China Plus. This is an option for those in China who speak English or are trying to become more familiar with the language. This Radio station is a little different from what you might think in the sense that it doesn't actually play that much music.

  This is more of a news broadcast via radio. As shown in the picture above they do hourly news run throughs in English. They even have a section in which you can learn to speak some functional Chinese. The biggest sections I saw on the website for this radio station were the podcast section and the written news stories. In a way the online format is much more like a news site than an average radio station. The podcasts are the equivalency of much of our American talk radio. There are many genres to choose from narrated by either natural English speakers or those who can speak it almost perfectly. There is News and Business, Society and Culture, Art and Music, Education, and even Audiobooks It even seems that some of the people who sounded like Chinese citizens tried to implement American or British accents. One specific example was the Chinese Folk Tales podcast, she seems to be overenunciating for the purpose of clarity. All other the interviews in the podcasts that are in Chinese are translated. 

  The news section was interesting because there was one that was labeled "America" and contained a lot of news pertaining specifically to the United States. There was election coverage and even stories about one of the current news trends the "murder hornet" nest that was found in Washington In addition there was one called "China- US" that was a mixture of Chinese and U.S. news mainly stories with content that involved or effected both like the new Netflix film coming out that was a joint production between the countries. There was also a "US-World" section. Some of these stories are covered in the news radio broadcasts and podcasts they had on the site as well. The fact that this station has a international view makes perfect sense when you remember that the company owning is called China Radio International.

  Since this is a "state run" station I would have expected more of a political bias in favor of the Chinese Government but it actually didnt seem as prevalent as in other publications. There was an abundance of celebration for Chinese culture and there also appeared to be an admiration for the U.S. which isn't entirely typical for Chinese publications or stations. This station seems to be a fairly solid source for news and other entertainment. If you are looking for music this isn't the ideal station but if you want to stay up to date on current events or hear some great stories it may be up your alley while visiting China.