Wei Xiangnan

I'm Wei Xiangnan. I'm from Shandong Province in the eastern part of China and my entire family still lives there, but Beijing is where I worked and lived.

I have worked as a journalist for China Radio International for seven years before joining the Master of Journalism program at The University of Hong Kong. By taking this course of study, I hope to improve my English reporting and writing skills.

I became a journalist in 2004 after graduating from Nanjing University with a Master's Degree in English Literature. For the first three and half years, I worked as an English-language news reporter for radio and as a web editor. I had the opportunity to cover several big events both domestically and globally.

In 2007, I was chosen by my boss to be a resident correspondent in West Africa. I decided to take the offer after days of hard thinking. On January 21, 2008, I got on board a China Southern airplane in Beijing. About twenty 20 hours later, I landed at Lagos International Airport in southern Nigeria. For the next three and half years, my work and life all took place in Nigeria and West Africa.

When China's first Confucius Institute in West Africa was commissioned in at Lagos University in 2009, I was there. When the first KFC restaurant in West Africa opened in Lagos in 2010, I was there. And when a series of bombs exploded in Eagle Square in Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, on Independence Day in 2011, I was there too. I also covered presidential elections in Ghana, Gabon and Cote D'Ivoire. Apart from the reporting work, I managed to relocate our office from Lagos to Abuja. I am very proud of this accomplishment because my predecessors all wanted but failed to do that. I made the long-time dream come true.

However, working in Africa wasn't all beneficial, as I discovered that my English writing ability has gradually deteriorated. That is because although I did interviews in English, I had to write the stories in Chinese for the use of the whole radio station. So after I returned to China after completing my mission in Africa, the first thing I wanted to do was to get my English back.

But quitting a stable job and going back to school was not an easy decision for me to make because it meant that I would have to start my life all over again at the age of over 30. Thanks to the support of my family, however, I was able to make the decision to come to Hong Kong. I believe it is a decision I will not regret.