CNN's Jaime FlorCruz on Yao Ming, Michael Phelps, Bill Clinton & Beijing

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.— Steve Jobs

 BEIJING, China — Top international journalist CNN bureau chief Jaime “Jimi” FlorCruz is one of the former young Filipino student activists who dissented to martial law and decided to stay in exile after a trip to China in 1971. He has since lived in Beijing for four decades and was also formerly Beijing bureau chief for Time magazine.

After earning an associate degree in Chinese language and translation from the Peking Languages Institute (now renamed Beijing Language & Culture University), FlorCruz next earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the prestigious Peking University where one of his schoolmates was former top China political leader Bo Xilai.

Jaime FlorCruz agreed to give Philippine STAR an exclusive interview at the St. Regis Hotel during this writer’s recent visit to Beijing. Excerpts:

PHILIPPINE STAR: You have been living in Beijing since August 1971 as a former student activist. Why did you stay when martial law was only declared a year later on Sept. 21, 1972?

JAIME FLORCRUZ: I came to Beijing in August 1971, it was also the week that President Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus after the Plaza Miranda bombing. We decided to extend our stay.

Why were you in China then, you were still in college?

I was a senior advertising student at Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), editor in chief of the college newspaper Ang Malaya (The Free) and I was also president of the League of Editors for a Democratic Society (LEADS), a national group of college newspaper editors.

Originally, we were 15 in our tour group, mostly student activists. We were invited to visit for three weeks by the China Friendship Association. We traveled via Hong Kong, then had a stopover in Guangzhou City, then on that same day we flew to Beijing. Weeks later, we saw Premier Zhou Enlai host a National Day banquet.

Who were the student activists who stayed on with you in China?

Interviewing then Shanghai Mayor and future China President Jiang Zemin: When Zemin was president, FlorCruz interviwed him for a Time magazine cover story, just before his Zemin’s to the US in 1997.

Among the student activists with us were Chito Santa Romana, the former De La Salle University student council chairman who would become Beijing bureau chief of ABC News until his retirement in 2011; and Eric Baculinao, formerly University of the Philippines (UP) student council chairman whowould become NBC News Beijing bureau chief. The fourth activist to stay was then UP student leader Rey Tiquia, he also extended his stay in China, studied Chinese medicine and acupuncture, and he’s now settled in Melbourne, Australia. The fifth student activist who stayed on was Grace Punongbayan, who was then a UP student activist; she studied Western medicine in Beijing and later emigrated to Holland.

What happened to the other 10 student activists in your China trip?

Vic Manarang was then editor in chief of the UP Collegian, he went back to the Philippines after three months in China. He eventually worked for Ayala and now has his own company. There was the late Roz Galang, she was then a young reporter for the Manila Times. She was forced to go underground during martial law.

What are the secrets to your success as a respected international journalist?

I’m just lucky. I was at the wrong place at the right time… It was a matter of making a good thing out of a bad thing, as the late Chairman Mao Tse-tung once said. My staying in exile then seemed like a hopeless situation, and China was then isolated diplomatically.

Were your parents also in media?

My father Cenon FlorCruz studied at UP Los Baños and later took up law, too. By profession, he was a sugar technologist and chemist, a member of the chemistry examiners’ board and deputy general manager of the Philippine Sugar Institute before he retired. My mother Lourdes Adriano FlorCruz studied home economics at UP Diliman. Both my parents are from Malolos, Bulacan.

Did your parents worry about your prolonged stay in China?

My mother tried to visit me here in Beijing many months later and before martial law was declared. She planned to tag along with Charito Planas, who was then organizing a friendship tour of China. However, when martial law was declared, that trip was cancelled. It was only in 1978 when my parents were able to visit me here.

I heard you studied history in Peking University — Chinese history and also world history. What period of Chinese history?

I studied modern Chinese history, starting from the era of Dr. Sun Yat Sen.

Have you read the fascinating China books of Harvard’s summa cum laude graduate on Chinese history Theodore H. White and Yale University’s famous Dr. Jonathan Spence?

Yes. Theodore White is one of my idols. I personally met him here in Beijing.

I was a student when the late columnist Alfredo Navarro Salanga gifted me with White’s book In Search of History. I think Salanga was probably a student activist of your era also?

I knew Freddie Salanga, he was older than me, a brilliant writer and thinker. He was from the Ateneo.

What about famous Time magazine founder Henry Luce, the son of American Protestant missionaries in China?

No, I never met him. Luce spent some of his childhood years in China. I had met Roy Rowan, he opened the Life magazine bureau in Shanghai before.

You’ve been in China during its most dramatic period in history, also the world’s fastest-growing economic miracle the past 30 years.

Where were you when Chairman Mao died and just before Deng Xiaoping’s bold reforms?

I was in Hunan, the home province of Mao, when he died in 1976. It wasn’t a big shock as when Premier Zhou Enlai died earlier in February of the same year. Mao was already very old and people were not shocked when he passed away on Sept. 9, 1979. There was also the big earthquake in Tangshan in July that year.  It was also the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac.

You’ve been here so long, what habits have you learned? Like the Chinese invented tea, do you drink tea daily as most Chinese do? If yes, any favorite kind of tea?

Yes, I drink green tea every day and my favorite is longjing tea from Hangzhou City, by force of habit. Longjing means “dragon well” in Chinese.

With a baby panda in China: FlorCruz’s advice to young people, “Whatever you end up doing in the future, there are a few skills you should develop, like good writing skills — it’s basic and will go a long way in any profession.”

How many Filipinos are there in Beijing now, including students learning Mandarin?

The last estimate in 2011 was over 400 Filipinos, including students. This number included only those who registered at the Philippine Embassy here in Beijing.

Some Gokongwei scholars to the Beijing Language & Culture University told me they had met you in Beijing before?

Yes, they’re bright and thoughtful students. That program of John Gokongwei, Jr. is very good, it helps young Filipinos to better understand China. I hope he continues this project.

You said aside from good parents, good education and your luck of being in China during its historic period, you had so-called “angels” who helped your career? Who are they?

Yes, I’ve benefited from angels in my life, professional peers who encouraged me. There’s Time magazine’s Sandra Burton, she was on the same plane when ex-Senator Ninoy Aquino returned to Manila on Aug. 21, 1983. There’s Richard Hornik, also of Time magazine. They were my former bosses at Time. I was with the magazine for 16 years. Then I left China for a year to accept the Edward Murrow Press Fellowship at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York. It was prestigious. They choose only one journalist a year. That year, they changed the rules, for me to be eligible to become a fellow, because according to their rules then they could only choose among American journalists.

Burton and Hornik were instrumental in my pursuing my career, despite my not being an American citizen, not having an Ivy League degree and my not even having a journalism degree.

But you were editor in chief of your college newspaper before…

Yes, I was a student editor and I have the passion for journalism, and I know China well. When Sandra moved from Beijing bureau chief to Hong Kong, she recommended me in 1990 to replace her. Sandra Burton passed away a few years ago. Richard Hornik is in Hong Kong, now a visiting professor at Hong Kong University.

People who recruited me to join CNN were also my angels. They, too, were color-blind.

As top journalist for Time magazine, and now CNN, you must have interviewed many world-famous people. Perhaps a leader of China too?

I interviewed then China President Jiang Zemin for a Time magazine cover story, just before his trip to the US in 1997.

What about the legendary reformer Deng Xiaoping?

I saw Deng Xiaoping when he welcomed then US President George Bush at the Great Hall of the People in the mid-1980s.

I heard the NBA stars are playing pre-season games in China, have you interviewed NBA superstars like Kobe Bryant?

I saw Kobe Bryant play NBA tune up games and in the 2008 Olympics here in Beijing.

What about the former NBA star Yao Ming?

I interviewed Yao Ming when he was drafted to the NBA. He went to our CNN office with his parents. He was interviewed from our Beijing bureau, because he was the No. 1 pick of the NBA at that time. Mabait siya talaga (He is really a good person). He was shy, and I remember he then spoke very little English. I think the few English words that he knew (and said then) were: “Houston, here I come.”

Any other memories of that Yao Ming interview?

Yao Ming was very unassuming, humble, and he was very tall. He had to duck to enter our doors and I had a stiff neck after interviewing him (laughs). At that time, I wasn’t sure he could really make it in the NBA. At that time, he was more worried learning to drive a car in Houston rather than whether he could play mano-a-mano against the likes of Shaquille O’Neal.

I remember you interviewed former US President Bill Clinton in Beijing for CNN. Your impressions of him?

Bill Clinton is very smart and cerebral. He has very wide knowledge. He’s able to look at the complexities of the world, crunch them down and explain it in layman’s language. He exuded charisma in person. I think charisma is a God-given gift. I admire his ability to connect global issues, because of his broad experiences.

What about Chinese movie directors, like Zhang Yimou of such internationally-acclaimed works as Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern, Red Sorghum, To Live and Not One Less ?

I’ve interviewed the director Zhang Yimou about his films, about the cinema in China. He was spontaneous and natural. I have also interviewed Jiang Wen the director/actor. My favorite film of his is In the Heat of the Sun. I liked it, because it was about the lives of teen-agers who grew up in Beijing in the 1970s, it resonated with me. It’s probably one of his best movies. He’s a personal friend. He’s China’s equivalent to Robert De Niro in the Taxi Driver film as an actor and Martin Scorsese as a director. 

The China Open is now ongoing, with international and Chinese tennis athletes competing. Have you interviewed Li Na, the 2011 French Open singles title champion?

Yes, I’ve interviewed Li Na, the first Asian woman tennis athlete to win a grand slam. She is frank, humorous, and by Chinese standards, she is no-holds-barred. She is the pioneer in breaking into world-class tennis on her own, it’s like a pilot case for China.

With NBA superstar Yao Ming: “I interviewed Yao Ming when he was drafted to the NBA. He went to our CNN office with his parents. The few English words that he knew and said then were: ‘Houston, here I come.’”

What about Michael Phelps during the 2008 Beijing Oympics?

I interviewed Michael Phelps. He came to our bureau. He was very unassuming and very patient. In fact, after my interview, my daughter Michelle and her friends — her high school classmates — waited for Phelps. He chatted with them and even signed autographs. He said in the interview how hard he was training and preparing for the Beijing Olympics. He was humble. That was before his record-breaking wins.

Any interesting entrepreneurs you’ve interviewed in China?

The businesswoman Zhang Xin, co-founder with her husband Pan Shiyi of SOHO China, the largest commercial real estate developer in Beijing. She’s very bright, educated in Cambridge University, well-traveled, speaks English fluently, has a lot of friends and connections in China and overseas. She and husband Pan Shiyi are very astute business people. They are also good patrons of art and architecture.

What about Chinese painters?

I’ve interviewed contemporary painter Zeng Fanzhi.

Any suggestions on how we can strengthen over 1,000 years of Philippine-China relations?

I hope for better Philippine-China relations, especially more public diplomacy or people-to-people exchanges for better understanding.

By the way, how did you meet your future wife Ana Zaldivar Segovia?

My wife Ana came here in 1985 to visit her aunt who was then an officer of the Philippine Embassy in Beijing. She had just finished her undergraduate degree at UP and was already admitted to law school. She visited, we met, she went to the US for a few weeks, then she came back here to work at the Beijing international school.

No more law school for her?

I derailed her plans for law school (smiles). A year later, we married in the Philippines. By the way, she’s from Antique. Her maternal grandfather was Supreme Court Associate Justice Calixto Zaldivar of the Marcos era; he dissented with then president Ferdinand Marcos on the martial law issue.

If you were to choose where to live in China’s cities, where would you choose and why?

Beijing. The appeal of Beijing is its history, its people, its diversity. If you really want to know China and its history, you can take a lifetime to learn its culture, its people and it’s changing very fast. Beijing is also very safe.

What is your advice to young people on success?

Well, I think… young people have different situations, different dreams and goals. Just stick to your goals. Go where your passion takes you, but you also should try to learn more about our own country, and about other countries, other cultures. Whatever you end up doing in the future, there are a few skills you should develop, like good writing skills — it’s basic and will go a long way in any profession.

I also recommend that young people learn a foreign language, such as Mandarin, which is now obviously very important. To be good at it, it took me two years of studying, including writing in Chinese, but learning it is a lifetime occupation. I started learning Chinese when I was 20 years old. It’s best learned earlier, even 20 is too late, but late is better than never.

A lot of foreign students come to China to learn Mandarin. Why learn Mandarin? These young people must pick up the signal that China is going to be an important country in global affairs.

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