By staff reporter ZHANG HUA

SONG Yingjie gets up at 3:50 am every morning and refreshes himself with a cold shower before leaving to make his weather forecast at 6:26 am on CCTV. He arrives at his anchor room in the Weather Forecast Production Center at the State Meteorological Bureau at 4:30 am and continues with his work of dubbing, recording, and meeting with meteorological experts until 11:00 pm. He appears before the audience 14 times a day. "Weather forecasts should be timely, and unlike entertainment programs, my program cannot be prerecorded," said Song.

Song seems at home in his routine, and no sign of fatigue shows on his face. The center has four anchor-men and women that work rotating shifts, which means Song spends a quarter of each year working like this. "Sometimes I need to work continuously for two days, and at times like this you are too tired to eat or sleep."

Song made his first appearance before the Chinese audience nine years ago on March 1, 1993, at the weather forecast program after the prime-time CCTV news. Viewers were surprised to see this pleasant and agreeable-looking young man actually talking to them about the weather while showing them a map. Prior to that day, the weather forecast consisted of only maps and charts.

Song's appearance won a favorable response, and the ratings for this 21-year-old and formerly dull weather program climbed. It was reported that over 800 million people watched the program every day, and many newspapers and periodicals spoke favorably of the change in its presentation.

Not long after, however, Song got bored with his routine of stating that there would be rain here or wind there, and talking solely in meteorological terms. "I felt like little more than a stage prop," he recalled, "and as my foreign counterpart once remarked, we were all being too perfect to be human."

Song admired the way foreign weather forecasters chat with their audience about the weather. "Why can't we do that too?" he asks. "I think it wrong that a weather forecaster should merely communicate with his audience in meteorological language they barely understand," says Song. Another thing that he did not like was the emphasis on agricultural weather, but this was a time of limited flexibility that did not allow much scope for creativity, and his ideas often met with opposition.

Song nevertheless continued thinking of possible innovations. He included in his program tit-bits of information about the weather and health, or the weather and tourism. During the time of national university entrance examinations, he told his audience, "The weather for the coming two days will be very kind to the country's 3.4 million university entrance examinees."

"The audience showed great interest in these new aspects of the program, and particularly to references to China's 24 solar terms," says Song, pointing to a pile of letters from viewers. "But at the time I started all this, no one in the administration was forthcoming with positive comments, because in their eyes the weather forecast had become too instituted to change its format."

Things are much different now. More and more people have become aware of the significance of weather information as regards economic policy making, health, and the environment, and there is now a much greater demand for such information. Song finds particularly encouraging his increased contacts and exchanges with foreign counterparts, more access to foreign weather programs, and a more flexible environment for creativity.

Through Song's active involvement, the weather program has now become rich in content and diversified in form. Song and his colleagues have introduced computerized animation techniques and developed 14 weather programs, including items such as popular meteorological knowledge, disaster prevention and relief, tourism, business travel, military meteorological service, overseas news, and weather around the world. The programs are televised nationwide to over 100 countries and regions through CCTV channels 1, 2, 4 and 7.

Song considers that he became China's first weather program anchorman purely by chance. In 1984, he was enrolled into the Beijing Meteorological Institute, and after graduation worked as a short-term and mid-term weather forecaster at the State Meteorological Station, until 1993 when he was selected as anchorman.

Although he has brought a change to China's weather program, Song still has many ideas he is itching to put into practice. He wishes he could be as witty an anchorman as some of his foreign counterparts, saying things like: "I think it very likely that there will be precipitation in this part of the country, although I cannot say whether it will be rain or snow, but don't blame me if there is neither, and you'd better prepare for both. I can only give you a 97 percent accurate forecast, and nobody can be perfect in this work except God."

"Why can't we tell our audience the limits of science in a matter-of-fact way? Why shouldn't we hold an umbrella while talking about rain, and wear a down coat while talking about snow? China is now a WTO member. Are we able to hold our ground before the witty, personalized service of our foreign counterparts?" Song asks both himself and others these questions.