Do You Recognize This Man?

by Xia Dong

Rick O'Shea likes to leave some things vague. His age: "Whatever you imagine is fine." (You might want to imagine the 40s.) How he broadcasts three radio shows simultaneously in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou alongside three different co-hosts: "The magic of radio." His real name: "It doesn't sound that good on air." He is, however, certain about one thing: "Anything that isn't the suburbs of Detroit attracts me."

And that in part is what has led the Detroit native on a 19-year journey that has finally brought him to Beijing, where he hosts one of the more popular pop radio shows in China. Joy FM is broadcast evenings on 91.5FM in Beijing, 103.7 in Shanghai and on 102.7 in Guangzhou. The show is a two-hour mix of Western and Chinese pop music, heavy on the love songs and light on the hard rock and rap. O'Shea introduces songs and speaks in English and his co-hosts speak in Mandarin or Cantonese, depending on where the show is broadcast. The program tries to be a little foreign but not too alienating, about two-thirds English and one-third Chinese. O'Shea is careful to speak slowly and refrains from using slang.

"If it's all English it doesn't appeal to me," says O'Shea, a rugged looking man in a blue shirt and black jeans. "I want to reach an audience." The formula of the 6-year-old show apparently works. In-house estimates put the number of listeners in the millions, making O'Shea as popular as some of his bigger American counterparts.

O'Shea ' known in Chinese as "Li Ke" ' ventures that the show's success stems in part from a very basic global reality: "It's 1998 and English has become the most important language in the world. The Chinese are smart enough to know this."

But the show is more than an on-air English class. It's also about the music.

"They don't want to be left behind," O'Shea says about his fans' hunger for modern pop.

There's ample evidence of the show's popularity. Four large walls in the radio station are plastered with pictures fans have sent in. O'Shea and his co-hosts receive 70 letters a day from listeners between the ages of 18 and 34.

And the listeners ' a part of what O'Shea calls "the Joy family" ' pour out their souls, revealing intimate secrets they say they cannot share with anyone else. Maybe one of 500 will be read on the air, though O'Shea edits letters to keep out embarrassing details. "After a long day in China working, it's a way to unwind," O'Shea says while sipping tea from a carton in his living room. "People say they listen and it's the joy of their day."

Joy FM is a Sino-French venture linked to media-giant Hachette, publisher of Elle Magazine. O'Shea has hosted for three years. He recently moved his headquarters from Shanghai to Beijing, though he frequently shuttles between the show's three main locales.

The co-hosts ' it's Jade's voice you hear in Beijing ' are more than sidekicks. "She's 50 percent of the program," O'Shea insists. Jade is there to do more than just translate O'Shea's banter, but also adds her own flavor and opinions. The same is true for the other two hosts.

O'Shea didn't set out to be a DJ. After graduating from college, he did a stint as a street painter in Toronto, then headed down to Florida where he worked odd jobs before landing a job as an ad salesman for a local radio station he hated. He says he got the job after telling the station's owners how they should change their format. He soon went from selling ads to making them.

In the mid-1970s he worked as a DJ in Hawaii for three years, then in 1979 he was offered a one-year gig at a Taiwan radio station. He stayed for four years.

"I just never flew back," he shrugs.

He spent the next 15 years in Hong Kong, eventually working as both DJ and music director for Commercial Radio, one of the island's biggest stations. Three years ago he was offered the job at Joy FM. He was told Shanghai was like Taiwan in the "old days." "It's real difficult to turn down an adventure," he explains. For a man of his popularity, he has a very low profile and walks unnoticed along Beijing's crowded streets. His fans only know his distinctive voice, a mellow lilting baritone that uses the same soothing cadences on and off the air. In fact, O'Shea doesn't want his fans to recognize him and often turns down television appearances. He would rather his listeners invent their own version of who he is ' hence his preference for vagueness. "It's not so great to deal with the reality," O'Shea explains. "Anything that sparks the imagination is what I want."