English TV lessons in China go primetime
In 1981 an estimated 500 million people in China began watching the 成人快手 series Follow Me to learn English. The evening programme made a huge star of Kathy Flower.
In 1981 the first major series of English lessons was broadcast on Chinese television.
President Deng Xiaoping had allowed private enterprise and was pursuing an era of 鈥渙pening up鈥 to the rest of the world. It followed a decade of educational turmoil when teachers had been castigated as bourgeois by the former leader Mao Zedong.
Kathy Flower presented the English education programme, Follow Me, several times a week at primetime. It was watched by an estimated 500 million people keen to get a taste of the English language and observe westerners on television. Kathy Flower recalls to Josephine McDermott what it was like becoming the most famous foreign person in China.
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(Photo: Kathy Flower at a book signing in China. Credit: 成人快手)
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Witness History
History as told by the people who were there