Beijing Farewell for CCTV Anchor Jing Yidan, 71

A farewell ceremony for veteran Chinese television journalist and former CCTV anchor Jing Yidan was held on the morning of 17 September at the Babaoshan Funeral Home in Beijing, six days after her death at the age of 71. Colleagues from across Chinese broadcasting gathered to mourn a figure whose quiet, restrained presence shaped the look and sound of Chinese news television for a generation, according to The Paper.

The ceremony was arranged by her family and conducted in a solemn, simple manner. A long queue formed outside the hall before it began, and mourners were given a memorial booklet. Her alma mater, the Communication University of China, posted a memorial at 7:00 a.m. the same day and sent faculty and students to bid her farewell.

A Life in Broadcasting

Jing was born on 27 April 1955 in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. She entered the Beijing Broadcasting Institute — now the Communication University of China — in 1976 to study broadcasting, worked as an announcer at Heilongjiang People’s Radio in 1979, and returned to the institute for postgraduate study in 1983. After earning her master’s degree in 1986 she stayed on to teach, before joining CCTV in 1988.

At CCTV she hosted some of the network’s most influential programs, including Economic Half-Hour, Yidan’s Topics, Focus Report, Oriental Horizon, News Probe and Moving China. She served as lead anchor for the network’s Hong Kong handover coverage and won the Golden Microphone Award — the country’s top honor for television presenters — in three consecutive editions. She formally retired from CCTV in April 2015 at the age of 60.

Her death was announced by her daughter, Wang Erqing, on the morning of 13 September via Jing’s personal WeChat account. “My dearest mother, the ‘Auntie Jing’ everyone knows, left us today,” the notice read. It said Jing had suffered an acute cerebral hemorrhage in June while recording a program in her home city of Harbin, was hospitalized there, and was later transferred to Beijing for treatment, thanking medical staff in both cities. The family said the funeral arrangements would be kept simple.

Tributes From Colleagues

In a wreath sent by the production team of Oriental Horizon, the inscription read: “Together we remember the rivers and mountains of the years; in remembrance of Auntie Jing’s original screen-heart.” Wreaths also arrived from colleagues including Ni Ping, Bai Yansong and Ju Ping. According to Red Star News, those who attended in person included CCTV hosts Zhu Jun, Zhu Xun, Nigmat, Liu Chunyan, Shui Junyi, Han Qiaosheng, Gang Qiang, Wang Ning and Sun Yusheng.

A couplet at the hall read: “A life of compassion that amplified the voices of the weak; a loyal and open heart that spread the ideas of the wise.” Its horizontal banner — “Thank you, this world, for letting me pass through” — echoes the title of one of her books.

Liu Chunyan, known to audiences as “Jinzhuizi,” recalled on 14 September that Jing had been her university counselor, crediting her with teaching the seriousness, professionalism and composure that a career in broadcasting demands. In a letter published at dawn on the day of the ceremony, Ni Ping wrote that Jing was “reverent toward the profession,” adding simply: “I, reverent toward Auntie Jing.” Stranded on assignment some 3,000 kilometers away in Xinjiang, Ni Ping said she could not return in time to see her off.

Bai Yansong, who helped arrange the farewell, wrote in a tribute published by the CPPCC Daily that Jing “fell at work in her own hometown, and fixed herself at her most beautiful years — she will never grow old.” He recalled the lunches he organized for her and fellow CPPCC members during the annual Two Sessions, when the March session overlapped with International Women’s Day.

A Second Act

After retiring, Jing “retired but did not rest,” shifting from news toward cultural programming and Chinese traditional culture. She made programs on the 24 solar terms, visited museums across the country, and appeared in video series such as Museum in 9 Minutes, mostly distributed on new-media platforms. She also published several books, including Voice, Meeting You, Letters From Those Years, Moonlight Before the Bed and Passing Through.

Her final public appearances were tied to promoting her hometown of Harbin. Reflecting on joining Focus Report at 40, she described her most valuable professional work as “amplifying the voices of the weak, spreading the voices of the wise, and advancing the progress of civilization.”

What’s Next

Jing’s death closes a chapter in the era of Chinese television news that came to prominence in the 1990s, when she helped define an earnest, restrained, “speaking with facts” style that shaped how a generation of viewers understood the news. For many, that legacy is captured less by any single broadcast than by the colleagues she mentored and the audiences she addressed without flourish.

The family has asked that arrangements remain modest. For now, tributes continue to circulate across Chinese broadcasting and social media, and her programs remain available on streaming and new-media platforms — a screen record of a career that, as one wreath put it, remembered “the rivers and mountains of the years.”