HISTORY OF TELEVISION IN CHINA

EARLY HISTORY OF TELEVISION IN CHINA

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Television factory in the 1980s In 1953, representatives from China visited the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia to study television technologies. In 1955, the Chinese Central Broadcasting Bureau proposed the establishment of China's first television station in Beijing. Zhou Enlai adopted the proposal and stated that China's television industry should be part of the "Five-Year Culture and Education Plan" with the goals of using it as a tool for propaganda, education, and cultural enrichment. Experiments in TV broadcasting began by 1956. Competition with Taiwan spurred development. [Source: Morning Sun (morningsun.org) , Long Bow Group]

Beijing TV Station (later renamed China Central Television Station, or CCTV, in 1978) began broadcasting on May 1, 1958. The first broadcast included a 10 minute report on Labor Day and model workers report on production outputs. A documentary called "Go to the Countryside" showed Communist officials working with farmers. Among the other segments were cultural programs, dance and poetry readings, and a Soviet program on "Television."

Initially, there were only 50 television sets in China, for use by government officials. The black-and-white broadcasts reached only the Beijing area. In the 1950s, there was only one channel, which went on the air a few times a week, for two to three hours beginning at 7:00pm. Programming consisted of news, documentaries, entertainment and educational materials.

The first news item produced by the Beijing TV Station, aired on May 15, 1958, was a report on China's success in making its own cars. Its first newsreel covered the Red Flag, the Party's theoretical journal. News consisted mostly of still photos, text, and talking heads, along with news documentaries. TV dramas with heavy-handed political themes were also produced. A typical one — "A Bite of Cabbage Cake" — contrasted life under the Nationalists before 1949 with life under the Communists. It was broadcast live on June 15, 1958. On October 1, the National Day parade and celebration in Beijing was broadcast.

Television in China in 1960s and 70s: During and After the Cultural Revolution

Between 1958 and 1965, approximately 26,000 television sets were produced and sold in China. Private ownership, however, remained rare; television viewing was more of a collective activity done by work units. [Source: Morning Sun (morningsun.org) , Long Bow Group]

The Cultural Revolution brought China's TV service to halt. Beijing TV Station announced: In answer to Chairman Mao's call that "you people should be concerned about the important affairs of our country and should carry out the Great Cultural Revolution to its full extent," we have decided to launch a general, all-out offensive on a tiny handful of inner-Party power holders who have been taking the capitalist road. As a result, from January 3, 1967 on, this station will suspend normal broadcasting service except on important matters and occasions.

According to Morning Sun: TV stations were under tight control: Between 1967 and 1976, the only so-called "entertainment programs" shown on Chinese television were eight revolutionary model operas. A British broadcaster, who happened to visit China in 1970, found, much to his surprise, that within a 26-minute principal evening news broadcast by the Beijing TV Station, 18 minutes were devoted to rolling captions of Chairman Mao's quotations against a background of music praising Mao.

TV broadcasts started at 7 p.m. with Mao's portrait on the screen and the sound of The East Is Red, China's unofficial national anthem. These were followed by newscasts of such topics as commemoration of heroes, the work of educated youth in a remote village, reception of foreign visitors by the Chinese leaders, and the heroic struggle of the North Vietnamese. Next came revolutionary ballet and films, usually old Chinese movies about the anti-Japanese war or the war waged by the Communist Party against the Nationalists. At 10:30 p.m., the station signed off.

The Cultural Revolution ended in 1976. The were around three dozen television station at that time. In 1978, China still had less than 1 television set per 100 people. That year Beijing Television (Beijing TV Station) was renamed China Central Television (CCTV). The first TV commercial in China appeared on Shanghai TV in January, 1979. [Source: Morning Sun (morningsun.org) , Long Bow Group]

The first televisions didn’t show up in people’s homes until the late 1970s and then only the elite got them. Ni Ching Ching wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “Television was such as new phenomena that and the state broadcasts lasted only a few hours at night and half of it was propaganda. Still we treated the magic box like a shrine. By day it was covered with an embroidered cloth and by night we opened our small living room to neighbors who brought stools and sat three or four rows deep.”

Television in China the 1980s

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Television expanded rapidly in the 1980s as an important means of mass communication and popular entertainment. The sales of televisions rose from 300,000 a year in 1975 to 10 million in 1990. In 1987, there 10.7 television sets per 100 people. The number of color and black and white televisions per 100 rural households rose from around 11.7 in 1985 to 44.4 in 1990. The number of color televisions per 100 urban households rose from around 17.2 in 1985 to 59 in 1990.

Matthias Niedenfuhr wrote in the Political Economy of Communication: “Soon after Deng Xiaoping implemented the ‘reform and opening’ policy in the late 1970s, many sectors of the economy began to develop rapidly — including the television industry. Entertainment became an increasingly important means of attracting audiences. New local content productions saw the adoption of international program formats to advance the domestic television industry. Television dramas were the most important category in this endeavor and have remained so, both in terms of ratings and in terms of their airtime share. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, productions from Hong Kong and Taiwan (and to a lesser degree from the West and Japan) formed the bulk of television drama entertainment. However, this soon changed. For the first part of the reform era, production formats from Hong Kong and Taiwan were the model for domestic productions, but the latter quickly gained a growing market share. [Source: Matthias Niedenfuhr, Political Economy of Communication no. 1, 2013]

In the 1980s supplies of electrical appliances increased along with family incomes. Household survey data indicated that by 1985 most urban families owned a radio, and a television. Virtually all urban adults owned wristwatches, half of all families had washing machines, 10 percent had refrigerators, and over 18 percent owned color televisions. Rural households on average owned about half the number of consumer durables owned by urban dwellers. Most had 1 bicycle, about half had a radio, 43 percent owned a sewing machine, Twelve percent of farm families had a television set. [Source: Library of Congress, 1987]

In 1985 consumers purchased 15 million new sets, including approximately 4 million color sets. Production fell far short of demand. Because Chinese viewers often gathered in large groups to watch publicly owned sets, authorities estimated that two-thirds of the nation had access to television. In 1987 there were about 70 million television sets, an average of 29 sets per 100 families. CCTV had four channels that supplied programs to the over ninety television stations throughout the country. Construction began on a major new CCTV studio in Beijing in 1985.

Television Stations and Programming in China the 1980s

By 1985, there were 202 stations. By 1987, television reached two-thirds of the population through more than 104 stations (up from 52 in 1984 and 44 in 1983); an estimated 85 percent of the urban population had access to television. As television stations grew, the content of the programming changed drastically from the political lectures and statistical lists of the previous period. [Source: Library of Congress, 1987]

In 1987 China Central Television (CCTV), the state network, managed China's television programs. CCTV produced its own programs, a large portion of which were educational, and the Television University in Beijing produced three educational programs weekly. The English-language lesson was the most popular program and had an estimated 5 to 6 million viewers. Other programs included daily news, entertainment, teleplays, and special programs. Foreign programs included films and cartoons. Chinese viewers were particularly interested in watching international news, sports, and drama.

Most television shows were entertainment, including feature films, sports, drama, music, dance, and children's programming. CCTV's annual Spring Festival Gala premiere in 1983. It remains the most popular program on Chinese television. River Elegy, a controversial documentary series, aired in 1988. In 1985 a survey of a typical week of television programming made by the Shanghai publication Wuxiandian Yu Dianshi (Journal of Radio and Television) revealed that more than half of the programming could be termed entertainment; education made up 24 percent of the remainder of the programming and news 15 percent. A wide cross section of international news was presented each evening. Most news broadcasts were borrowed from foreign news organizations, and a Chinese summary was dubbed over. China Central Television also contracted with several foreign broadcasters for entertainment programs. Between 1982 and 1985, six United States television companies signed agreements to provide American programs to China.

Growth of Television, Cable and Satellite TV in China

Ting Ni wrote in the World Press Encyclopedia: As a state-owned and party-controlled instrument of propaganda, television had limited penetration prior to the 1980s and thus figured insignificantly compared with newspapers and radios before the reform period. However, due partly to a more open political atmosphere and an emerging market economy, and partly to the Chinese Communist Party's intent to use television as an effective means for political and cultural propaganda, television programs became increasingly interesting and more relevant to Chinese daily life. This development resulted in an expansion of television stations, a growth of television-set ownership, and the emergence of an extensive cooperative relationship among stations, commercial financing institutions, and government agencies. [Source: Ting Ni, World Press Encyclopedia, Gale Group Inc., 2003]

“With the introduction of cable in the mid-1980s, many municipalities and counties, as well as large government units and businesses with their own residential areas for employees, established local cable networks. Because cable stations charge monthly fees, they do not need government investment. As a result, they have developed at an explosive rate and have become highly decentralized. As of the first half of 1993, there were more than 2,000 cable networks in the country reaching into 20 million households. Approximately 800 were full-scale cable stations, broadcasting videos or self-produced programming. Two hundred of these were run by large-scale state-owned business enterprises. At the end of 1995, the number of full-scale cable stations had reached 1,200, with an estimated audience of 200 million.

The number of Chinese that had access to satellite television grew rapidly in the 1990s despite government controls and the fact that satellite dishes were officially banned in 1993 except for certain government offices. Sometimes authorities crack down on the illegal satellite dishes but mostly they look the other way. In the 1990s and 2000s the military and the government sold dishes for about $500 a piece. They made so much money from selling them that the only thing set up to discourage people from buying them was an "honor" system.

Television in China the 1990s

In 1997, there were around 400 million televisions in China. The sales of televisions rose from 10 million a year in 1990 to around 30 million a year in 1996 to 43 million in 2000. In 1992, there were 19.5 television sets per 100 people. By 1996, the figure reached 25 television sets per 100 people. The number of color and black and white televisions per 100 rural households rose from around 44.4 in 1990 to 80.7 in 1995 to 92.4 in 1997. The number of color televisions per 100 urban households rose from around 59 in 1990 to 90 in 1995 to 100.5 in 1997.

In 1994, CCTV opened up prime-time advertising slots. In 1997, it operated 209 government-owned television stations. There were also 31 provincial stations and almost 3,000 city stations. The most important station was Beijing's Central People's Broadcasting Station (CPBS). From there, programs were relayed by local stations. CPBS broadcast daily on several channels using a variety of languages, including Mandarin (or standard Chinese), the Hokkien and Hakka dialects, Cantonese, Mongolian, Tibetan, Uigur, Kazakhi, and Korean. [Source: Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations, Thomson Gale, 2007]

The sale of video compact disc players rose from 70,000 in 1994 to 118 million in 2001. The sale of CDs and DVDs, including pirated copies, increased from 63.4 million in 1994 to 80 million in 2000 to 109 million in 2001. The big demand for video cassette recorders and video disc recorders is partly the result of the limited choices found on Chinese television.

VCD (video compact discs) were low-tech versions of DVDs. They replaced video cassettes as the main medium for watching films and homes in China in the 1990s. VCD players that sold for less than $100 and VCD versions of the latest movies that sell for $1 are widely available in China in the 1990s. Many people watched pirated DVDs and videos more than regular television shows. If the censors banned or cut a television show or movie, Chinese simply got a pirated version of the original.

Television in China in the 2000s

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daughter-in-law dramaChina was the world’s largest producer of televisions in the early 2000s. In 2001 China produced more than 46 million televisions and claimed 317 million sets in use. In 2002, the total television audience reached 1.15 billion. By 2005, 95 percent of the population had access to television one way or another. [Source: Library of Congress, August 2006]

China produced 30 million television sets in 2002 compared to 25 million in 1998. In the early 2000s, there were television sets in over 400 million households There were 315 television sets per 1,000 people in 2003 and 350 television sets per 1,000 people in China in 2006, compared to 84 per 1,000 in low-income countries, 735 in high-income countries and 938 in the United States . Home televisions were still prized possessions. Since large segments of the rural population were without televisions, many TV sets were set up in public meeting places. In Hong Kong, there were about 504 television sets for every 1,000 people. [Source: Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations, Thomson Gale, 2007; Library of Congress, August, 2006; Ting Ni, World Press Encyclopedia, Gale Group Inc., 2003]

Approximately 75 of every 1,000 people were cable subscribers in 2000. By the end of 2004 cable television was reaching 114.7 million households, a good portion of the Chinese population. Hundreds of millions of Chinese were hooked up to satellite television through illegal cable set ups. The Chinese cable TV industry was initially made up primarily of people who bought satellite dishes and ran wires from the dish to neighboring homes for a fee. As of 2006, there were 139 million (11 per 100 people) cable television subscribers, compared to 110 million (32 per 100 people) in the United States.

Matthias Niedenfuhr wrote in the Political Economy of Communication: “Since China and Taiwan joined the WTO in 2001, the media industries of the PRC (concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai) on one side, and Hong Kong and Taiwan on the other, have become ever more integrated in terms of creative personnel, production, and sources of funding. This growth of domestic program production can be seen when we compare production numbers from the 1980s with the first decade of this century. Between 1984 and 1989, a total of approximately 6,000 episodes of television dramas were produced domestically. Between 2001 and 2008 approximately 120,000 episodes of more than 5000 dramas were produced, which represented an annual production of more than 14,000 drama episodes. This means that domestic production has grown twenty-fold over the last 30 years. China can now count itself among the four biggest producers of television drama in the world, although the export potential of domestic programs is still limited to the Chinese-speaking market and China’s East Asian neighbors. [Source: Matthias Niedenfuhr, Political Economy of Communication no. 1, 2013]

History of Television Stations in China

Beijing TV Station (later renamed China Central Television Station, or CCTV, in 1978) began broadcasting on May 1, 1958. The Shanghai TV station begins broadcasting in October 1958. Between then and 1960, sixteen provinces set up TV stations The number doubled by 1975. There were 202 stations by 1985, and 980 by 2000). [Source: Morning Sun (morningsun.org) , Long Bow Group]

In 1997, China had 3,240 television broadcast stations. Of these 209 were operated by China Central Television and 31 were run by provincial TV stations. Nearly 3,000 were operated by local city stations. By 2000, there were 980 television stations in China (according to another count there were 3240). The number of television stations rose more than 2,100 in 2005. Of these about 200 are operated by China Central Television (CCTV), 31 are provincial stations. In recent years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of regional stations with more than 1, 900 television stations in small and medium size cities.

In August 2000, China's first private TV station, Sun TV, launched programming in Hong Kong. In January 2001, Shanghai began China's first digital TV program. Other cities, such as Shenzhen, Qingdao, and Hangzhou soon followed suit. In December 2001, the largest Chinese media, China Broadcasting and Television Group, was started in Beijing. [Source: Ting Ni, World Press Encyclopedia, Gale Group Inc., 2003]

By 2001 CCTV had 33 local affiliates, along provincial lines, with areas such as Fujian and Shanghai having two stations. China Education Television (CETV) also is used for distance learning. While most programs are in Chinese, the national network, CCTV, and municipal stations in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou broadcast English-language news programs six evenings a week. Popular American television programs are occasionally broadcast in Chinese. [Source: Worldmark Encyclopedia of Nations, Thomson Gale, 2007; Library of Congress, August, 2006]

China Xinhua News Network (CNC) launched it English-language 24-hour news broadcast, CNC World, in July 2010. CNC has news, weather and sports, like similar networks, with 70 percent of the content international news and 30 percent on China. The Chinese government reportedly was anxious to get the network going so it could offers its side on controversial topics involving China such as Tibet and human rights.

ChinaTV Reporter in Shanghai

Foreign Television Companies in China

In January 2002, China allowed Time Warner's Mandarin programs (CETV) to broadcast in southeast China. This was the first foreign TV program to be shown in China. In return, China's Ministry of Radio, Film and Television and American Time and Warner started broadcasting CCTV English news (CCTV, Channel 9) 24 hours a day in New York, Houston, and San Francisco. [Source: Ting Ni, World Press Encyclopedia, Gale Group Inc., 2003]

CETV, Star TV and Phoenix (See Below) have permission to operate 24-hour channels in the southern province of Guangdong. CETV broadcasts on cable systems in the Pearl River Delta area around Guangzhou.

Since television programming is controlled entirely by the state in China, Western media companies must negotiate every detail and aspect of programming with government officials that decide what can and can not be shown Broadcasts on CNN and BCC of issues deemed sensitive by Beijing are routinely blacked out.

One of the biggest players in bringing foreign media to China in the 2000s was the Shanghai Media Group. It had deals with Viacom to bring MTV and Nickelodeon programing to China as well as deals with VNU, CNBC, Universal Music Group, Sony, Discover Communications and the National Basketball Association to bring a host of other shows. Shanghai Media was headed by Li Ryugand,, who considered Rupert Murdoch and Robert Wright of NBC Universal and Sumber Redtsone of Viacom as his close friends. Li was voted “Showman of the Year “by the Chinese version of Variety. Much of the programing he brought to China was carried on the 13 over-the-air and 17 national digital stations that Shanghai Media controlled. The Chinese television company TCL acquired a controlling interesting in its French rival Thomson.

Rupert Murdoch and Phoenix TV

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch made a deal with the CCTV in 1995 to allow it to use AsiaSat II, a satellite belonging to Murdoch's Hong Kong-based Star TV. According to the terms of the deal, Murdoch was allowed to broadcast Star programming through the CCTV system in exchange for providing CCTV with technological know-how, increased satellite capacity and more programming. The plan involved hooking up millions of households to a satellite and cable network of channels controlled by Beijing.

When Rupert Murdoch gained control of Star TV, Chinese authorities were upset by that fact that it beamed BBC broadcast into China. Later Star TV quietly got rid of the BBC channel to appease Beijing. In 2003, Star TV received permission to broadcast its Starry Sky channel to the mainland. It features Chinese versions of favorite Western shows such as Judy Judge and The Tonight Show.

The Phoenix is a Hong Kong-based satellite network that operates three Mandarin-language news and entertainment channels geared towards viewers on the mainland. Launched in 1996 and owned by Rupert Murdoch and Chinese businessman Lui Changle, it reaches about 50 million household in mainland China. Murdoch supplied the capital, satellite access and infrastructure. Liu — a former radio reporter and People’s Liberation Army soldier who made a fortune from construction, development and trading petroleum and other products and’supplies the connections and insight into the Chinese market

For a while Phoenix was the only private network in China allowed to broadcast in China. In the 2000s, Phoenix employed several hundred people and operated out of a high rise in Hong Kong. The entertainment channels featured movies, game shows and dubbed versions of the American show Survivor, Taiwanese dating games, tell-all celebrity interviews, and advise shows like Sex and Love Classroom. Advertisers includes banks, electronic manufacturers and drug companies. As of 2001, Phoenix was only supposed to be available to people staying at nice hotels or residential areas where foreigners live. Chinese officials and military compounds had access to the station through satellites dishes. Ordinary people can sometimes gain access through illegal satellite dishes and cable lines.

In 2001, Phoenix launched a 24-hour news channel. Similar to Western news networks, it features smartly-dressed anchors, breaking news, sexy entertainment reporters, sports and financial reports, panel discussions with feisty, argumentative guests and in-depth reports n a number of subjects. Phoenix’s owners and management walk a fine line of testing the limits of what they cover while maintaining good relations with the Chinese government and Communist Party. Liu Changle, the Chinese media tycoon and part owner of Phoenix, told the Washington Post, “We walk on a tightrope. If we do everything the government wants, people will treat us with contempt. If we follow the people completely, the government will wipe us out...It can be very uncomfortable.”

Phoenix avoided or downplays controversial subjects such as Tiananmen Square, Falun Gong and anti-government protests in Hong Kong and took a nationalistic stance on issues like the forced landing of the American spy plane in 2001 but otherwise had a free hand and tacit approval from Beijing to cover a wide range of topics and subjects, including the entertainment scene in Taiwan. One Phoenix reporter told the Los Angeles Times, “International. It’s not so sensitive. But political stories, anything having to do with the mainland, are more difficult. To tell the truth without getting into trouble, it takes a lot of skill.”

After the September 11th attack, Phoenix was the only station accessible to Chinese on the mainland that had up to date information about what was happening. Because of that Phoenix suddenly became relevant the same way CNN did during Tiananmen Square in 1989 and the 1991 Gulf War. It also put pressure on CCTV to do a better job covering what was going on in the outside world.

Evolution of Chinese Television in the 2010s

By the 2010s many Chinese were bypassing televisions and televisions stations altogether by watching TV shows or TV-style programming on their phones, tablets and computers via a variety of online platforms. By the end of 2012, the number of Chinese watching entertainment programs online surpassed 445 million.

Creative Transformations reported: “On the 5th December 2013 a crowd of media industry professionals and observers crammed into the Number One Ballroom of the Grand Hyatt Shanghai Hotel to listen to the new elite of China’s online content sector. Heading up the keynote list were Charles Zhang, CEO and Chairman of SOHU, Ma Dong, CCO of iQyi.com; Shan Xiaolei, Vice President of PPTV.com; Tan Jingying, Vice President of Letv.com, Tao Mingcheng, CEO of BesTV, and Tian Ming CEO of Canxing, the latter a leading television production company based in Shanghai. The event was the China National Internet Audio-Visual Industry Forum. [Source: Creative Transformations, May 2014]

While the names might not be so familiar outside China, perhaps the best point of comparison are digital platforms like Youtube, Hulu and Netflix that offer a range of streaming and downloaded content through the internet. In China the online content market is growing exponentially because of the massive online audience and its propensity for sharing. The dominant players manifest as online video providers and video-hosting providers. Many of those presenting in the Grand Hyatt Ballroom were on the side of pirates in the past; on this occasion they sang in unison from the copyright hymn sheet provided by the event’s sponsor. The sponsor was the Motion Pictures Association, which for many of the audience present was a potent symbol of the creativity of Hollywood.

Government VIPs informed the assembled masses of the significance of the ‘Chinese dream’, in this case the dream was to take China’s media to the world. Like most dreams, however, there was an air of unreality. The home market was where the action was, and where internationalization was taking place. Following the departure of officials from the Ballroom dreams were put to the side. Discussion turned to the domestic market, how to generate original content, how to combat piracy, how to exploit e-commerce, and how to work alongside the incumbent television system.

“This event is significant for a number of reasons. First, there is a growing sense that China’s media industry is transforming, breaking out of the political containers that have constrained commercial development since the term ‘industry’ was first used in the early 1990s. The collapse of boundaries is most evident in China’s online space. Second, the idea that China’s media can go out to the world, and even compete with the ‘foreign wolves’, fits nicely with the political rhetoric about China’s international status, a feature of nightly news broadcasts on the national broadcaster, China Central Television (CCTV). With the dream of internationalization pervading the nation there is no shortage of support for ‘national champions’.

“To understand what this means for the future of media in China we have to take account of how technological changes in the medium of television are impacting on viewing practices. Since its inception in 1958, Chinese television has been viewed in the family living room, allowing the government to send messages directly to a captive audience. Propaganda, by definition, relies on constant repetition and assumes a passive audience. This equation has changed with digital media. While still viewed in living rooms, television is a communication and entertainment medium delivered through set-top boxes deploying interactive applications (apps). An expanding array of opportunities exists for audiences to view content and to ‘reconnect’ with each other.

“Content is accessed on small tablets as well as on large flat panel television screen and conspicuously displayed in taxis, subways and on transit platforms. ‘Smart devices’ allow audiences to be users and content generators — as the tag line of BesTV, one of China’s new breed of content providers puts it, ‘from watching TV to using TV’. Access to digital video recorders means that people can watch when it suits; these flexible viewing practices disrupt the traditional model of television production. While these changes began in international television systems, their impact is nowhere as obvious as in China. Many younger audiences are especially attracted to shorter ‘transmedia’ formats that can be viewed on ‘second screens’ and enhanced by ‘TV everywhere’ apps, which makes it easy for content to be shared interactively and instantaneously with friends.

“Whereas getting access to the hearts and minds of Chinese viewers in the past was almost impossible, the existence of hundreds of community discussion forums provides a means for fans of international content to connect. Even if the content is not readily available, there are ways to access; some avenues like Bit Torrent sites and pirated DVDs are illegal but increasingly new online players are entering into content distribution deals and incubating new fast-moving formats and genres that exploit celebrity culture.

“The medium of television is in a state of unprecedented flux in China. Changes translate into new opportunities for foreign content players, whether licensing, co-productions, formats or transmedia. Whereas in the past television was about making a successful show, producers are now looking to create content that is flexible, which can be distributed across different platforms and networks. Micro-content and user-generated content, sometimes innovative, often derivative, has become the new currency as the technology sector integrates with story-tellers. The digital transformation of media is transforming peoples’ lives and their cultural consumption in a way that was unimaginable even a decade ago.

Image Sources: 1) Julie Chao ; 2) Nolls China website, Wiki Commons

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated May 2022