In a simply decorated apartment in the picturesque campus of Xiamen University, Li Zhurun, a guest professor, is talking to us about his life as both a journalist and a teacher of journalism. Time and again he says he has nothing spectacular to offer. "I'm a small potato," he says.

As the talk goes on, however, we find him increasingly fascinating because he has been leading a simple yet rich life, a life interesting though without much sensation.

As a journalist, Li has worked at the Xinhua News Agency since 1965. As a teacher, he has taught as a guest professor at many universities. In 2001, he worked as an English language expert for the 29th Beijing Olympic Games Bid Committee.

BFSU professor and his soybeans

Li was born into a poor family in a mining town in Jiangsu Province. His grandfather and father died when he was barely three, leaving two widows to take care of five children. "Life was really hard, and we were hungry even during the Spring Festival," he says. "When I saw how my grandmother and mother toiled day and night to keep us alive, I was resolved to repay their kindness when I grew up."

He worked hard in primary and middle school, and in 1960, he was admitted into the Peking Institute of Foreign Languages, the predecessor of BFSU (Beijing Foreign Studies University ), where students were expected to work as diplomats and translators for the Foreign Ministry after five years of study. A lot of Chinese people were starving at the end of the Great Leap Forward Movement in the late 1950's. "Fortunately, I had a good teacher," Li Zhurun says. He was referring to Professor Li Binghan, the translator of the Communist Manifesto. As a university professor, Li Binghan was entitled to 1.5 kg of soybeans a month to supplement his meager food ration.

Already in his 70s and feeble from illness, the professor cooked the soybeans and kept them in a cloth bag. "In class, when he saw a student too hungry to continue studying," Li Zhurun recalls, "Professor Li Binghan would take out a handful of soybeans and give them to the student, asking the student to eat them in his presence. I was moved to tears when one day, I got a few dozen soybeans from the professor, and I became determined to be a teacher after graduation, a teacher as good as the old man."

Premier Zhou Enlai and Li's dream

When he graduated from BFSU, however, the government assigned him to Xinhua, even though he had always wanted to be a teacher.

In 1965, Li Zhurun reported to Xinhua, where he was assigned to the news agency's Department of Home News for Foreign Service. "I had had no idea of what I was going to do until the last minute," he says.

He worked hard at the job of writing domestic news stories in English, though he had never dreamt of it. "It was Premier Zhou Enlai who inspired me to continue studying, and that was to prepare me for research and teaching," he says.

In the summer of 1972, Henry Kissinger came to Beijing. After seeing the guest off at Beijing Airport, Zhou Enlai asked General Zhang Jizhi, the head of the military control group, to tell Xinhua people to think seriously of what they could learn from those American reporters in Kissinger's company.

"Since English news reporting and writing is my job," Li Zhurun thought, "I must know how American reporters write news stories."

In 1979, Li Zhurun had his first article on American news writing published. And also in 1979, he was asked to work as advisor to masters students studying at the Postgraduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "My dream of becoming a teacher came true, at last," he said.

Li's fame kept growing, being one of the first people to introduce Western experiences in journalism to China's media industry. In early 1989, he was sent to Cairo to work at Xinhua's Middle East Bureau, and eventually stayed there for four years and seven months. The Gulf Crisis broke out about six months after he arrived in Cairo. Then came the Middle East peace talks in Madrid, and then in Moscow. "I was busy all the time, but life there was thrilling," he says.

In April 1992, Li Zhurun had an exclusive interview with Libyan leader Muamma Kadaffi as head of a Xinhua group. Back in China, he picked up teaching again, at the China Institute of Journalism and then at the University of Cardiff Wales.

Always strive for real learning

"Always strive for real learning, and never do anything for false reputation - that is my maxim," Li Zhurun says. "As a journalist, I have done my best for China. As a teacher, I think I have done my best for my students."

At 63, Li Zhurun is still working full time at Xinhua, as an English language expert. With Xinhua's permission, he works at Xiamen University for two months every year, teaching students of journalism at the university. He is currently writing a book on English news writing, based on his research and experiences as a journalist. "I have fallen in love with Xiamen City and Xiamen University," he says. "My book will be published in 2006 or 2007 if all goes well, and I hope it will be useful to the university."