Woman's Hour - Is work working? Harvey Weinstein, Fedina Zhou

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

Is the jobs market working for women? We ask if policies on part time or flexible working actually work in practice? And, as more and more women leave careers to go freelance – why are they doing it? We hear from Lucy Adams, CEO of Disruptive HR, Kirsty Holden, blogger and founder of TheMoneySavingMum.com and Anna Codrea-Rado, journalist and presenter of the podcast “is this working?” about the modern workplace. Hollywood has been rocked by allegations against Harvey Weinstein. This week, he pleaded not guilty to two additional charges of predatory sexual assault and he faces a criminal trial in the New Year. He has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex. A new documentary looks at the rise and fall of the film mogul. Jenni talks to the director of the documentary Ursula Macfarlane and to Hope D’Amore who was a victim of his alleged abuse.Fedina Zhou is the President of The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Asia’s oldest symphony orchestra, which is celebrating its 140th year with a world tour and a first appearance at the BBC Proms. She talks about the origins of the orchestra which was the first to introduce symphonic music to Chinese audiences and now strives to promote cultural exchanges between East and West. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Ruth Watts

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Thursday the 29th of August. As we learn there's been a 67% increase in the number of women turning to self-employment in the last decade, why is the 9-to-5 job going out of favour? Might it be that the right to flexible and part-time working just isn't working? As the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra prepares to appear at the proms, their president, Ferdinand Zhou, explains how Western

music was introduced to China. And the serial, episode nine of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls. Now you may have heard in the news earlier this week that the film producer Harvey Weinstein had appeared in court in New York and pleaded not guilty to two further charges of predatory sexual assault

in addition to sexual misconduct claims made against him by more than 70 other women, he will face a criminal trial in the new year. Any allegations of non-consensual sex have been unequivocally denied by Mr Weinstein. Well, a documentary which will be broadcast on Sunday at 9 o'clock on BBC2 is called Untouchable, The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein. Hope DeMoor is one of a number of women

who've spoken for the first time now about what they say happened to them. She worked for Weinstein in the late 70s as a young PA when he was building his career. Ursula Macfarlane is the director of the film. How easy was it for her to persuade people to talk to her? Well, it was quite difficult to get ex-employees to talk, I have to say. That was the toughest challenge. You know, many people, perhaps out of sort of some kind of guilt and complic the industry. But the women, I have to say,

I think perhaps, you know, had more motivation to talk to us because Me Too was very much exploding. And I think there was a sense that, you know, hope will tell me if I'm right, but there was a sense that this was something really important to lend your voice to. Having said that, you know, I understand, I can see and we could see that it was difficult and it was traumatic so me and my producer spent time either meeting people face to face or having Skype calls I think we I think we Skyped you didn't we Hope at some point yes and and I think you know we just wanted to make people feel comfortable with us because it was going to be hard. Hope I know you worked for him in the late 70s when he was a concert promoter

before he was making all these films what was he like then? I think he was essentially the same man man he is now. He obviously became bolder in his actions as he got older. But the accounts that I heard of him, he really hasn't changed. So the obvious question is, well, then why did you go to work for him? Part of his makeup is that he can be extremely disarming, very charming man. You might not intuit that just by, you know, at first glance, but he can be. He initially asked me if I would work for the concert promotion business. And I said, you know, I'm not really, I'm not a good fit for that industry. I had worked backstage at a big concert he had just as a gopher. When he offered me the job, I said, really, this isn't something I'm very good at. And he just, well, what do you like?

What do you do? And that's how we started talking. And I said, well, I love film. And he said, oh, well, my brother Bob and I are getting into that business. I love films, too. He talked about it fairly extensively. it was clear he knew what he was talking about um and he said so if you worked here you know you'd be around that as well so that's how i ended up working with him now i know you allege that he abused you what happened to you

before we went to new york before the i mean he raped me um before we went to to uh on the business trip to New York where the rape occurred um you know he would he would flirt with me in the office but that was not unusual I mean things like that happened all the time, especially back then. We were both right out of college. I you know, we went to the same university. He he's two years older than me, I think. And he actually grabbed me once in the office. He was walking down the hallway. I was walking toward him. There were people there. There were at least two people there to witness it. He grabbed me and pulled me into a closet and tried to kiss me. And I just pushed him off. And I said, Harvey, and, you know, just kind of what the hell. But I left it off, which is pretty much what you

did back then. That wasn't against the law. And now it would be considered an assault. Those kind of, you know, harassment laws were just beginning to be discussed. If you didn't laugh something like that off, you either had to find another job, or people would just, and even for several years after that, it was, oh, you know, what's her problem? She can't take a joke. She's a bitch, you know, she has no sense of humor. So I just kind of, you know, laughed it off, put it out of my head and kept going. You used the word rape. How did that happen? How it happened was he asked me if he said he and Bob were going to New York to talk to someone about distributing the film. Did I want to come along and just listen in on the meeting?

I said, absolutely. And when we got to New York, we're waiting in the lobby of the hotel. And it was sort of you wait here with the bags. I'll go check us in. And when he came back, he said, oh, there's been a mistake. There's only one room. And I rolled my eyes and I just said, Harvey. I said, well, fine. Then you're sleeping on a chair. But, you know, that night I went to bed with a T-shirt and shorts on, you know, sort of kind of gym shorts that you'd go running in. And, you know, suddenly he gets into bed with me and he's naked. And that's as far as I'm going to go with the details of that right now you don't need to go into any further details i think we can understand exactly

what it is you're saying but why did you not make a complaint about it at the time uh a couple of reasons um and first and foremost i i can't emphasize enough the humiliation and shame i so not only did i not make a complaint i didn't tell even my closest friends i didn't tell my sisters about this for 40 years i i told no one um and uh know, I felt like it was my fault, even though it never occurred to me that something like that would happen. I've been in situations with guys, you know, our age in college. You know, you study all night. You sleep for a couple of hours on whatever's available. Nobody forces themselves on you um your friends um even

if someone you know says something or you know tries to make a movie just say you know listen no and that's that um so i absolutely felt like it was my fault um and and until even now i i can see how people would say their immediate reaction would be, well, what the hell was she thinking? What did she think would happen? Um, you know, but I'm telling you, I didn't think that would happen. That hadn't been my experience with men. Um, certainly men my age at that point. Um, but also, you know, he was a powerful guy even then, and he was

wealthy even then. And he, he is an imposing force. You've probably heard about his screaming tantrums, but he's also just a large person. So even if he didn't start screaming at you, I mean, just his physical presence is, is, is, can be very threatening when he wants it to be. And he had always, he had said more than once, I own the cops in this town, this town, meaning Buffalo, the rape happened in New York City. But, and, you know, I don't think the police in Buffalo, New York are corrupt. But I knew he hired off-duty policemen to do security at the shows. And I believed him. I know you've spoken to a number of people for the documentary.

Actresses, former workers at Miramax, journalists. As they were telling you their stories, what were you making of what they were telling you? Well, I mean, there are, you know, there are sort of shades, there are nuances of different behaviours. But I think I got wind quite early on of a pattern, a real pattern of cajoling, of drawing someone in, because I've never met him. But, you know, many people said to me how charming he was, echoing those words. So I think he would conjure, cajole, bring people in and, you know, manipulate them. And then there were threats, you know, both to people in the office, but particularly to the female survivors. You'll never work in this town again. You know,

I will, I will break your career. And, you know, we now know there is evidence that they were not empty threats, you know, he did do that to people. So I found, you know, the sort of pattern of it, I found really gobsmacking. And there is, you know, one particular incident where he physically attacks a young journalist in a party, and, you know, they end up rolling with a headlock and he's punching this guy's head, the journalist's head. And it just was so shocking to me because you suddenly thought this is a man who just, you know, there's no norm here. He just feels like he can behave exactly how he wants. Now, any allegations of non-consensual sex, we know, are denied by Mr Weinstein.

And I did wonder, watching the film, how concerned you might be that you're rather denying him the right to be innocent until proven guilty by making the film. Well, I mean, we, you know, we spent a lot of time, you can imagine, you know, the BBC, but any broadcaster would legal that film to the hilt. And there were many things in the film that we couldn't stack up, we couldn't corroborate, so we ended up not having to use them.

But we approached Harvey several times via his lawyers for an interview. We were very keen to hear his point of view. He constantly declined. He was sent a very detailed list of all the allegations in the film at the end. Again, didn't come back to us. So, I mean, I think he was given a pretty fair crack of the whip. And in terms of his trial, you know, yes, is he going to get given a fair trial? I mean, frankly, my concern is much more for the women who are going to be in court, who are going to be, you know, discredited, dragged through the mud by his lawyers. There is a gossip columnist in your film who says it was assumed that aspiring film stars wanted to sleep with him.

What do you say to people who say, oh, some of these women were complicit? Look, I think, you know, I have heard through reliable sources that there were women who slept with Harvey consensually and in some kind of trade off for getting a small role in a film. I have heard that. I have not met any of those people, so I can't testify to that. But I just want to be really clear that every woman I spoke to and everybody in our film did not go to that meeting with intention of having any kind of sexual encounter with Harvey Weinstein I believe them it's very clear to me and I have not heard a single survivor whom I don't believe and I think there was you know there is nuance there there you know there are people who you could say well why did you go back you know you knew that he was a kind of you know that you're accusing him of these things so why did you go back but it's a very delicate dance you know you knew that he was a kind of you know that you're accusing him of these things so

why did you go back but it's a very delicate dance you know between someone who wants something badly a job a career uh who is vulnerable and someone who is very powerful hope what do you say to those people who say that some of the women who've made complaints were complicit? I can see from the outside how people might think that. I think that they're wrong, but I understand how they might think that. I do know, I don't want to say there are no women who would ever do something like that just for a role in the movie. I think some women might, but we're not talking about those women. We're talking about the women who have accused him of sexual harassment, of rape, and of, you know, destroying their careers because they turned his sexual advances down and were fortunate enough to get away from him.

Just one other question. Why did you not speak out till now? It's ever such a long time since it happened it is it is and um i've actually defended i haven't been on social media much since this all broke um but i have defended uh rose mcgowan and ashley judd because they've been accused of well this isn't believable all these years later and i said oh trust oh, trust me, it is believable. I can, you know, I'll see their 10 years and raise them 30, basically. I would never have spoken out.

Actually, Harvey's the reason I spoke out. He pushed it, you know. Again, they came out with their story. I was, first of all, extremely grateful for them to them for speaking up because I knew how frightened they must be. I knew that they must assume that they would tell the story. It once again, it would not get published, but Harvey would know about it and he'd make their lives hell all over again. The story was published. So I was extremely grateful for that, for their bravery. And it was the evening, I believe, of the day that the New York Times

article was published, I heard on the news that he was going to sue for defamation. That's why I spoke out. I mean, that's, finally, I got angry enough. And, you know, I've said this before, but it, for some reason, it's easier to stand up for other people than it is for yourself. I was so grateful for them. I just can't even begin to express my gratitude to those women. I thought, you son of a bitch, not this time and so I emailed Jodie Cantor who was one of the authors and I said I can corroborate what those women said because there was enough that was similar to my situation that I knew it wasn't a coincidence that this was his MO he had he was still doing the same thing he was just more

brazen about it. Angela why do you believe his behavior was able to continue for so long? You know, I think Hollywood is a particularly complex place and there are many people who make a lot of money out of Hollywood, riches, Oscars, you know, awards, setting you up for life. And I think so the stakes for many people were very high, i.e. had they come out and complained about it at the time, you know, that would have probably been their careers over. And that sounds very mercenary, but I think that was coupled with a real sense of fear because he did threaten to break people's careers. And we know now that he did do that. So I think it's a kind of, you know, it was a sort of miasma of fear around him. You know, and then for sure, a small coterie of people at the top, lawyers, people who drew up the NDAs, non-disclosure agreements,

who absolutely knew what was going on. But it kind of wasn't in people's interests to say anything. And I think there were also many, many people who suspected things, perhaps never saw it for themselves, perhaps thought he was a lech, you know, a philandra, but never quite realized or never really asked the question that whether there was sexual abuse involved. So it's complicated. But I think, you know, there's definitely a degree of complicity in the Hollywood community, for sure. I was talking to Ursula Macfarlane and Hope DeMoor, and Untouchable, The Rise and Fall of Harvey Weinstein,

is on Sunday night at nine o'clock on BBC Two. Still to come in today's programme is the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra prepares to perform at the Proms. We're joined by their president, Fadina Jou. And the serial, the ninth episode, of the Country Girls. Now, the Office for National Statistics published figures earlier this year that showed that the number of women opting for self-employment rose by 31,000 in the last three months of 2018. Other figures say the percentage of women choosing self-employment

in the past decade has risen by 67%. Well, what's gone wrong with the 9-to-5 job? Why do all those new employment practices, such as flexible or part-time working, appear not to be so attractive as working for yourself? Or is it maybe that employers have simply not fallen in with what's expected of them? Well, Anna Codrea-Rado is a journalist who presents the podcast Is This Working? Lucy Adams is a former head of human resources at the BBC and now chief executive of Disruptive HR. And Kirsty Holden, who joins us from Humberside, is a blogger and founder the moneysavingmum.com. Kirstie what

was the job that you loved? I used to work for one of the biggest government agencies and it was my dream job I'd always wanted to be in the legal department of of something I just wanted my hand in with legal and I got that opportunity and I was there for 13 years how did it change after you had your first child after my first child um it wasn't so much after my first child although I did have to go through well I went through the flexible working applications and it was actually granted there was no issues then, but that was nine years ago now. That was quite a long time ago. However, with my second child was when things started to change.

It was a battle. It was a massive battle. I think I did about three flexible working applications in the space of about four years. My first one was granted. The second one and the third one went to appeal and was granted at appeal but it was just, it was such a battle it knocked my confidence it was terrible really

So what was it that made you say right, I'm off, I'm not doing this anymore It was, I actually had therapy I had been, at the time I didn't realise that I was actually going through discrimination and bullying. It didn't really occur to me that that's what that was until I ended up referring myself for CBT and it was then that it was quite clear that it wasn't me. Everything that I was feeling and everything that I was being put through, it was not because I had children. It was not because of me.

It was my employer. And it was at that stage I needed to do something. It was not healthy. Lucy, I know you've described so much of human resources work as a parent-child relationship. What did you mean when you said that? Well, a lot of what we do in HR, in organisations in general, is we have kind of two types of parenting role. We have the caring parent, which is where we try and do, you know, kind of make it everything all right for everybody. But we also have the critical parent, the compliance officer.

And this is, I think, the example that Kirstie's experienced of that kind of compliance officer role that we see, which is almost all of our policies are designed around the tiny minority of people who are going to behave badly. And so the policies are designed to protect the organisation from a tiny minority, but unfortunately are applied to everybody. And so what we see are these kind of big, bulky processes, loads of hoops to jump through

for what would seem to be a very reasonable request. And these are supposed to be rights. You know, flexible working and part-time work are supposed to be rights. Flexible working and part-time work are supposed to be in law as rights. Why would somebody like Kirsty have to go through all these applications and feel she was being bullied? Well, the right is to request flexible working, which is the legal position. But of course, we know that the vast majority of people who want to work flexibly want to do so because actually it suits them and they will perform better.

Unfortunately, part-time working, flexible working is very often seen as working less than, that it's somehow a privilege that is bestowed on people to get away with working less hard or less effectively, when actually it's the opposite. You know, we see that those organisations that get it, that understand that their role is to create the conditions where people can do their best work, that flexible working is right at the heart of that.

But why do so few employers appear to get it? I mean you know, you know, Kirsty knows, I know because I work with a lot of them that women who work part-time more flexibly work twice as hard as anybody else does. I always love it when one of my teams say they want to work part-time because you know you're going to get loads more work out of them because I think it's seen in this very traditional way where if you're not in the office this culture of presenteeism you know I've known people who have kept their jackets on the backs of chairs and gone home to make it look as if they're working harder than everybody else because they're still in the office this culture where we see you very often, I don't want to stereotype, but very often older blokes who are in management positions,

they do these air quotes where they talk about working from home, as if somehow what they're really doing is, you know, doing the washing. Well, they might be, and why not, you know? But you can still work once you've got the washing machine on. Exactly, you know. I'm trying not to be biased about this but oh dear jenny shut up and they're not spending hours of wasted time commuting how much anna would you say this is only about fitting in caring responsibilities how much do people without children want this sort of thing to

and should they have the right to it? They should have the right to it. And plenty of women who don't have children want to work flexibly. I include myself in that. I worked for an organisation where I asked to work one day a week from home because I'm a journalist, I need to write, I need a bit of headspace to write. Offices are super noisy. They're not always

the most conducive to your best thinking work I didn't even get to the point where I was putting in a formal application because already at the initial conversation I was turned down the reason I was given was because if it was if this right was given to me other members of the team would also want to work from home and they couldn't be trusted and that working from home is as we've already discussed it's it's this it's it's it's as though it's granted to people as some kind of privilege or something that you earn rather than something that you should just have an automatic right to it and women who don't have kids also have plenty of reasons for why they would want to work flexibly

they may have a medical or a mental health condition or any other number of reasons why they may have an elderly parent they may have an elderly parent um they may have claustrophobia and commuting might be a problem for them there are so many reasons why they would choose to work either flexibly or from home or just in a way that actually suits them and actually also means that they are working better and actually producing higher quality work which in turn benefits employers but this piece of the puzzle just it just hasn't fallen into place yet. Lucy how much would you say the child free are taken seriously by employers? Well in terms of asking for flexible working yeah it's kind of seen well well, why would you want to?

But to say that, I think there is a growing number of people that we're seeing who don't have young caring responsibilities. They may well have older carers. But we're also seeing older people who want to work in plural careers. They don't just necessarily want to work for one organisation we're seeing older people in the workplace who perhaps don't want to work the hours that they were doing but we're also seeing a number of younger people who want to work for an employer but also have their own business on the side so I think and this is particularly the case with retaining digital talent you know so they're wanting to maybe run their own DJing business or their own startup. So I think the requests and pressure on employers to accept flexible working as being something that isn't just a sort of a gift that they give to people who are going to work less than, but actually something that enables them to run a much more diverse workforce

is definitely growing. Kirsty, how much did you think that the attitude you found was, oh, well, if she wants to go part-time or she wants to go flexible, she won't be doing the job properly? Yeah, I felt that. I felt when I returned to work part-time that I would I didn't belong that I don't I no longer work part-time I'm no longer there nine to five Monday to Friday I'm there three days a week nine till three I didn't have a desk which was horrible

to go in and not know where I'm going to be sitting every day I know a lot of people hot desk but I felt it was because I was part-time that I was no longer entitled to a desk and the desk that I'd had for the past 10 years um I just I just felt like a number I just plugged the gaps and it was it was not a nice feeling um but that that was not necessarily from from management that was from your environment, you know, where you are, where you're working and the team that you're working with. So it was fellow workers as well as management? Yes. Yeah, yeah.

And how much, Lucy, is this no longer simply a women's issue, but an issue for fathers, for older people, as you've said? Absolutely. There are numerous reasons why every demographic would want to work flexibly and indeed you know we've spent millions every year on so-called employee engagement and yet we know that the ability to work autonomously to have a level of control over how you work is one of the key factors in feeling engaged and good about your employer. So we're not just talking about hours.

We're talking about, you gave the example, Anna, about the ability to work in a silent atmosphere where you're not surrounded by noise. Absolutely. We know that for many, many introverts in the workplace that ability hugely important it's the ability i mentioned earlier about having your own business it's the ability to you know when do you work best jenny are you a morning person or an evening person oh i work all the time but we know that we have particular times when we're stronger when we feel so it's not just about um mothers fathers people

with caring responsibilities it's about employees knowing when they're going to be most effective and employers working with them to provide those conditions why do big corporations i mean you used to work for the bbc seem to struggle with these issues well i think we immediately make it into a process i mentioned earlier this parental piece which is what if people abuse it? That's the first thing that comes into their minds. What if people abuse it? So let's put in place a process to prevent that abuse rather than saying, let's, we know the people that might abuse it. Let's deal with those on an individual basis. But actually, let's have a starting point which we're seeing now companies like Unilever they have a statement which is every job can be done flexibly so the

starting point of let's start from the position that every job can be done flexibly now let's work out how rather than let's retain this kind of permission and only grant it if a certain number of criteria. Anna, why do you say there are such big numbers of women leaving traditional employment and setting up on their own? Well, some of them are being forced into it. So I went freelance because I got made redundant. But plenty of women, I think what we've really been talking a lot about here today is all of these gender based microaggressions and small, almost invisible ways that women are just made to feel like they do not belong in the office. The example that Kirsty gave of not having a desk, could there be a more visible way of showing that this person does not belong here? It's's quite outrageous to be quite honest but even things as it sounds really silly but there are studies that have come out that say the air conditioning is set too low for women so it's often women who feel cold in the office all the way through to um i

used to work in an office where every morning i would go in and the security guard would tell me to smile which sounds innocuous enough but that is a man telling me that I have to look a certain way and be happy just to make him feel comfortable these are all the kind of small ways that women are made to feel like they don't belong and then this continues to get worse and worse until women are being turned over for jobs because they're pregnant or women feel that they can't even go for a job interview with their wedding ring on because that will send a certain signal. It's essentially women don't feel like work is working for them and so they feel like they have to go and strike out on their own and whilst that can be super empowering it shouldn't be the case that you can't feel good and fulfilled in traditional

employment and for an employer. Kirsty what difference did it make to your life when you did walk away? An unbelievable difference. I am there for my children whenever they need me. If they're poorly, they can't go into school. I don't have to ask anybody to take time off. I don't have to ask anybody to take a holiday. I don't have to ask somebody to leave five minutes early for example which was always felt like well I only work five six hours a day I can't really ask to leave any earlier it was just

the I don't have any of that and it's not and it's a lot harder there was this there's things i never even thought about for example having to work where i actually live is one battle that i never thought i would ever i thought i would love working at home i thought i would look get the washing in in the morning leave that put it out at 10 o'clock and it's it is the most difficult part of freelance for me um but as far as financially is is concerned I my blog as you've already mentioned um themoneysavingmum.com is that was my baby that was my journal when I had to reduce my hours at work. There are so many variations. You don't have to do one thing. There are so many things that women can do,

anybody can do to earn a little bit more money. As far as the one job that I'm doing now and why I left the job, yeah, it's difficult. It's not easy, but it's worth it. The fact that I'm there for my children whenever they need me is what I've done that for, really. Anna, what about freelance financial security for you? Well, I never felt secure when I was in full-time employment.

I'm a journalist and I eventually got made redundant, but I spent my career up until that point being worried that I would be made redundant. So I paradoxically feel a lot more secure now working for myself sure there are huge pay issues mainly actually not so much to do with the amount that I'm getting paid but more to do with getting paid on time and I just I think it's really worth emphasizing that women are putting themselves women are prepared to put themselves in a financially vulnerable position over staying in traditional employment because as kirsty has just

said it's it's just worth it and finally lucy you describe yourself on twitter as an hr director in recovery why because i have been a corporate hr director working in the big organizations that we've all been talking about for so many years and i realized that it just wasn't working that actually hr needed to do things radically different and so that's what my business is about is just helping companies and hr people just think rethink um because it's perhaps never really worked, but it certainly doesn't work now. Well, Lucy Adams, Anna Codrea-Rado and Kirsty Holden, thank you all very much indeed. And of course we would like

to hear from you on this subject. How do you cope when you ask if you can have flexible work or part-time work? And if you don't get it, what do you do about it? Send us a tweet or of course send us an email and thank you all three of you now the shanghai symphony orchestra was

founded in 1879 as the shanghai public band and developed throughout the early part of the 20th century to become the first orchestra to introduce Western music to China. This year, they'll make their first appearance at the Proms, that's on Sunday, and they're celebrating their 140th anniversary with a world tour. Their president is Ferdina Xiu. Ferdina, where did the musicians come from in 1879? Oh, actually, at that time, all musicians, they came from abroad, they're foreigners, non-Chinese. So actually, a lot of foreigners, they entering Shanghai, living there. And then they found that they needed a culture as well. So they bring the culture, bring the music, and a lot of refugees actually at that time, especially for the war. So they stayed in Shanghai as a safe harbor

and organized such kind of non-Chinese, totally non-Chinese orchestra. So what was the repertoire when it began? At the very beginning, the repertoire was actually very modern. So what's the new came from Europe, they immediately, maybe next month they performed in Shanghai. So I read

some documentary and archive things least Beethoven even, you know, Beethoven No. 9 very big scale, right? With choirs. So everything happened in Shanghai. So what part did the orchestra play

in introducing Western music to Chinese audiences? Well, actually, this is quite new for Chinese. So in 1920s, around 1920s, the orchestra just feel they want to expand more audience. So they want to invite more Chinese audience come into the concert. That's the beginning of everything. So after that, everything opened to the Chinese people

and a lot of young people started, you know, to learn the instrument play. They learn the instrument play from those concerts, those musicians in the orchestra. So the orchestra actually educated a lot of young people, generations. We know that there are a lot of very brilliant Chinese musicians and conductors and composers. But how difficult was it to persuade Chinese audiences

that really Western classical music was what they wanted to listen to? I don't think it's a difficulty to persuade them because at the very beginning they want to enter in the concert. They want to join it to listen to this very beautiful and different kind of art. So everything just you know very natural, no one need to be persuaded. On the other side, I mean, Chinese people, they're so eager to absorb it. They want to learn it. So at that time, those very fashion young people, they start to learn how to play the instrument. So that's the beginning part. And later, they became some soloists, cooperated with the orchestra. What happened to the orchestra during the Cultural Revolution? That was 1966 to 1976.

The orchestra, we are very proud of the history of the orchestra because no matter there goes a war or new China establishment or any other period, the history never stopped. Even in that period, because the whole Chinese musicians, composers, they are working, focus on how to combine the real Chinese elements, culture, music, even those kind of traditional opera, to combine this kind of different arts with the orchestra, symphonic piece. They want to create a new style of music to use the symphonic piece orchestra to play the real Chinese elements. So that's what all the musicians did at that time. But did they have to work underground or were they able to do it

openly? You know, there are two sides. One side, those traditional opera players, even the instruments are different. They start to learn the Western part of music, those basic knowledges. And those musicians, they start to learn about those traditional parts. So two parts merge together, create a lot of very great piece.

From that year on, so we can say now we can really know how to play instruments to express the real Chinese music. Now, I think on Sunday, there's going to be a combination of the Chinese with the Western. In Shigang Chen's,

I'll call it water. You say it in Chinese, please. Yeah, water. You call it water. You say it in Chinese, please. Yeah, water. You call it water. There must be a Chinese. Yeah, in Chinese, the pronunciation is shui. Okay, fine. How would you describe that piece?

It's a very Chinese philosophy piece, actually. We have this kind of concept. The whole world is made of five elements. That's exactly these five elements composed in the piece. That's water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. Shall we hear just a little bit of water? I love you. It's so beautiful. I want to hear the whole piece. Just one more question to you.

I know you joined as president 19 years ago after music college. How have you achieved its current worldwide success? Oh, actually, when I joined the orchestra, my first position as a librarian, not a president. I worked in the orchestra for 19 years. I almost, you know, take all the different kinds of positions I can take, so different kinds of work. And I established a lot of new departments. At that time, not that traditional. It's more international, professional. So I established

like education, IT department, the branding department, media, marketing. So I think after so many years, I'm working on this kind of, you know, different things later came to the job. I was talking to Fadina Zhou, president of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. They'll be performing at the BBC Proms this Sunday, the 1st of September at 11 o'clock in the morning

at the Royal Albert Hall and you can hear it live on BBC Radio 3 and then on BBC 4 on Friday the 6th of September. Tomorrow I'll be talking to Sam Taylor-Johnson about her new film A Million Little Pieces and to Cara Delevingne about her new television series on Amazon. Join me tomorrow, if you can, two minutes past ten. Bye-bye.

I'm Simon Mundy, host of Don't Tell Me The Score, the podcast that uses sport to explore life's bigger questions, covering topics like resilience, tribalism and fear with people like this. We keep talking about fear and to me, I always want to bring it back to, are you actually in danger? That's Alex Honnold, star of the Oscar-winning film Free Solo, in which he climbed a 3,000-foot sheer cliff without ropes. So, I mean, a lot of those, you know, social anxieties, things, and certainly I've had a lot of issues with talking to attractive people in my life. I'm like, oh no, like I could never do that.

And it certainly feels like you're going to die, but realistically you're not going to die. And that's all practice, too. Have a listen to Don't Tell Me the Score, full of useful everyday tips from incredible people on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy.

And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.