💕「愛台灣，我的選擇」系列第13發：金鐘獎節目主持人阮安祖 Andrew Ryan保存台灣故事和記憶的聲音
「我在美國西北大學學華語，當時就深深愛上這個語言。1994年夏天我跟著『哈佛世界教學計劃』到了上海，當時上海才剛開了第一家麥當勞。大學畢業後，我想繼續進修華語，但我也想到台灣看看，所以我在1996年申請了傅爾布萊特獎學金來台灣教英文，並研究台灣的英語教學環境。
我第一年在台灣時遇到一對荷蘭夫妻，他們問我打算在台灣待多久，我說一年，他們聽了哈哈大笑說，等你遇到那些也說只待一年的人就知道了。一轉眼我已經在台灣20年了。我在1999年1月開始在中央廣播電台工作。我曾經到北京教鞏俐一年英文，但她後來沒有演出那個角色，那是在她演出《藝妓回憶錄》之前。鞏俐和史蒂芬·史匹柏會面時我剛好也在北京，她後來去了好萊塢，我也回到台灣繼續在中央廣播電台工作。
在北京待過、聽過北京的聲音之後，我回到台灣，重新感受並聆聽台灣的聲音，那個時候，我第一次從心底油然而生，一種在我去中國前沒有的感受，我覺得：「我到家了」。於是我開始思考廣播電台的獨特性，以及如何做一個最適合電台的節目。電台不是電視節目，不是一本書，也不是一首詩或是視覺藝術，而是聲音，這就是我製作「Sound Postcards聲音明信片」廣播節目的起源。
台灣有些聲音還是跟以前一樣，有些聲音則因為人事更迭而消失，但還是有一些古早時期流傳下來充滿台灣故事和記憶的聲音，這些傳統的聲音是我真正想要保存下來的。人們總是拿著手機拍照，但是紀錄台灣的聲音對我來說是一種看世界的獨特方式。
談到台灣的廣播電台，我覺得最有趣的就是地方電台，就像計程車上會聽到有人唱卡拉OK那種。有一次我在屏東訪問摘鳳梨的果農時，他們也開著廣播聽，聽他們最喜歡的原住民音樂。像這種地方電台，我以為現在已經沒有了，沒想到還持續存在。我剛到台灣時去上了華語課，有一堂課叫做新選廣播劇，基本上是以警廣的廣播劇來進行教學。16年後我也製播了一個廣播劇，並獲得廣播金鐘獎。」
⭐️阮安祖是中央廣播電台節目主持人兼製作人，曾獲得3座廣播金鐘獎和1座電視金鐘獎。他的廣播與電視節目以中英雙語進行。
⭐️欣賞安祖的《聲音明信片》(現為《貼緊台灣的洋耳朵》): https://en.rti.org.tw/radio/programView/id/710
💕Why I chose Taiwan #13 – Award-winning host Andrew Ryan’s journey to discover the voices and memories of Taiwan
"I studied Chinese in college at Northwestern and fell in love with the language. Then I went to Shanghai the summer of 1994 with the Harvard WorldTeach program. The first McDonald’s had just opened in Shanghai that summer. When I graduated from college, I wanted to continue learning Chinese but I was interested in coming to see what Taiwan was like.
I came to Taiwan in 1996 as a Fulbright Fellow teaching and doing research on Taiwan’s English teaching environment. The first year I was here, I met a Dutch and American couple and they asked me, 'How long are you gonna be here in Taiwan?' and I said, 'A year.' and they both laughed and said, 'Wait until you meet all the other people who said they would just be here a year.' And here I am 20 years later.
I started working at RTI in January 1999. I actually went to Beijing for a year to teach English to 鞏俐 Gong Li, the Chinese movie star. It was for a role that she did not end up doing, just before Memoirs of a Geisha. I was actually in Beijing when she met with [Steven] Spielberg. When she went to Hollywood, I came back to Taiwan to return to my job at RTI.
After having been in Beijing and hearing the sounds of Beijing, then coming back to Taiwan and hearing Taiwan with fresh ears, for the first time, I felt like I was sharing a collective sound experience, a feeling I hadn’t had before I went to China. And I felt like: 'This is home.' I started thinking a lot about radio and how to do a show that’s perfectly suited to radio: it couldn’t be a tv show; it couldn’t be a book; it couldn’t be a piece of poetry or a work of visual art. That was what inspired me to start doing Sound Postcards.
Some sounds have been consistent in Taiwan. Some have disappeared because life has changed. But there are still traditional sounds from an older way of life that contain stories and memories of people in Taiwan. Those are the ones that I really want to preserve. People walk around taking pictures of things with the cameras on their phones. But the process of recording the sounds of Taiwan is really a special way of looking at the world.
And when I think about radio, for me the most exciting radio in Taiwan is the local radio. Like taxi driver radio where you can hear somebody singing karaoke. I interviewed these pineapple pickers in Pingtung. They had the radio on and they were listening to the music they love, indigenous music. Such local radio, I would have thought would be gone by now, but it’s still there. When I first came to Taiwan and I was taking Chinese, one of the classes I took was called New Radio Plays. It’s essentially like lessons built on actual radio plays that were played on Police Broadcasting Service. 16 years later I actually wrote a radio play that won a Golden Bell Award."
⭐️ Andrew Ryan is a host and producer with Radio Taiwan International. He is the recipient of three broadcasting Golden Bell Awards and one Television Golden Bell Award. He broadcasts and hosts television shows in both English and in Mandarin.
⭐️ Check out Andrew's Sound Postcards/ Ear to the Ground here: https://en.rti.org.tw/radio/programView/id/710
