Having been a host for 28 years, Chen Luyu believes that he is essentially an introvert, "I have severe social anxiety."
At work, she is able to start conversations with guests with ease - "Date with Lu Yu" has been on the air for nearly 20 years. She has recorded more than 3,000 episodes and interviewed tens of thousands of people.
But in life, she resists lively occasions and is used to being alone. Except for her family and close friends, eating with anyone else is a difficult task for her.
Lu Yu told Ten Points, "I am a person who keeps to himself. I will only take a polite look at other people's lives from a distance. If you don't invite me, I won't enter." "She paused, "But I am still very grateful for this job. By reading a part of another person's life, I have awe of life."
Social Fear Patient
On the day of the interview, Lu Yu had just finished recording a talk show with his friend Ma Weiwei. The two met in the variety show "Super Speaker" in 2014. Lu Yu was the mentor and Ma Weiwei was a player on the Lu Yu team.
The conversation centered around Lu Yu’s new book "Still Believe". As soon as they met, Ma Weiwei told her, "I think your writing is much more playful than your real life."
Over the years, Lu Yu has rarely shown her life to the public.
She does not have a Weibo account and has a limited number of friends. Her Douyin account was only opened two days ago and is managed by colleagues in the studio. She rarely accepts exclusive interviews, and she has never responded to outside controversy, speculation, and curiosity.
Lu Yu attaches great importance to "appropriateness" and "sense of boundaries."
During the chat, Ma Weiwei mentioned that one time she moved alone. When she went downstairs to buy water, she suddenly broke down. Thinking of all the bitterness of Beidiao, she couldn't help but sit on the roadside and cry bitterly, attracting the attention of passers-by.
Lu Yu will not allow this situation to happen to him. "Even if I want to cry, I will hold it in until the mover leaves, give the tip to the mover, say goodbye, close the door and cry again. This is who I am."
One of the few people who can do this When Lu Yu revealed his true feelings, he left behind words.
Six years ago, Lu Yu started writing a column on the public account "Lu Yu You Ren". Most of the readers are young girls, and most of the letters from the backstage are about troubles in love and marriage, as well as confusion about the future.
Lu Yu picks a topic of interest every week, first writes a handwritten reply, and then compiles it into audio. When writing alone, she felt that she was "a lot more relaxed and a little more courageous."
In the book, Lu Yu admitted that she was a "complete introvert":
In Ma Weiwei’s impression, Lu Yu’s favorite activities are lying down and sitting quietly. After work, I come home, take off my makeup, take a shower, then lie on the sofa, eat fruit, read a book, watch American TV series, and stay shut in for several days without seeing anyone.
This kind of life makes Lu Yu feel relaxed and safe. "I occasionally force myself to go out and touch the world. Most of the time, I will let myself exist in the most comfortable way like today."
But once she enters work mode, she can quickly switch to another state, skillfully start conversations with guests, and quickly shorten the distance between people.
Her chatty interviews allow countless celebrities and ordinary people to sit on her yellow sofa and tell the audience about their lives.
Today, "A Date with Lu Yu" has been on the air for nearly 20 years. No matter who watches it, it is a story about persistence.
But Lu Yu believed that she did not "persist". She said, "I just stumbled in the only way I knew how to, and happened to get to where I am today smoothly."
Talent
Since junior high school, Lu Yu has discovered that she has Two abilities are outstanding, one is language ability, and the other is memory.
One summer vacation, she went to live with her grandparents in Shanghai. There is an English corner in the People's Park near my home, where many English lovers hang out every day.
Lu Yu had only learned English for a short time at that time and only knew a few simple words and sentence patterns. But she was not afraid at all. She stood among a group of uncles and aunts and introduced herself loudly in English:
"My name is Chen Luyu. I am a first-year student at Beijing Normal University Experimental Middle School. My parents are at China Radio International Work..."
People surrounded her on three levels inside and outside, everyone wanted to see whose family this powerful little girl came from.
In high school, Lu Yu was the English teacher’s “last line of defense.” She could always answer questions that the whole class couldn’t answer fluently.
Once, the teacher randomly checked the recitation text, and the first six students were "killed" one after another. Lu Yu was stunned and used shorthand for 5 minutes to recite the entire text word for word.
At the age of 18, Lu Yu was successfully admitted to the Beijing Radio and Television Institute (now Communication University of China) majoring in international journalism. After many years, she concluded, "English did not change my destiny, but it opened a door for me."
In the winter of 1991, Lu Yu was in her junior year. Beijing held an English speech contest for the Olympic bid, and she won first place.
Two months later, Zhang Xiaohai, the director of CCTV’s literary and art department, came to the school to choose a host. The teacher originally only notified students from the broadcasting department to participate, but because he won an award in the English competition, Lu Yu was called to the scene as an exception.
Among a group of broadcasting girls with long hair and smooth words, Lu Yu, who has short ear-length hair, looks out of place.
During the impromptu interview session, Lu Yu picked up the microphone and asked Zhang Xiaohai, "Why do the directors of the Arts Department all have big beards? You, Zhao An, Zhang Ziyang. Is the competition between you fierce?"
The sharp and straightforward question made Zhang Xiaohai sweat, and also made Lu Yu stand out. Before graduating from university, Lu Yu entered CCTV and hosted "Art Garden Scenery". This was the beginning of her TV career.
Looking back now, Lu Yu feels that he is very lucky, "I have almost never experienced the difficult starting point that a newcomer usually has to go through, being poor and struggling to make ends meet. I seem to have always been a fool, reckless, and naive. Be confident." A friend told her fortune and told her, "You are destined to work hard and have no luck in wealth, but you are not in the wrong profession."
In 1996, Lu Yu came to Hong Kong and joined Phoenix TV. After hosting a music program for two years, she was assigned to host an early morning news program, "Phoenix Morning Bus."
During that time, Lu Yu got up at 4 a.m. every day. When she walked out of the house at 4:30, the city was still dark. In the usually bustling streets, the only sound she could hear was the click of her leather shoes.
When she arrived at the dressing room, she spread all the newspapers of the day on the table and read them with concentration for two hours.
At 7:15, she walked into the studio. The corridor from the dressing room to the studio was 50 meters long. She walked steadily, fearing that if she shook her head, she would forget the news she had just memorized.
At 7:30, the program started on time and ended half an hour later.
At 8 o'clock, normal office workers walked out of the house. Lu Yu walked home against the crowd and took a short rest. She had to host the "Phoenix Noon Express" at 12 noon.
From March 1998 to the end of 1999, Lu Yu's "Phoenix Morning Train" created a craze for "news-telling" TV programs in China.
She rose to fame and quickly became the leading actress of Phoenix TV. In 2000, she was also named the best female host of the year on the Chinese TV list.
However, the intensity of her work as a host five days a week, and her average sleep of less than five hours a day, also put her physical strength on the verge of collapse.
Considering that there are more and more "news-telling" programs in China, Lu Yu applied to Taiwan to quit "Phoenix Morning Train" and formed a small team of three or four people to do the program she had been thinking about for a long time. , has also been planning a program for a long time.
"A Date with Lu Yu" 20 Years
It has always been Lu Yu's wish to have a talk show named after himself.
In 1994, Lu Yu went to the United States to study and saw Oprah Winfrey's talk show on TV for the first time. From then on, she longed to do a daily show:
There was a comfortable sofa in the venue, and it wanted to be yellow. She sat on the left side of the sofa-because she felt that the left half of her face To make it even more photogenic, a different person sits on the right side every day. There is a large TV screen behind the sofa, and during the conversation, some pre-edited short films are played interspersed.
In 2002, "A Date with Luyu" was launched, and the guest in the first episode was Mao Amin.
At that time, Mao Amin was involved in a tax case and had a change of heart, which was extremely controversial. However, one of the two asked sincerely and the other answered frankly, giving the program an almost perfect start.
At first, "A Date with Luyu" was a weekly program. Although the first episode achieved both word-of-mouth and ratings success, it really became a national talk show after it was changed from weekly to daily broadcast.
On January 1, 2005, the new version of "A Date in Luyu" was broadcast simultaneously on Phoenix Chinese Channel and more than 20 provincial TV stations in the mainland. It was established specifically for the production of "A Date in Luyu" Energy companies are also fresh.
Lu Yu recorded his day in his autobiography "Hearts Meet":
Lu Yu is very strict when it comes to work. Every day at noon, as soon as the show ends, the credits are still running. No matter where the producer is, he has to hold his mobile phone and wait for Lu Yu's life-threatening call.
She laughed at herself that at that time, she always "went straight to the topic in a rage". The lighting was not good, the eye shadow was too dark, the camera did not cut when the audience laughed, and there were typos in the subtitles - there were 10 typos. 8 were discovered by Lu Yu.
In just one year and eight months, Lu Yu recorded 500 episodes of the program and interviewed more than 1,000 guests.
When the stage design department rearranged the stage, they found that the thin Lu Yu had made a hole in the sofa. New Weekly awarded her the 2005 Program Host of the Year Award to praise her "model worker-like diligence."
"It's very tiring to listen to other people's stories every day," Lu Yu told me, "because you are distracted and exhausted physically and mentally."
But she was still very tired. I like this process, "I am curious about people and sensitive enough. After listening to the end, you will find that every life is not easy, which allows you to look at some problems in your life more objectively."
However, the high-density interviews also brought her overwhelming controversy a few years later.
A collection of cut-off interview clips are circulating on the Internet, accusing her of "not doing her homework", "making awkward conversations" and having "low emotional intelligence".
Ma Weiwei once asked Lu Yu, "How to ensure efficiency and high quality when there is a lot of work?"
Lu Yu said bluntly, "In fact, everyone who makes content has to My own requirements are far higher than the public's requirements for you. Often, you can only focus on high efficiency and high quality. It is difficult to ensure high quality when you are particularly efficient. The pace of TV is very fast, and I will be willing to sacrifice efficiency for quality. . But sometimes I don't have this luxury."
There may be misunderstandings, but she has not explained them publicly. She always feels that "explanations are useless, and it is not other people's responsibility to understand you."
And changes are happening quietly.
Starting from 2016, "A Date with Luyu" was changed from studio recording to "A Date with Luyu One Day", which means that she has to spend several times as long with the interview subjects.
Two years ago, when I was working on "The Later", Lu Yu went to Lanzhou to interview Yang Lijuan, and they squeezed into the bus and went to the supermarket with Yang Lijuan.
The two were sitting by the lake chatting, talking about the idol Andy Lau whom they had been crazy about, and her father who committed suicide because of her. Yang Lijuan became emotional and shed tears. Lu Yu didn't say anything, just hugged her shoulder gently.
In the most recent episode of the show, she interviewed Chen Jianbin, and the two of them sat in a restaurant eating hotpot mutton. Lu Yu asked him, can you cook? Chen Jianbin denied it instinctively.
Lu Yu asked, "Didn't you do it when you were helping the kitchen?" Chen Jianbin was stunned and smiled, "I don't even remember what happened for so long."
Select Life
"If I can only choose between dreams and life, today I will choose life." Lu Yu said.
Over the years, she spent all her time at work. "The education our generation has received has some overreaching elements. Our teachers have told us since childhood that you must be self-reliant and devote all your body and soul to your career. Life is meaningless. Doing housework is too trivial and not great. It’s not noble, we are people who do big things.”
But she doesn’t regret working hard back then. "I won't use today's standards to struggle with the choices I made back then. I should have worked hard at that time."
Outside of work, Lu Yu admits that he is not a person with a taste for life.
She doesn’t know how to cook, clean her room, raise a dog, pet a cat, or grow flowers. Her daily entertainment is reading books and watching TV shows. She has lived in her current home in Beijing for ten years. She thinks the color of the wallpaper is ugly, but she has never been too lazy to change it.
She resists anything with a strong sense of form. After all, she faces stages, lights, and processes every day at work. She really can’t imagine living her life as a never-ending show.
Living alone gives Lu Yu freedom, but sometimes, she is also afraid that "moderate loneliness" will turn into "loneliness".
She wrote in "Still Believe" that she once went to Lane Crawford to buy towels. Thinking of the deserted home, she deliberately chose bath towels and face towels in two colors: rose red and bright yellow. It was for two people and I bought a big bag.
Lu Yu believes that she has not reached the level where she can enjoy living alone. Apart from her, there is no living space for living things, which often makes her feel frustrated.
"I always feel that if you buy an extra towel, you admit that a person's life is not so self-sufficient and contented. Sometimes he will be frightened and feel lost, but there is also the possibility of getting rid of the solitary life.
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In the past two years, various media reports will constantly remind her that she is already a middle-aged woman in her late 50s.
Even if she is concerned about the passage of time and the growth of age, It’s not that strong a feeling, “But society doesn’t forget your age and what a woman of a certain age should be like. ”
Lu Yu is not particularly satisfied with the current situation, but he accepts it.
Will a mature, independent, single, and childless career woman be happy in the future? Yu is not sure. However, she is not that anxious to know the result.
After interviewing all kinds of people during her 28-year career as a host, she felt relieved about some of the problems in life. "Just do it, move forward, time will give you the answer. ”
Click to watch, I hope we can all be not afraid of time and enjoy life.
Some of the pictures in this article were provided by the interviewees