If You Are The One Forum

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The event will be live-streamed by SBS on the 15 November, 7.30pm at If You Are The One Forum - Live (opens in a new window)

Featuring Q&A with host Meng Fei

Cultural, Social and Linguistic Impact of If You Are The One in Australia

Sunday, 15 November 2015
7.00 pm arrival for 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm.
Ian and Nancy Turbott Auditorium (Building EE)
Western Sydney University Parramatta campus

Western Sydney University is proud to present the If You Are The One Forum, featuring Q&A with the program host, Mr Meng Fei and program producer, Ms Chen Chen. The forum will explore the cultural, social and linguistic impact of If You Are The One in Australia.

If You Are The One currently airs on SBS 2, weekends at 7.30 pm, with encore screenings every weeknight at 6.30 pm.

Special Guests from If You Are The One

Meng Fei – host of If You Are The One

Mr Meng Fei was born in Chongqing and grew up in Nanjing. He is well known in China, not only as a hugely popular TV presenter, but also for the remarkable success story of his life. Before becoming a news reporter and TV host he worked in various casual jobs, including water delivery, security guard, receptionist, construction site worker and printing assistant in a printing factory. In 1994, he got work by chance as a casual hand with Jiangsu Broadcasting Corporation, where he went on to train as a cameraman. In 1996 he became the head cameraman for the documentary series Towards Atlanta. His first breakthrough as a TV presenter came in 2002 when he produced and hosted Jiangsu TV's highest rating news program, Nanjing at Zero Distance 《南京零距离》, which won him the national award for best TV host. In 2007 and 2009 he went on to host another two popular reality shows for Jiangsu TV, Best Singers 《绝对唱响》 and Masters and Apprentices 《名师高徒》. In 2010, he was chosen to host the first series of If You Are The One. The show's ratings topped every variety show in all of China and made him a household name. In 2012, Meng Fei won "Best Presenter" in the 9th China TV Golden Eagle Awards.

Chen Chen – producer of If You Are The One

Chen Chen holds a Bachelor of Television Production from the Communication University of China and a Masters of Communications from Hohai University of China. She started her career with Jiangsu Satellite TV as a documentary director in 2003. From 2007, she was a director of the popular TV reality shows Best Singers 《绝对唱响》 and Masters and Apprentices 《名师高徒》, responsible for script writing and production. In 2009 she was appointed general director of the reality show Who Dares to Sing 《谁敢来唱歌》, based on the British series.

From 2010, she joined the production team of If You Are The One, as a director and executive producer. In 2012, she was made producer of the show, responsible for all aspects including selection of contestants, script writing, on stage direction and post production. She initiated the first overseas special in Australia in 2011 and was responsible for the following seven overseas specials out of the entire 13.

Master of Ceremonies (MC)

Jan Fran

Jeannette Francis (Jan Fran) is a presenter with The Feed on SBS2.  Jeannette writes, produces and presents everything from long form documentaries to short comedy segments for The Feed and in doing so brings her own unique style to her work. She has worked as a journalist for six years, often travelling solo to shoot stories from all over the world. She was nominated for a Young Walkley for a three-part series she shot on women in Uganda.

Jeannette has worked across SBS's news and current affairs platforms, including as a video-journalist for the network's flagship current affairs programme, Dateline. She is one of a handful of Australian journalists who was allowed into Nauru to cover the re-opening of Australia's off-shore detention centre.

In 2011, she moved to Bangladesh where she spent one year living in Dhaka and working as a communications specialist with UNICEF. She has lived in France, Bangladesh and Uganda and speaks four languages, most of them terribly.

Panellists

Ien Ang

Distinguished Professor Ien Ang is a Professor of Cultural Studies at Western Sydney University, where she was the founding Director of the Institute for Culture and Society. She has an international reputation as a world leader in the field of Cultural Studies, and her work has been translated in many languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, Italian, Spanish and German. Much of her research deals with the cultural impacts of globalisation, focusing on a wide range of issues including migration and multiculturalism, media and popular culture, and identity, ethnicity and diaspora. She is the author of several books, including Watching Dallas, Desperately Seeking the Audience, On Not Speaking Chinese and The SBS Story. She recently chaired an expert working group on Australia's engagement with Asia for the Australian Council for Learned Academies, publishing the report Smart Engagement with Asia: Leveraging Language, Research and Culture (ACOLA 2015).

Wanning Sun

Wanning Sun is a Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Technology Sydney. Her researches include Chinese media and communication, social change and inequality in contemporary China, and diasporic Chinese media and China's public diplomacy. She is the author of a number of books, including Leaving China: Media, Migration, and Transnational Imagination (2002), Maid in China: Media, Morality and the Cultural Politics of Boundaries (2009), Subaltern China: Rural Migrants, Media and Cultural Practices (2014), and Telemodernities: Television and Transforming Lives in Asia (with Tania Lewis and Fran Martin 2016). She has also edited a number of volumes including Media and the Chinese Diaspora (2006) and Media and Communication in the Chinese Diaspora - Rethinking Transnationalism (with John Sinclair, 2016). Wanning is a member of the editorial board for Media International Australia (MIA), Communication, Culture & Critique (ICA), Asian Journal of Communication, and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Communication and the Public, and the China Journal.

Currently, Wanning is the Chief Investigator of a multiple-year research project, which examines how inequality shapes the love and romantic practices of Chinese people born in the 1980s and 1990s.

Joe Sweeney

Joe visited China for the first time in 2008 and was captivated by its richness of culture and the warmth of its people. Eager to learn more about China he commenced study in the Chinese language whilst completing his Law degree. Joe has been engaging with China ever since and attributes his many unique experiences to learning Chinese. He represented Australia at the 2011 International Chinese Bridge Language Competition in China and won the first prize in 2014 competing in the Jiangsu Cup Chinese Language Speech Contest at Melbourne University. He was also invited by Asialink to speak at the Victoria in the Asia Century conference in 2012.

Whilst living in China in 2013 Joe went on the most popular dating show If You Are The One and his "15-minute fame" on this show gave him insight into the social phenomena of televised match-making in China.

Joe holds a Bachelor of Laws, Monash University, a Bachelor of Film and Television, Swinburne University and a Diploma of Modern Languages (Chinese), Monash University. He currently practices law in Melbourne with a leading Australian law firm and regularly utilises his language skills and knowledge of Chinese culture.

Jing Han

Jing Han received her BA and MA in English in China. She came to Australia in 1988 to pursue her PhD in English literature at the University of Sydney and received her doctoral degree in 1995. She joined SBS TV in 1996 as a Mandarin subtitler and is now the head of SBS Subtitling Department. Over the last 19 years, Jing has subtitled more than 300 Chinese films and TV programs for the Australian audience, including major Chinese films Sacrifice, Under the Hawthorn Tree, 1942, Forever Enthralled,  Crazy Racer, Crazy Stone, Lust Caution, Let the Bullet Fly,  The Curse of Golden Flower, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Hero, Not One Less, The Road Home, Blind Shaft, Beijing Bicycle, Springtime in A Small Town, The Blue Kite etc and by now over 150 episodes of the popular Chinese TV series If You Are The One.
Jing also lectures at Western Sydney University, teaching translation studies including subtitling and literary translation. As a leading expert in subtitling and intercultural communications, Jing has been frequently invited to present at conferences and give lectures in China, Europe and Australia. She has recently completed the English translation of the famous Chinese writer Ye Xin's novel Debt of Love.