Old friend's return is mighty welcome during isolation

With the simple flip of a switch and turn of a dial, I recently opened the good version of a Pandora's box, unleashing melodious bliss into my surroundings.

The palm-sized box had just arrived by courier in Beijing, and it was no sooner out of its packaging than the magic of radio, long absent from my life, was in the air again.

I remember my father and grandmother describing how, long before the arrival of television, families in the United States would gather around huge tube-radio cabinets, which had a single speaker the size of a manhole cover, to listen to music, news and popular radio series.

My generation saw the invention of the transistor radio, which gave music instant mobility. My brother and I each had such a radio, about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and these tiny wonders went everywhere we did.

And that was how "The Mighty 1290 KOIL", the hugely popular local AM radio station of my childhood, became an ever-present friend.

That was many decades ago. But now, in Beijing, I have a friend again in radio－and a very welcome one at that, considering the recent isolation amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The mysteries of the airwaves were rekindled via a small but stylish radio housed in a wooden cabinet reminiscent of those tube radios of long ago.

Curious, I switched on the radio as soon as I got it, adjusted the antenna, slowly turned the dial, and stumbled onto a Beijing FM station that, much like the Mighty 1290 did so many years ago, dishes out (for the most part) one tasty tune after another, freely mixing genres.

Years back, FM turned commercial radio on its ear, emphasizing "album-oriented" music－meaning that any song from an album was fair game－rather than the hit-single approach of AM radio. FM radio also featured mind-blowing (at the time) stereo sound.

Sadly, the underground feel of FM radio in its 1970s heyday was quickly corrupted by corporate "suits" who killed radio slowly, introducing strict music formats that restricted, and eventually choked off, the flow of all but the most commonplace music.

Fast-forward to Beijing and Easy FM 91.5, which is one reason broadcast radio has taken up a new berth in my head.

The Beijing station has startled me time and again by eschewing format and tapping into a widely inclusive play list that ranges from The Clash, King Kooba, Snoop Dogg and Joy Division to The High Kings, Marvin Gaye, JB McPherson, Tom Waits, Rose Murphy, Beth Ditto, Nick Drake, the London Jazz Four and Joni Mitchell. Occasionally the station goes far astray, as when once it played the ditzy fluff of Jack Johnson back to back with AC/DC's real-deal rock.

Jazz, punk and lots of funk; music that's old, recent and contemporary; house, rhythm and blues and samba－they all find a niche at Easy FM, which boasts "real music variety from China's biggest library".

But don't stop there. Turn the dial a notch or two higher for a range of contemporary music as well as made-for-radio English-language presentations, including the works of Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, and still higher for hip-hop and pop heavy Metro Radio 94.5.

Further up the dial are a number of Chinese pop stations, a host of talk-radio programs (usually found on AM radio in the West) and even, around 104, a station that plays traditional Chinese music, including Peking Opera.

As you can see (or, more accurately, hear), FM radio is teeming with activity in Beijing. I counted 24 active stations late one night (although on some nights all but one or two vanish).

Dialing in to broadcast radio, rather than logging in, is pleasing for more than nostalgic reasons, too. Broadcast FM, a truly magical medium whose signal must be "grabbed" with a tuner, just feels warmer than listening online.

And you're wrong if you think FM's broadcast signal lags behind high-tech online radio. In fact, that old-fashioned signal has lower latency, or delay, so you'll actually hear it sooner than its high-tech counterpart.

At any rate, I now spend many a relaxing afternoon or late night simply turning the dial and seeing where those magic signals might take me next.