Medal honor a day I will remember forever

A truly unforgettable or memorable experience is something which happens very rarely in the life of a person. I can truly say that such an unforgettable and memorable experience happened to me when I received the Chinese Government Friendship Award at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept 30.

So many aspects of this experience were unforgettable and memorable, such as the fabulous and historic location where the ceremony took place.

In addition to receiving this award, I was also proud and honored to be in the company of many fellow award winners who are very esteemed and high-level personalities, including a Nobel Prize winner, the former Italian minister of justice and former chairman of the Italian Communist Party, and many high-level scientists, academics and executives.

I was proud and honored personally, but what gave me even greater pride was to attend the grand celebration of the 75th anniversary of New China in the presence of the top Party and State leaders.

I have attended National Day banquets at the Great Hall of the People several times over the years, but this time was extra special as it was the first time I had attended such an event in the presence of China's top Party and State leadership and many veteran former top leaders.

In addition, the around 3,000 people attending the banquet included many prominent people from all walks of life, including a contingent of China's Olympic champions.

My sense of pride and honor is all the stronger for the fact that this award, which I can confidently say is one of the most important things to happen in my entire life, is not just for me personally, but represents the great esteem in which our paper, China Daily, is held.

Receiving this award is a significant milestone not only in my decades-long professional journey as a journalist, but also in the even longer journey which I embarked on in my teenage years when I first made contact with China almost four decades ago as a listener to the English service of Radio Beijing (known today as China Radio International) and when I first began to read China Daily in the late 1980s.

All those years ago, when I started to get to know China and learn about China, sitting listening in Scotland to those broadcasts coming thousands of miles, all the way from Beijing to my shortwave radio, I would never have imagined that one day I would be in the Great Hall of the People wearing the Chinese Government Friendship Award and listening to the speech marking National Day by President Xi Jinping.

And what is of even greater significance is that this is the first year in which China Daily had two Friendship Award winners, myself and Andrew Graham.

This is something which is not only unprecedented since the Friendship Award was established in 1991, but it is also particularly rare for two Friendship Award winners to come from the same organization in any one given year. This is a strong vote of confidence in China Daily and the important role it plays in telling China's stories.