My good friend the previous BBC Shanghai correspondent Francis Markus, who has died aged 65 of most cancers, was a gifted journalist whose compassion for these he reported on led him to spend the final twenty years of his life working for humanitarian organisations all through Asia.
After being posted to Shanghai in 2002, Francis demonstrated not simply an unerring information sense, protecting protests in Hong Kong and social change in China, however a deep curiosity in human tales, from the suicide-watchers patrolling certainly one of China’s highest bridges over the Yangtze River, to the lives of these coping with HIV.
He was at all times ready to go the additional mile for a narrative, whether or not that meant dodging authorities minders to interview North Korean refugees, or, for a TV report on why residents of Shanghai’s outdated neighbourhoods typically went out to the outlets of their pyjamas, venturing out on to the road in his personal pyjamas to interview them.
Born in Southgate, north London, he was the son of Peter Markus, {an electrical} engineer, and Anna (nee Somogyi), an artist and puppeteer. After Highgate faculty he went to New Faculty, Oxford, to check French and German, however quickly switched to Chinese language and Japanese.
After commencement in 1983 he spent a 12 months on a British Council scholarship in Shanghai, the place he picked up the notoriously troublesome Shanghainese dialect – certainly one of some 10 languages, together with his mother and father’ native Hungarian, that he spoke fluently.
He then labored as a subeditor for Agence France Presse in Paris for 2 years, throughout which era he found that the BBC World Service had no vacancies for Mandarin audio system however wanted a Vietnamese speaker. He enrolled on a Vietnamese course, and subsequently spent about 15 years on the World Service as a producer and presenter protecting east and south-east Asia. He made many memorable reporting journeys to the area, together with an epic journey via the Russian far east into northern China, earlier than transferring to Shanghai.
After leaving the BBC in 2005, Francis joined the Worldwide Federation of Crimson Cross and Crimson Crescent Societies in Beijing as a communications delegate, elevating consciousness of its work in a few of China’s poorest areas, and of famine in North Korea. He additionally went again to Oxford to take a course on compelled migration, certainly one of his main considerations.
From 2014-16 he labored for the UNHCR and the ICRC in Geneva, earlier than relocating to Nepal after which Thailand, selling protection of points such because the Rohingya refugee disaster on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border. From 2021 on, he labored for the UN Meals and Agriculture Organisation.
His dedication to humanitarian points by no means diminished his irreverent sense of enjoyable. A implausible mimic, he might compose impromptu limericks in nearly any circumstances, certainly one of many attributes – alongside along with his kindness and generosity of spirit – that made Francis a lot liked by colleagues and pals around the globe. Assembly Wang Yuehua, a college trainer, made him very comfortable, and in 2006 that they had a civil partnership, ultimately settling in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand.
Yuehua survives him.
